Fruit Cake with Raisins, Cherries & Spices

Two cups of raisins. A cup of candied peel. The smell hits different when you’re mixing this. Not like regular cake — something older, sweeter, more like Christmas tastes. This fruit cake lives for patience. You soak it. You wait. The spices don’t rush.

Why You’ll Love This Fruit Cake

Takes 2 hours 20 minutes total but most of that’s baking — actual work is maybe 25 minutes. Wraps itself in bourbon and gets better for weeks. Leftovers hit harder than the first slice. Comfort food that doesn’t feel light or trendy. Dense. Real. Built to last through the holidays and beyond. Pecan halves and walnuts stay chunky instead of disappearing. You taste them. Works cold from a tin next to tea. Works at a festive table too.

What You Need for This Spice Cake

Golden raisins and sultanas — both. Not one or the other. They taste different and together it matters. Skip the sultanas and it flattens out.

Red and green glace cherries. Candied citrus peel chopped up. Walnuts coarse chopped. Pecan halves chopped but not fine — you want pieces you can find when you bite.

Brown sugar, packed. Vegetable shortening. 480 milliliters of water.

Allspice toasted lightly. Fresh cinnamon ground. Fresh nutmeg grated — not the old stuff from the back of the cabinet.

Cake flour. Baking soda. Fine sea salt.

Cheesecloth for wrapping. Bourbon or dark rum if you go that route — optional but it changes everything. If not, strong tea works. You need something to keep it alive.

How to Make Fruit Cake

Dump the raisins, sultanas, cherries, peel, walnuts, pecans into a heavy pot. Add the brown sugar and shortening. Sprinkle the spices in — toast the allspice first, it’s worth thirty seconds. Pour the water over.

Set it to medium. Stir until it starts moving, then watch it bubble. The bottom will want to stick — don’t let it. Keep scraping. Once it’s bubbling hard, turn it down to low. Let it simmer for eight minutes. The fruit swells. The water tightens up. It starts looking thick.

Pull it off the heat. Smells like December now. Let it cool all the way down, then cover it and shove it in the fridge overnight. This part matters. The fruits get soft. The spices sink in. By morning it’s transformed.

How to Get This Cake Dense and Moist

Heat your oven to 175 Celsius. Rack goes in the middle. Butter two loaf pans — the 22 by 12 centimeter ones — and dust them with flour. Or use parchment. Don’t skimp on the butter or flour coating. Too little and it tears when you flip it. Too much flour on the edges dries everything out.

Take the fruit mixture — it’ll be thick now, almost black — and sift your cake flour, baking soda, and salt into a separate bowl. Now fold the dry stuff into the fruit. Use a wooden spoon. Fold, fold, fold until you can’t see the flour streaks. Then use your hands. Knead it for four to five minutes. It should feel sticky but hold its shape. Not wet. Not dry. In between.

Divide it between the pans. Don’t pack it down. Pack it and you trap steam. You want air pockets inside so the cake stays moist.

Bake for about one hour fifty minutes. Could be two hours. Check it with a skewer at the hour-forty-five mark. If crumbs stick to it with a little moisture, keep going. If it’s wet batter, not ready. You want moist crumbs clinging to the skewer — not raw, just not dry.

Cool in the pans for twenty minutes. Then flip onto a rack.

Fruit Cake Tips and Common Mistakes

Cut your cheesecloth into squares big enough to wrap each cake snugly. Soak the cloth in bourbon until it’s pliable — doesn’t take long. If you’re skipping alcohol, use strong brewed tea or juice. Dark rum works too. Wrap the cake tight. Then wrap that in foil so nothing dries out.

Store it in a cool spot. Not the fridge, not the freezer. Just cool. Three days minimum before you cut into it. The flavors get sharper. The cake gets moister. Wait a week and it’s better. Wait two weeks and it’s somehow still getting better.

It’ll keep for weeks wrapped up like this. Months if the room stays cold. That’s the point.

Substitutions — dried cranberries swap for sultanas if you want tart. Use mashed butter instead of shortening but cut the water by 15 milliliters. Ground cloves if you can’t find allspice — adds warmth, changes the whole thing in a way that works.

Don’t skip the overnight chill after cooking the fruit. Don’t pack the batter into the pans. Don’t bake uncovered — the foil halfway through keeps the top from going too dark while the inside finishes.

Fruit Cake with Raisins, Cherries & Spices

By Emma

Prep:

25 min

Cook:

1h 55min

Total:

2h 20min

Servings:

2 loaves

Ingredients

• 590 ml golden raisins
• 590 ml sultanas
• 240 ml red glace cherries
• 240 ml green glace cherries
• 300 ml candied citrus peel, chopped
• 300 ml walnuts, coarse chopped
• 240 ml pecan halves, chopped
• 480 ml packed brown sugar
• 40 ml vegetable shortening
• 12 ml allspice, toasted lightly
• 12 ml cinnamon, freshly ground
• 1 ml nutmeg, freshly grated
• 480 ml water
• 720 ml cake flour
• 4 ml baking soda
• 4 ml fine sea salt
• Cheesecloth
• Bourbon or dark rum (optional)

Method

1. 1 Combine all fruits, nuts, sugar, shortening, spices, and water in heavy-bottomed pot. Bring to boil over medium heat, scrapping bottom to prevent sticking. Once bubbling well, reduce heat and simmer gently for 8 minutes until fruits swollen and water reduced slightly. Remove from stove, cool room temp before chilling covered overnight; this softens fruit and melds spices.
2. 2 Preheat oven to 175C, rack in middle. Butter and flour two 22 x 12 cm loaf pans or use parchment liners to avoid sticking and tearing. Be generous but don’t overdo flour - too much dries edges.
3. 3 Sift flour, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. To dried fruit mix (now cooled and thick), fold in dry ingredients with wooden spoon, then knead by hand for 4-5 minutes until homogeneous but not overmixed. Texture should be sticky but firm enough to hold shape in pan.
4. 4 Divide equally, fill pans loosely - don’t pack batter; air pockets needed to keep cake moist inside. Cover tops with foil halfway through baking to prevent crust darkening prematurely, also traps moisture.
5. 5 Bake about 1 hour 50 minutes to 2 hours, test center with skewer for moist crumbs attached (not raw batter). When done, cool in pans 20 minutes, then invert onto racks.
6. 6 Cut cheesecloth into squares large enough to wrap each cake. Soak in bourbon or dark rum till pliable; if skipping alcohol, use strong brewed tea or juice to add moisture. Wrap cakes snugly, then cover with foil to seal. Let rest minimum 3 days in cool spot. Flavors deepen, cake moistens through wrappings.
7. 7 Serve thick slices for tea or festive occasions. Store wrapped in cool place; will keep weeks.
8. 8 Substitutions: Use dried cranberries instead of sultanas for tart note; swap shortening for mashed butter but reduce liquid by 15 ml. Ground cloves add warmth if allspice unavailable.

Nutritional information

Calories

480

Protein

4g

Carbs

78g

Fat

15g

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Frequently Asked Questions About Fruit Cake

Can you make this without alcohol? Yeah. Tea works. Strong brewed black tea, cooled. Or juice — cranberry, orange, whatever. You just need something to keep the cheesecloth damp so it feeds the cake moisture over time. The alcohol evaporates anyway. It’s really about the wrapping and the waiting.

How long does it actually keep? Weeks easy. Wrapped tight, cool spot, probably a month. The sugar and spices act like preservatives. The moisture in the cheesecloth helps. It doesn’t dry out the way regular cakes do.

Can you use different nuts? Pecans and walnuts are doing different work here — pecans are sweeter, walnuts are earthier. If you only have one, use it. Almonds work but toast them first. Hazelnuts too. Don’t use macadamia. Too soft, disappears.

What if the top cracks while baking? It cracks. That happens. The foil halfway through helps but a fruit cake is dense enough that some cracking is normal. It doesn’t affect anything. You’re wrapping it anyway. Nobody sees the top.

Should the fruit be soaked before cooking? Not in this recipe. The eight-minute simmer with water does the softening. If you want to soak it in rum first, overnight, you can — just reduce the water by about 120 milliliters so you don’t end up with soup.

Can you make a Dundee cake or Simnel cake variation this way? Dundee uses blanched almonds on top and fewer spices — strip the allspice, go lighter on cinnamon. Simnel cake is more spring, less fruit, and you’d add marzipan. This base is too dense for that. Stick with this as a plum cake style or a traditional fruit cake. Different cakes need different builds.