Christmas Plum Cake

I love plum cake a lot and I wanted to try it out myself and it came out really well. I would love to share the recipe here. The recipe below makes 2 cakes.


Ingredients

For Caramelizing

• Sugar - ½ cup
• Water - 1 cup

Other Ingredients

• All purpose flour (Maida)- 2 1/2 cup
• Sugar - 1½ cup
• Butter - 2 stick
• Dried fruits (dates, raisins, dried cherries, plums, prunes and apricots) - 1 cup
• Dried nuts (almonds, cashews and walnuts) - ½ cup
• Egg - 6
• Baking soda - ¼ tsp.
• Salt - ½ tsp.
• Vanilla extract - 1 tsp.
• Dried orange peels - 1 tbsp.
• Spice powder (cinnamon, clove and dry ginger) - 1 tsp.
• Rum - ½ cup

Preparation

• Chop the dried fruits and soak them in Rum for 1 day. (Orange juice can also be used instead of Rum. If Orange juice is used soak the fruits for 3 days in room temperature)

Caramelizing

• Add 1 tbsp. of water to the sugar and heat it in medium heat.
• When the sugar starts to turn brown keep stirring and increase the heat to high.
• The sugar will start to change color from light brown to very dark brown.
• Microwave 1 cup of water for a minute and add it to the brown sugar solution.
• Boil it for a min and take it off the stove.

Mixing & Baking

• Preheat the oven at 350 degree, grease a cake pan with butter and keep aside.
• In a blender, add 2 cloves, ½ inch cinnamon, dry ginger powder, orange peel and make a powder and keep aside.
• Take a mixing bowl, and add butter and sugar and blend them really well. Now add the eggs and blend them to get fluffy.
• Now add the all purpose flour little by little and keep blending it.
• Add the caramelized sugar, vanilla essence, salt, spice powder, baking soda and beat again. Now the batter is really soft and fluffy.
• Add the dry fruits with Rum and blend it with the mix.
• Take 1 tbsp. of flour and mix it with the broken nuts.
• Pour the batter in the already greased pan. Now spread the flour coated nuts on top of the batter.
• Cook in middle of the rack for 45 minutes in 350 deg. C. The cake is ready when a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean without any cake being stuck to its sides.
• Cool completely before storing it.

The cake was so yummy as it would be in bakery.