Christmas Cake (Part-1): Dry Fruits Soaking in Rum

Its the time to soak dry fruit in alcohol(dark Rum/ whisky/ Brandy/ red wine). Traditionally, dry fruit should be soaked 3 months before the Christmas. But at least 1 month soak is very necessary to make dry fruit juicy. In classic Christmas cake, juicy dry fruits are the main ingredients. Here you can use any dry fruits whatever you get. Other ingredients like flour is just used to bind dry fruits and nuts. My Christmas celebration can't be complete without traditional Christmas cake. We will bake the cake in next month at least a week before from Christmas. After baking, the last step is feeding the cake. It is very important to allow the cake to be matured by feeding with alcohol. After baking some tiny wholes will be made with a skewer to feed the cake. Brush the cake with alcohol twice in a week after baking. Here I am using Rum to soak the fruit and will do the feeding after baking the cake with Rum.
If you don't want to use alcohol, instead of this you can use orange juice or apple juice or grape juice or cranberry juice/ Dark tea. This is for non-alcoholic version of  Christmas cake. 

•  Preparation time: 30 minutes

•  Cooking time       : 00 minutes

•  Resting time         : 1 to 3 months.

Ingredients:

• Raisins-100 gram
• Pitted Dates-100 gram
• Dried Apricots-100 gram
• Cranberries-100 gram
• Crystallised Ginger-100 gram
• Sultana Raisins-100 gram
• Prunes-100 gram
• Dark Rum(or alcohol as per choice)- 300 ml

How to Soak:

1. Deseed & Chop the Prunes into small chunks.Chop apricots, Dates, Crystallised Ginger properly.
2. Take a clean and dry glass jar.Make sure there is no water in the glass jar.
3. Transfer all the fruits into the airtight glass jar.
4. Now pour the Rum into it.
5. Close the jar and shake twice in a week.
6. Don't refrigerate, keep at dry and dark place at least for a month.

My Tip:

• Always soak the dry fruit in glass jar/bowl because alcohol may react with other material.
• Make sure glass jar is dry and clean.There should not be any water at all.
• You can use so many more fruits like dried figs, dried pineapple, candid mixed peels, black currants, golden raisin, dried kiwi etc whatever you get and you like.
• Traditionally Rum is used for soaking dry fruit. But you can use whisky, brandy even red wine also that will also go well.
•  For non-alcoholic version, orange or apple or grape or cranberry juice/ dark tea can be used instead of Rum. If you use any non-alcoholic liquid to soak the dry fruit, you have to store soaked dry fruit in a air tight glass jar in fridge until you bake the cake. But this cake will not keep for so long. So, you should soak dry fruit before a week and bake the cake few days before Christmas.
• If you use any bowl then make sure it should be air tight with clingfilm and then put a lid on it.

WE WILL BAKE THE CAKE IN NEXT MONTH..

Christmas Cake (Part-2): Baking the Cake -https://sangeetas-kitchen-delights.blogspot.nl/2017/12/christmas-cake-part-2-baking-cake.html

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