Today’s Christmas Inspired recipe is for my Healthy Gluten-Free Fruit Cake, which is packed full of fruit, seeds and flavour.
Let’s get real here, fruitcake is one of those desserts that you either love the taste of or it makes you gag. I have always fallen into the first category and in fact, fruitcake formed a large part of my families Christmas celebrations.
My Family & Christmas Eve
My Aunt Trudi would always make her famous Fruit Cake in a Bundt pan every year for Christmas Eve.
The house would be decked in beautiful lights inside and out (a time before load shedding), the most delicious smells would waft from the kitchen and the best part – my whole family was together.
For my siblings and I, this was an occasion to look forward to and even more so because of two magical reasons;
- Trudi would cover R1, R2 and R5 coins in tin foil and bake them into the cake. This meant the best part of the dessert was going home with R10 – R15 pocket change, depending on how much cake you could eat
- My uncle Trev provided an after-dinner show, by drowning the fruitcake in Brandy and then setting it alight while we all ooohed and aahed at the flames.
Besides these two very wonderful reasons to look forward to Christmas, her cake was utterly delicious and truly tasted like a slice of Christmas to me.
My aunt and uncle live in Chicago now, and sadly our lovely Christmas Eve party doesn’t happen anymore, so I thought it was about high time for me to create a Christmas Cake this year.
A New Christmas Fruit Cake
Today I have tried to create my own version of my Aunts magical cake, which is gluten-free and filled with seeds from NuSeed, spices fruits and nuts.
I topped it with a simple glace icing instead of marzipan, but marzipan can be used instead if you’d prefer.
It is very easy to make and if you follow my instructions there really won’t be too many hurdles to overcome.😉
Healthy Gluten-Free Fruit Cake
Bake this festive fruitcake in advance of Christmas and feed it regularly with rum, brandy or whisky to build the flavour and keep it moist.
I have been spiking mine in brandy for the past two weeks, but you can omit this step if you do not like alcohol in your desserts.
Love,
Cat
Gluten-Free Christmas Fruit Cake
Equipment
- Loaf Pans
- bowls
- Grater / Zester
- scale
- measuring cups
Ingredients
- 225 g Muscavado Sugar
- 125 g Gluten Free Flour woolworths
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 100 g coconut flour
- 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- ½ tsp all spice
- 225 g unsalted butter softened
- Zest of 1 orange
- 5 medium eggs
- 2 tbsp. brandy + more or whisky / rum
- 50 g almond flour
- 400 g mixed sultanas and raisins
- 100 g chopped peel
- 100 g glace cherries
- 20 g blanched sliced almonds
- 1 tsp Almond Essence
- 1 tsp Vanilla essence
Glace Icing
- 200 g icing sugar
- ½ tsp teaspoon almond essence
- 2 tbsp boiling water
- cherries
- thyme fresh
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 130C
- Grease a 23cm loaf tin or cake tin that is at least 8cm deep. You can also line with baking paper for easy removal.
- Sift the coconut, almond and plain flour, baking powder and spices and set aside
- Whisk butter and orange zest in a large bowl for 1 minute until light and fluffy
- Add sugar and whisk for a further 2 minutes
- Now whisk in eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla essence, almond essence and brandy
- Fold in the sifted flour mixture into two goes mixing until combined – careful not to over mix
- Now add in the glace cherries, peel, sultanas, raisins and blanched almonds
- Transfer to the loaf tin and smooth the surface
- Bake for 1 hour then turn oven the down to 120C and bake for 3 hours or until a skewer comes out clean
- Leave to cool in the oven overnight
- The next morning, if desired, sprinkle some brandy over the cake. If desired you can even sprinkle brandy over the cake for the next couple of days.
- To glace – mix the glace icing ingredients together and pour over cake
- Garnish with cherries and rosemary for a Christmas vibe!
Notes
This recipe is proudly sponsored by Nu-Seed 🤩
