Three-Ingredient Christmas Fruitcake

“The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world,

and people keep sending it to each other.”

~ Johnny Carson ~

 

As a lover of fruitcake, I was saddened by Johnny Carson’s famous quote from the 1960s. My paternal grandmother baked many Christmas Fruitcakes in her lifetime. Most of them were actually sold to people in the community, who placed their orders with her every year. She used to keep one big cake for the family, and I very fondly remember the dark, rich cake with a strong whiff of brandy being sliced for tea whenever we visited her in December.

 

Leave it till December

If you have ever known someone who bakes fruitcakes, you will know that fruitcakes are best baked six to twelve weeks before you eat it. A Christmas fruitcake should therefore be baked around September. You need to give it time to “ripen” and improve in flavour. The process is also helped enormously by feeding it with brandy or rum every week. This is why I have never bothered to try my hand at it, even though I love fruitcake. Who can think about Christmas things in September? But last year, I saw an amazing post on my Instagram feed from Taste Australia. Not only could you leave baking this beauty till December, but it was a Three-ingredient Christmas Fruitcake! I was ready to try this instantly as I already had great results from a 3-ingredient banana bread recipe I also found online.

 

Iced coffee or something stronger?

In the original Taste recipe, the three ingredients used are fruitcake mix, iced coffee-flavoured milk, and self-raising flour. But the Instagram reel I saw definitely mentioned replacing the iced coffee with something stronger, like Bailey’s Cream Liqueur or a mixture of orange juice and brandy. Of course, here in South Africa, the perfect ingredient would be our very own Amarula Cream Liqueur! Definitely the perfect pairing to bring extra fruity flavour! So, whether you want to go all out and use liqueur, a mix of juice and brandy, or keep it alcohol free and use iced coffee or fruit juice, the choice is yours! The secret to this (much quicker) fruitcake recipe is soaking the fruit mix in your liquid of choice overnight. This will plump up the dried fruit and impart all that Christmassy flavour to your mixture.

 

From twelve weeks to just over 24 hours

So place your cake fruit mix into a shallow dish and cover it with your chosen liquid. The shallow dish should ensure that everything is covered with the liquid, but I still stir it through once or twice to make sure everything is mixed well. Once your fruit is moist and plump, remove it from the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Then you just add self-raising flour and your cake is ready to bake! As there is a lot of moist fruit to cook through, you will still need around 50 to 90 minutes of medium oven baking for a well-cooked cake. I find it best to cover the cake pans with foil, as even though there is no added sugar, the top fruit tends to burn eventually.

 

Ready, set, Christmas!

You can decorate your cake with marzipan, Royal Icing or powdered sugar. I prefer to make it more boozy by painting it with some more brandy or orange liqueur. Now it’s time to dig in and enjoy all those nostalgic Christmas flavours. I would never say this cake tastes the same as my granny’s amazing fruitcakes, but it’s very delicious and much better than buying the very expensive ones in the shops. Oh, and make sure you wrap your cake in some layers of plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out! If you do, you could be lucky enough to still have some fruitcake lying around in January when everone else is dieting!