By Ranita Ray
Fruit cakes predate contemporary times. It has a reputation for being ostracized, despite its solid fan base and popularity. This cake is called bricks, paperweights, and doorstops. To give its due glory, choose the right dry and fresh fruits to make a perfect fruit cake. Here are some tips.
The fruit cake batter often contains a lot of fruit and nuts, leaving little batter to keep everything together. Hence, the cake is dense, moist, and hefty. Thus, watch the batter-to-ingredient ratio.
Candied fruits can replace citrons. Choose citrus fruits and berries, including orange, lemon, lime, pineapple, and more. Before drying, the fruit is dipped in syrup. Granulated sugar coats them after drying.
Dark and light fruit cakes exist. The latter uses molasses and brown sugar. Its fruit and dry fruit choices are raisins, prunes, dates, cherries, pecans, and walnuts.
Fruit cakes often dry out. Before adding them to the cake mix, soak the fruits in juice or liquor overnight to keep them moist. The day before baking, soak the dried fruit combination in black rum.
Fresh fruit cakes should not contain dried, candied, or dehydrated fruits. Choose grapes, kiwis, apples, pineapple, peaches, pomegranates, strawberries, mango, tangerines, and berries. Use firm fruit, not melons, bananas, or other mushy ones.