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Easy Christmas Fruitcake

My mother in law makes awesome cakes, and one of the cakes she regularly makes and takes to places is fruitcake. She makes this one all year round but it is always really popular at Christmas. Her recipe is just 3 cups of self raising flour, a large tin of apricot nectar, 1kg of mixed dried fruit and one packet ofglacé cherries. I thought that this recipe would be pretty easy to modify because it already doesn't have any eggs, dairy or added sugar (apart from the juice andglacé cherries!). I just needed to fiddle around with the flour and ratios to get it perfect as a gluten free cake. Not as easy as I thought but I did get there!

You need to soak the fruit overnight and I used some fresh orange juice I made in my juicer. There's no reason you couldn't use a quality bought fruit juice free of sugar and additives, and different juices would provide different flavours. I got the fruit ready in the evening before I went to bed and then made the cake in the late afternoon the following day.

Easy Gluten Free Christmas Fruit Cake - Happy Tummies

Easy Gluten Free Christmas Fruitcake Recipe

Gluten free, wheat free, dairy free, soy free, nut free, egg free, refined sugar free, alcohol free

Makes 12 mini cakes - adjust cooking time if you make this recipe as a whole cake!

Ingredients:

1 cup (90g) desiccated coconut
1 cup (140g) sorghum flour
1 cup (180g) potato starch
2 tspxanthan gum (orguar gum)
6 tsps gluten free baking powder
1 tsp bi-carb soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp mixed spice
500g mixed dried fruit - I used an equal mixture of organic sultanas, organic raisins and chopped organic dried apricots
1¾ cups (440mls) fresh orange juice

Method:

Juice oranges until you have 1¾ cups (440ml) of juice. Place into a glass bowl and add mixed dried fruit. Cover and soak overnight in the fridge
Pre-heat oven to 160° C and line tin(s) twice with baking paper
Grind together all dry ingredients in a food processor (if using a Thermomix grind on speed 9 for 20 secs) - so the coconut is fine like a flour (DO NOT use coconut flour or it won't work!! - start with desiccated coconut)
Combine orange juice and fruit that has been soaking overnight with dry ingredients and mix by hand if you don't have a Thermomix. If you have a Thermomix combine on reverse for 10 secs on speed 4. Scrape down and repeat if necessary
Spoon cake mix evenly into pans and smooth tops with wet fingertips
Bake for approximately 1 hour or until cooked
After 5 minutes turn out of the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack
Decorate as desired

Easy Gluten Free Christmas Fruit Cake - Happy Tummies

I used this awesome mini cake pan I have to make the cakes. It has space for 12 cakes with loose bases and straight sides. It was a little pricey when I got it, even when on sale but it is really useful to jazz up a simple cake or dessert when you have guests. It makes fantastic single serve cheese cakes or raw desserts!

Enjoy! Lisa x

PS.Feel free to swap out ingredients to suit your dietary requirements. You could use any starch to replace the potato starch, although I do like to use potato starch in cakes because I think it gives a better result. You could also swap sorghum flour for a similar weight flour like brown rice flour or millet, although I choose sorghum because my son is rice free and I like to use a blend of lighter flavoured flours to produce a more 'normal' taste.