Golden Fruit Cake - An Heirloom Recipe Series

A Cake for Christmas from Grandma - Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!

This time last year I shared a Boiled Fruit Cake recipe from Grandma’s collection. Fruit cake was quite the staple in Grandma’s kitchen, even outside of Christmas time. I believe she used that recipe for many years, I wouldn’t be surprised if she made it from memory most of the time.

There are a few variations of fruit cake written down in her collection of recipes, most seem basically the same as the one I shared last year. However there is one exception. This Golden Fruit Cake is quite different, especially in that it almost only uses glacé fruit, and doesn’t rely on alcohol for flavour.

The story is, this recipe came from a friend of Grandma’s after she tried this cake and liked it better than the one she made! I’m sure many recipes have been shared that way for many people, with new found favourites replacing old ones.

For glacé fruit lovers like me, this cake is ideal. Also ideal for those like me that don’t love traditional fruit cakes, as it’s much lighter in flavour thanks to only vanilla extract in the mix rather than any other form of alcohol (you could leave it out completely to make it alcohol free, or use vanilla paste/seeds instead).

This recipe reminds me quite a lot of Stained Glass Window Christmas Cakes or Bishops Cakes, that use a mixture of mostly glacé fruit and nuts, with minimal cake batter to create a cake that once cut looks like a stained glass window. This Golden Fruit Cake has a similar effect, however with a slightly higher ratio of cake batter and less nuts in the mix.

I have made some small changes to the original recipe, as Grandma’s recipe said to cook in a 20cm round tin for 3 hours at a low temperature. And while the cake was nice, being in the oven for that long does make for a drier cake which isn’t ideal.

I have strayed a little from the specific list of glacé fruit Grandma asks for in her recipe, only because, well I still hate mixed peel, and I wanted to use a larger variety of glacé fruit since I had found some. You can use whatever combination you like (including mixed peel, if you must!), but I recommend using at least some glacé ginger for the flavour, and glacé cherries for their colour which really pops in the cake.

Baking Beyond the Paywall: The edited and tested recipe for this Golden Fruit Cake is below for paid subscribers.

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Grandma’s handwritten recipe + some photos from Christmas’ past at my Grandparents house (including my second Christmas just after my 1st birthday).

Golden Fruit Cake

Ingredients:

625g mixed glacé fruit (including mixed peel if using, I used glacé pear, cherries, ginger, fig, peach, apricot and pineapple)

250g sultanas

60g slivered almonds

200g plain flour

45g self-raising flour

250g unsalted butter, softened

zest of one lemon, finely grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

210g caster sugar

4 eggs

raw or blanched whole almonds + a couple of whole red glacé cherries, for decoration

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Line a 23cm square cake tin.

2. Roughly chop the glacé fruit, halve any glacé cherries if using. Combine the chopped fruit, sultanas and almonds in a bowl.

3. In another bowl, whisk together the plain and self raising flour.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter, lemon zest, vanilla and sugar using the paddle attachment until fluffy and well combined.

5. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.

6. Remove the bowl from the stand mixer, and using a spatula mix in the fruit, then the flour until just combined.

7. Transfer to the prepared tin, smoothing the top. Arrange the whole almonds around the edge of the cake, you can use a couple of almonds and a couple of whole glacé cherries to decorate the centre.

8. Bake for 45 minutes, then cover with foil and continue baking for 15-20 minutes or until the cake is cooked through (test with a skewer).

9. Allow to cool in the tin for about 30 minutes, before removing and allowing to cool on a wire rack completely.

Serves 20 (only small slices are necessary so one cake will either feed many or last a while!). Cake will keep well in an airtight container, however you can also freeze it.