This Eggless Fruit Cake without Alcohol, an easy to assemble rich fruit cake, is non-alcoholic, refined sugar-free, and full of dry fruits, nuts, and berries. With the right crumble, this makes a delicious Christmas cake!

I didn't want to miss out my tradition of baking a fruit cake for Christmas as part of my Bake-a-thon 2021. As always, during December I plan the weekly themes to coincide with BM theme. The last week of this year's BM is all about Make it Sweet. This Fruit cake is surely very sweet!

So for the Christmas Eve, its always a Fruit cake that gets baked. Though in past I have made fruit cake soaked in rum, I have been using only fresh juice. Konda asked me this time again why I wasn't using wine in my cake. Well, that's for next year then! Until then enjoy this delicious fruit cake in fruit juice!

Ingredients used in the cake

This is the complete set of dry fruits, seeds, berries, and nuts I used for the Soak in fresh juice. The juice is a mix of Mosambi, Kamala Orange measuring to a cup.
The nuts were approx 1/4 cup each of Almonds, Walnuts, Hazel Nut, few Cashews, Pistachios, and charoti
The dry fruits is a mix of cherries, apricots, figs, dates, tutti frutti, golden raisins, sultani, and black raisins.
The berries were cranberry, strawberry, black current.

Instructions to bake ~ Step by Step Pictures

Prep Work

Sort out all the dry fruits, berries and nuts you are going to use.
Chop all the nuts into bits, chop the dry fruits were required.
Make fresh juice with Mosambi and Kamala, extract the thick juice, add to a bowl.
Add the chopped nuts, fruits and berries to the fresh orange juice. Cover the bowl and keep it aside for about 7 to 8 hours.
If you are planning to make it early morning, you can always soak this in fridge overnight.

Measure the butter and microwave for 2 minutes in spurts of a minute for it to melt completely.

Making the Cake batter

After the soak is ready, you can begin by making the batter
Grease a 9inch circle baking tray and dust with flour. Tap down to remove excess flour. You can also line with a parchment paper.
Warm the milk and add Vinegar to it, keep it aside for it to curdle.
Sieve the flours along with baking soda, baking powder into the mixing bowl.

Add the brown sugar and mix well.
Add the soaked fruits and nuts along with the juice.
Next add the butter and mix well.
Now stir the milk, vinegar mix and add to the bowl.
Using the spatula, mix everything well.
Add the spice powder, vanilla essence

Spread the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake in a preheated oven for 50 mins at 180C.
My cake started getting browned on top and the knife came out clean.
So I switched off at 45 mins.
Allow to cool completely before serving.

Notes

I used 1/2 cup of raisins, and the remaining was filled with dried cranberries, dried cherries, tutti fruit, 4 dried apricots, 4 dried figs and 6 dates.
Two fists of dried berries that had strawberries along with other berries.
For fresh juice, I used a mix of Mosambi and Kamala. Kamal is a hybrid orange between pomelo (Citrus maxima) and mandarin (Citrus reticulata). It is in season during this season and I didn't want to miss using it.
For the spice powders, I used 3/4 teaspoon Punjabi Garam Masala.

Substitutions or what else you can use

I used a mix of both whole wheat flour and all purpose flour. You can completely use whole wheat flour or any gluten flour as well.

You can skip some of the dry fruits if you don't have it in hand. If you don't have vinegar, you can use lemon juice to curdle the milk.

Instead of garam masala, you can use just clove and cinnamon as well.

Variations you can make to this recipe

You can add fresh fruits purees like apple to the mix as well. See this Eggless Christmas Fruit Cake, or use cocoa powder for a rich chocolate fruit cake as well, like this Eggless Rich Dark Christmas Fruit Cake

If you love dark colour to your Christmas cake, use caramel sauce as I have used in this Kerala Christmas Fruit Cake

Equipment

You would need a 2 kg circle baking tray, which is 9inch tin. Mixing bowls and microwave safe bowls to melt the butter.

You can line the tin with a parchment paper, however, I always feel a Christmas cake has an excellent texture when you grease it with butter and dust with flour.

Storage and Shelf life

Allow the cake to cool down before slicing it. Store it in an airtight box. This can stay good for 2 to 3 days in room temperature. Else you can store it in fridge, and reheat for 30 secs before serving.

Expert Tips

Soaking the fruits and nuts for more time makes it soft and easy to be baked. However, minimum of 6 to 8 hours makes it good enough

At 35 mins, you can cover the top with a aluminum foil to prevent the top from getting burnt.

Allow the cake to really cool down before slicing, else you will have a crumbly cake on hand.

Other delicious fruits and nuts cakes you'll love

• Eggless Banana Fruits and Nuts Cake
• Christmas Fruit Cake
• Eggless Butterless Rum Fruit Cake

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