Fruit Cake Recipe
Due to severe food allergies, I can’t have store-bought fruit cakes and I am not really very fond of alcohol-steeped desert. I recently happened on a recipe from the President Truman household that was posted by the National Park Service. I made a few modifications to fit our taste and we really love it.
I am sharing both the original and my modified version.
A few notes
I don’t like my desserts to be too sweet, so they are a bit on the low sugar side. My sugar is adjusted for the sweetness of dried fruit I used. I suggest you taste your dried fruit and adjust the sugar accordingly.
I also substituted some of the sugar for clover honey to keep the cake more moist.
I used sweetened lemon peel instead of citron. I wanted more lemon flavor, so I added extra lemon peel and balanced the taste by adding dried cranberries.
I am writing the ingredients followed by the steps; that way you don’t have to go back and forth between the two. It is so much easier to follow when you are making a new recipe.
Ingredients are listed below as Original / My modified version
Preheat oven to 350F
Line a bread loaf pan with parchment paper so the cake can be easily lifted out once baked.
- 1C brown sugar / 1/2 C sugar + 1/4C honey
- 1 1/4 C water
- 1 C seeded raisins / 1/2 C golden raisins
- 2oz Citron / 1 C sweetened lemon peel
- None / 1/2 C dried sweetened cranberries
- 1/3 C butter
- 1 tsp nutmeg / skipped
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
Add these ingredients into a saucepan and boil for 3 minutes. Allow to cool.
- 2 C flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 2 eggs
For this part you can use a spatula to mix everything together directly in the saucepan. I suggest sifting the flour to avoid lumps. I transfer the liquid from the saucepan to a stand mixer bowl and use the mixer for the next step.
Add the eggs, flour and baking powder to the stand mixer bowl. Mix well.
- 1 tsp lemon zest ( I added this)
We have a lemon tree and I freeze lemon zest for baking. If you have some at hand and want to a bit more lemony aroma, mix in the lemon zest with a spatula.
Pour the batter in the lined pan and bake in the preheated oven. In my oven it takes about 40 minutes. Oven temperatures can vary, so please check a few minutes early if you are unsure and bake until it’s done. Cool on a cooling rack.
Our favourite way to eat it is to gently toast the slice in a toaster oven, then butter it. As I mentioned earlier, it is a huge favourite at home. I hope you like it too!