Fruitcake

Yesterday Bryce said, “I really want fruitcake. Can you make it?” I never had before but figured I could give it a try! With a little bit of this and a little bit of that using the ingredients that I had around this what I came up with and while this was great yesterday straight out of the oven, today it was even better!
It very much reminds me of plum pudding that comes out around Christmas time. There are members of my family who make excellent plum pudding and have even been known to mail it from Australia to the US for us when times gets desperate! This recipe fore goes the alcohol in traditional plum pudding, namely because we only have gin on board right now but I did include the tonic.

Fruitcake

1 banana, mashed

½ c tonic water

1/3 c rice bran oil

4 tbsp maple syrup

1 ½ c Self-raising flour (gluten-free)*

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground allspice

½ tsp ground cloves**

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 c pitted dates, chopped

¾ c dried raisins & cranberries, chopped

½ c walnuts, chopped

½ preserved lemon, rinsed & finely chopped***

1)    Mix together first 4 ingredients. In a separate bowl mix together remaining ingredients. Combine.

2)    Pour into lightly greased bread tin. Cook for ~1 hour at ~325F. **** Cover with tin foil for the last 20 minutes to prevent from browning too much.

3)    Remove from tin and onto a rack.

4)    Slice and enjoy!

* The flour does not need to be self-raising or gluten-free. This is just what we had lying around. I’m sure this would still be excellent with plain flour.

**I did not have ground cloves and tried my best to cut up the whole cloves that I did have. It was a lot more effort than it was worth.

***Make sure to rinse the preserved lemon. I was using lemon that I preserved myself and know exactly how much salt was in with them. As a result the cake came out a bit salty but it was still delicious. Rinsing the lemons will take care of this.

****I rely on an oven thermometer to tell the temperature of the oven and have to pull it out to read the temperature. Consequently, it’s not the most accurate. I was aiming for 300F, but it was at 350F for the majority of the baking and I tried to turn it down mid-cooking, which is why I say ‘about’ 325.