Eggless Gluten Free Fruit Cake

Dayo and I made a fruit cake for her birthday and even a number of people liked the cake, I thought the cake was like a Christmas pudding or a failed Chinese pudding and we both felt the same and the question is why don't we just add fruits and nuts to the chocolate cake without the cocoa.  So here is the fruit and nut cake without cocoa.

Baked fruit and nut cake

Ingredients

1. 1½ US cups 粘米粉 rice flour 
2. ½ US cup Mąka Ziemniaczana – Polish potato flour
3. 2 tsp gluten free baking powder
4. 1 tsp bi carbonate of soda
5. 4 oz [1/2 cup] 113 g of unsalted butter
6. 1 tin [397 g] condensed milk
7. 1 US cup of any fizzy drink eg 7 UP
8. 2 US cups mixed fruits – I used Sainsbury’s mixed fruits with cranberries and apricots
9. 1 US cup chopped mixed nuts
10. 1 tsp mixed spices

Method

1. Heat up the oven to 170 C and prepare a bundt tin by buttering and flouring the tin
2. Prepare the dry ingredients like chopping the nuts, measuring out the fruits, and mixing together the rice flour, potato starch, baking powder, bi-carbonate of soda, mixed spices
3. Mix the partially melted butter with the condensed milk until it forms a batter like consistency
4. Fold the flour mixture into the liquid mixture and pour the fizzy drink while mixing
5. Use a hand held mixer and beat the mixture to ensure there are no lumps
6. Mix in the mixed fruits and nuts into the cake mixture
7. Pour the cake mixture into a prepared bundt tin and bake for 50 minutes at a preheated conventional oven [fan switched off], second shelf from the bottom, initially at 170 C and turn the oven down to 165 C after 5 minutes for the rest of the baking period

Baked cake in a bundt baking tin

8.       Shake the cake to loosen the cake from the tin about five minutes after removing from the oven, turn the cake out from the baking tin o and allow to rest on a cooling rack until cool

9.       Drizzle the cake with any alcohol such as rum or whisky or brandy

Cup size used – An American size cup was used to make this cake.

Note about making eggless cake: It is not easy to bake eggless cake and the middle tends not to be cooked.  So bake the fruit cake in a Bundt baking tin.  Another very important point is to make sure every ingredient is at room temperature and none of them are straight from the fridge. 

Evaluation: The cake was rather crumbly and I have therefore changed the proportions of the flours above and removed the ½ tsp Doves Farm Xanthan gum from the ingredients list. Require further experimentation but a huge improvement from the cake made on 27 July Saturday. 

However, it is rather expensive to keep making this cake and I will be focusing on other things until such time as there is a call for making a gluten free eggless fruit and nut cake again in the future.

So, this recipe comes with a warning - it is NOT fully tested for success.