This Christmas Fruit Cake recipe is exactly what you would expect from crowd-pleasing Christmas dessert. It's festive, flavorful and amazingly delicious. Perfect addition to your Christmas menu.
Also check out these classic Christmas desserts: German Christmas Cake and Danish Christmas Rice Pudding.
Christmas Fruit Cake
Tis the season for the most decadent and delicious recipes to serve to your family and friends over the Christmas table.
If Thanksgiving is all about turkey and pumpkin recipes, Christmas, in my opinion is the best holiday for serving up eggnog, all things gingerbread and dried fruit laden desserts.
The latter are my favorite desserts because you can play around with different combination of dried fruits, infuse them with a little bit of alcohol and/or pair them with almond paste or marzipan.
The possibilities are endless and desserts that are packed with dried fruits are always delicious and never disappoint.
Where did Christmas Fruit Cake originate?
For ages, cakes made with dry fruits have been a traditional Christmas dessert in Europe. Different countries have their own variations of this sweet treat. In Portugal it's called Bolo Rei, in Germany - Stollen and in Scotland - it's Dundee cake.
All these cakes are very similar with nuts and dry fruits being the most important ingredients in the recipe. Some recipes also call for Marzipan or Almond Paste.
Thanks to the abundance of flavorful dry fruits, the cake always comes out extremely flavorful and delicious.
Plus, most of these Christmas fruit cakes are so easy to make. Maybe, that's why I love making them at any time of the year.
Moist Fruit Cake Recipe Without Alcohol
My today's recipe for Christmas Fruit Cake looks stunning and tastes delicious! It's very easy to make and unlike some other traditional European desserts, you won't spend your whole day in the kitchen.
Thanks to the abundance of various dry fruits, this Fruit Cake recipe is super flavorful and moist too. My recipe doesn't have alcohol in it, because I wanted to make it kid-friendly.
In addition, to make this cake look festive, I poured a simple sugar glaze all over the cake and decorated it with frozen cranberries and rosemary sprigs.
Simple and looks beautiful!
Best Fruit Cake Recipe
For this recipe you can choose any dry fruits you like or can find in your grocery stores. My favorite choice is raisins, dry apricots (Turkish apricots are the best), prunes, dry cherries, dry cranberries and dates.
And if you want, you can also pick 2 kinds of raisins: dark Thompson and Golden raisins.
Moreover, this cake will also taste great with candied fruits, such as pineapple, mango or papaya.
These can tricky to find, but if you do find them and decide to use in a recipe, make sure to reduce the amount of sugar as candied fruits are already quite sweet.
How to store fruit cake?
Store dry fruit cake in a cool dry place for up to a week. I stored mine on a counter covered with a mash food cover.
If you're planning to freeze the cake, I recommend doing so before you cover it with a glaze. Otherwise the condensation will appear and the glaze will be sticky and mushy.
Tightly cover the cake with 2 layers of plastic wrap and freeze for up to 3 months.
How to serve fruit cake?
Pour sugar glaze over the cake and scatter fresh cranberries on top along with the rosemary sprigs. Serve with a cup of tea or coffee.
More Christmas desserts to enjoy: |
Christmas Fruit Cake
Ingredients
For the batter
- 2 ¼ c + 3 tbsp all-purpose flour sifted and divided
- 3 c dry fruits raising, apricots, dry cherries, dry cranberries
- 8 oz butter softened
- 1 c sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the sugar glaze
- 1 c powdered sugar sifted
- 3 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoon cranberries fresh or frozen for garnish
- 1-2 sprigs rosemary for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 360 F and line a standard size loaf pan with parchment paper.
- Start off by cutting larger chunks of dry fruits into smaller pieces.
- Sprinkle them with ¼ cup of flour and shake off the excess.
- In a medium bowl combine 2 cups + 3 tablespoons of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.
- In a large bowl add softened butter, sugar, vanilla extract and whisk in eggs, one at a time. It's best to use hand mixer for this.
- With a wooden spoon stir in flour and baking powder mixture.
- Add in dry fruits and mix everything well.
- Pour batter into a loaf pan and bake for 1 hour (depending on your oven this type may vary). On 1 hour mark poke the cake with a wooden toothpick. If it comes out clean, cake is ready. If not - give it another 10 minutes.
- Remove cake from the oven and loaf pan and cool it on a wire rack until it's no longer warm.
To make sugar glaze
- In a medium bowl add powdered sugar. Start whisking in lemon juice one tablespoon at a time. Whisk until no lumps remain and the glaze is thick and smooth. If sugar glaze comes out too liquid, you can add a little more powdered sugar.
- Spoon sugar glaze over the cake, top with cranberries and decorate with rosemary sprigs.
- Let the sugar glaze harden and the cake is ready to be served.
Nutrition
Bartkova Natalia says
Delicious! Real Christmas cake! Love it. Thank you for a great recipe.
Iryna says
You're welcome:)