GIMME A BREAK - FEEL LIKE MAKING A CAKE

I feel like taking a break. I wanted to make another one of my favourite fruit cake for tea. I would say that all of my families, relatives, friends and colleagues love this cake so much. This is actually one of my specialty and it is a must for every Hari Raya or Eid Mubarak (festival for Muslim). This cake is very popular because you can keep the cake for 2 months when there is no artificial preservative added to the cake ingredients. So it is totally safe to eat.

Steam Fruit Cake is very rich with mixed fruits, dark in colour and quite moist. It smells very good too. As usual, the next day I took some of them along to office and were quite amazed to see and hear a good positive remarks given about the cake.

May Ling said, "Usually I don’t like fruit cake, but this is different. It taste less sweet and I like the smell. It very good" .

Siew Heng said, "Thanks Khaty. I like it so much because less sugar and no so sweet. I want to take back some for dessert tonight".

Yes please, go ahead moreover, we are going to have a long holidays this weekend. Please help yourselves. I replied. Too bad my canon camera run out of battery at that moment and I am unable to snap photograph for both of them. Here’s the ingredients if you might want to try to make one for yourself.

The ingredients are very simple. Here they are:

INGREDIENTS

600 gm plain flour
300gm fine sugar
5 large eggs
1 small tin Golden Churn/ SCS butter
500 gram mixed fruit finely chopped
2 ts bicarbonate of soda
1 ts cream of tartar (you can omit this if you want too)
2 ts essence of lemon
2 cups of melted till golden brown sugar

HOW TO MAKE

You will also need a 8 cm round cake tin, greased and sprinkled some flour on it. Some aluminium wrapper to cover on top to prevent water from dropping into the cake top while steaming.
Now begin the cake by sifting the flour together with bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl, lifting the sieve up high to give the flour a good airing. Next, in a separate large mixing bowl, whisk the butter and sugar together until it's light, pale and fluffy. Next add the eggs one at a time to the creamed mixture keep the whisk running until all the egg is incorporated. If you add the eggs slowly like this the mixture won't curdle. If it does, don't worry, any cake full of such beautiful things will always taste good! When all the egg has been added, fold in the flour using gentle, folding movements and not beating at all (this is to keep all that precious air in). Next add the essence and finally fold in the mixed fruits (if you want to add more variety you can always do so by adding chopped nuts, more raisins etc.).

Next, let the mixture to stand-by while waiting for the sugar to melt and turn to brown bubbly mixture. Immediately pour the sugar solution into the mixture by stirring quickly to make sure that the sugar is even. Using the spoon scoop all the cake mixture into the prepared tin, spread it out evenly with the back of a spoon.

Finally cover the top of the cake tin with the aluminium wrapper and start steaming for 4hours.

Here's my freshly steamed Fruit Cake looks like.


.....and ready to celebrate......

Feel free to join me for a cup of coffee one fine evening someday.....