I'm in the odd position with this, my first ever fruit cake, of not being able to comment on how it's turned out yet, but I wanted to post my notes on the making and baking of it before I forget. It's one of those cakes which is best eaten after a period of storage, so I've had to relunctantly swaddle my creation in clingfilm and put it in a cupboard, pending a visit to friends next weekend.
Anyway, this cake took about 4 hours to make and needed 2.5 hours in the oven. It's crammed full of apricots, cranberries, sultanas, pineapple and almonds (see picture 1) and took a lot of fiddly preparation. I tried a few new techniques for this, using scissors to chop the apricots up and the mezzaluna knife for the almonds (husband's idea). The actual cake bit was very straightforward, but lots of elbow grease was needed to mix everything up.
During its baking, lovely, buttery aromas wafted from the oven: it turned out to be quite substantial leakage from the springform tin, of butter used to grease it and butter from the cake (which hadn't totally broken down in the mixing stage). I was anxious about it being undercooked, but the skewer was clean and it was a nice colour, and even though husband thought the temperature was at 120 instead of 130 (eek!), it had cooked for the required time + 5 minutes.
Baker's verdict: easy, but labour-intensive to make. Smelt lovely.
Husband rating: tbc (but he said it looked and smelt good)
Here's what it looked like when cut, after a week's storage. As expected, it was hard to get a nice, neat slice, thanks to the amount of fruity bits, but other than that, it held together very well. For my first attempt at a fruit cake, I think I've done a good job. It turned out to be lovely and moist, baked really well and actually not too heavy on the stomach (although ridiculously heavy in the tin!) Husband has confirmed that he doesn't like fruit-cake, but is willing to try some.
Husband rating: 7.75/10 (because he doesn't really like fruit cake)
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