Extra Fruity Fruit Cake

When you want to cut down your intake of sugar, eggs and dairy, you might imagine cakes are out of the question, but that's not the case at all. This Extra Fruity Fruit Cake is absolutely delicious despite the fact it's fat free, sugar free, egg free and dairy free! 

What it does contain is plenty of healthy ingredients.  Dried fruits, dates, ground almonds and fruit juice provide natural sweetness and give the cake a lovely moist texture.  Don't feel you have to use the same dried fruits as I have.  Apart from the dates which are an essential ingredient, any combination of dried and ready to eat fruits such as raisins, sultanas, apricots, prunes, peaches and pears will do as long as the total weight is around 450/500g.

One thing I discovered years ago is that cakes made with wholemeal flour can be heavy and not to everyone's taste.  To lighten a cake, I use half wholemeal, half white flour, as I've done in the recipe below.   

Ingredients     

250g stoned dates,  chopped  
300ml water
150g raisins
150g sultanas
100g ready to eat dried apricots
50g dried peaches
50g mixed peel
85g plain flour
85g wholemeal flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 rounded tsp mixed spice 
50g ground almonds
80ml orange juice  (either freshly squeezed or from a carton)


Method

Preheat the oven to 170C/150C fan/Gas Mark 3.  

Grease a 900g (2lb) loaf tin and line the base with greaseproof paper. 

Place the chopped dates and water in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes until the dates have softened and the mixture has thickened.  Remove from the heat and set aside.

Using kitchen scissors, cut up the dried apricots and peaches into small pieces and place in a large bowl with the raisins, sultanas, mixed peel, plain/wholemeal flour, baking powder, mixed spice and ground almonds. 

Then add the cooked date mixture and orange juice and mix well.

Spoon into the prepared tin and level the top.

Bake for about an hour and a half or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.  After an hour or so of baking, I place a small piece of foil loosely over the top to avoid the cake going too brown.

Leave in the tin for 15 minutes, then slide a knife along the side to loosen and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.   

     
Eat one, freeze one! 
If you want to make two smaller cakes instead, split the mixture into two 1lb (450g) loaf tins and bake them for about one hour.