Christmas Recipes: Christmas Cake

At home, My mother always baked the 123 cake. We, the kids always had to pray and hope that one of the cousins would come for a visit and bring a fruitcake along...and when someone did bring a fruitcake, ah! it felt like winning a lottery. It was a well known rule that I get to eat the icing( especially the iced flowers).. Luckily my sisters never really fancied the icing..

I started baking the christmas cake when I was 17 yrs old. I soaked the fruits in rum and followed the 123 cake recipe. Well, I didn't know then that there was such a thing as fruitcake recipe.
My 123 fruitcake was much better than drinking the batter my oldest sister served as a cake!( she tried to bake a cake in a toaster oven..it did really look like a cake. with a nice brown crust on top. But we couldn't cut it)

Finally one day I found my mother's recipe book among the junk she was throwing out and was surprised to see that she did have a Christmas cake recipe and she never once baked a cake using that recipe.
Amma gave her recipe book to my oldest sister as she is the eldest and have the right to the family heirloom..My sister lost that recipe book, however I still have the recipe for the christmas cake from her recipe book.. I copied most of the recipes, because I knew, I would never get the book. I follow that recipe to this day..

Ingredients

1.5 kg mixed fruits(raisins, almonds,cashews)
1 cup rum
rind of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
250gm butter( room temperature)
1 tbspn treacle/caramel
5 eggs(room temperature)
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon, cardamom, cloves each
1/4 tsp nutmeg


Soak the fruits in rum for atleast 24 hours( longer the better)

Before you bake the cake, take a 9 inch round pan. Line the inside and the outside with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar well

Add one egg at a time along with a tbl spn of flour from the 2 cups you have meassured for the cake

Mix the rest of the flour, fruit mix, spices, caramel together in another bowl

Add the creamed butter, sugar egg mix in to the fruit mix and stir using a wooden spoon

If the mix looks too dry add 1/4 cup rum to the batter

Preheat oven at 150 degrees

Pour the batter in to the lined cake tin and bake for about 2 hours, till you insert a wooden skewer in to the cake and no batter sticks on the skewer.

Note: I don't use any raising agents with this recipe and cooking time varies according to the oven you use.