Evidence based fruitcake
2008 November 26
This shouldn’t work. This should be disgusting.
Fruitcakes are labours of love that involve vast quantities of ingredients and lard and liqueur and esoteric stirring rituals. You bake them in July and wrap them carefully in layers of waxed paper and newspaper and aluminium foil.
Except….this just works.
Following on from Karen’s fruitcake recipe for Fiona who cannot eat nuts, here’s a recipe that a friend gave me last year. It produces something scrumptious, and much more fruitcake-like than ought to be allowed.
CHOCMILK FRUITCAKE
- 1kg dried mixed fruit
- 600ml dark chocmilk (prepackaged chocolate flavoured milk from the refrigerator section)
- 2 cups self-raising flour
- Soak the fruit in the chocmilk overnight
- Add the flour
- Bake for one and a half hours in a moderate oven
It doesn’t really taste chocolatey at all. If you make it, please let me know how it goes – maybe we were delusional the couple of times we baked it.
Kathryn, I am so not a cook, but I have used a version of this recipe with coffee replacing the milk. It has to be good quality plunger/drip(I use Zentvelds Coffee) etc, with choc chips an added extra if desired!
Do you suppose it would work with chocolate flavoured soy milk?
Ah, two testing labs
Jo, you could actually do some very interesting things with adding various bits and pieces to the fruit/liquid brew – endless variations. I guess you could also sieve all sorts of spices in with the flour too.
Andrew I would guess that the choc soy milk proteins would behave differently to the casein in milk – whether this is a problem I don’t know … let me know when you find out
I bought chocolate milk on the way home last night and then discovered that what I’d thought was mixed fruit in the pantry was actually sultanas. So I soaked the sultanas in the milk overnight, mixed the flour in first thing this morning, and brought the cake to work.
Yes, I get up ridiculously early compared to when I leave for work. But also I only made a half-mixture so it cooked more quickly – in fact I should have had it lower heat because the edges went a bit black. Even so, it was very nice hot for breakfast (fruit, milk and flour – what could be healthier?) and my colleagues have made me repeat the recipe a few times plus email it to them, so I’d call it a definite success.
Ah. We seem to be building a nice body of evidence here. Did you colleagues email you back to tell you that you had surely left out three or four ingredients?
I tried this recipe. I halved it also but lowered the temperature. Next time I will try adding some mixed spice and some rum. It was very nice and low fat.
Thank you Joan. Great to hear that it turned out well – I’m waiting for the comment that says “I tried this and it was yukky. You have rocks in your head” – because it just.should.not.work.
Hi,
I tried it and also halved the mixture and put it in a date loaf tin. It was very morish (not sure if I spelt that right) and going to have it for christmas day with custard and cream.