Hi all🙋🏻,
After baking non boozy Christmas or plum cake last week with egg, tried today this eggless one. Yesss.. It’s my own recipe and believe me it’s no fail recipe for you to bake, relish and celebrate this Christmas with this plum cake.
It’s soft, dense and full of caramel flavour. I have used homemade caramel syrup and Tate and Lyle’s soft dark brown sugar to enhance and take maximum flavour out of caramel. But you can use any dark brown sugar. In this recipe of eggless one, have given a slight change while making the caramel, so that I can use less liquid as much as possible because batter has to be very thick as it should be for this traditional cake.
Have used curd to replace eggs because I think it is best replacement as it has no strong taste to overlap any used ingredient in the cake. Although you can use condensed milk too but I am very much comfortable with curd.
Now let’s take a look into the recipe which will yield 15 large slices of this cake.
RECIPE:
INGREDIENTS:
FOR SOAKING AND ROASTING DRY FRUITS:
1/4 cup dried mixed berries
2 tbsp raisins
2 tbsp black currant ( you can replace mixed berries, raisins and currants with tutty fruity )
1/2 cup chopped almonds, cashews and walnuts each
2 tsp tea leaves
1 cup water
FOR CARAMEL SYRUP:
1/4 granulated white sugar
1 tsp + 3 tbsp water
50 gms salted butter
METHOD:
FOR SOAKING AND ROASTING FRUITS:
Take water in a saucepan. Let it boil. Add tea leaves. Boil for a minute. Strain and soak all the berries, raisins and currants in it. Keep it soaked at room temperature for 24 hours.
Take almonds, cashews and walnuts in a skillet. Just dry roast them until a nice aroma you can smell.
FOR CARAMEL SYRUP:
Take sugar and 2 tsp of water in a saucepan. Melt sugar and caramalise until golden brown. Immediately butter and 3 tbsp water. Keep it aside to cool completely.
FOR BATTER:
1+1/2 cup APF or maida
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg powder
2 pinches of salt
3/4 cup very thick curd (use the muslin or strainer method)
3/4 cup dark soft brown sugar
1/2 baking soda
1+1/4 tsp baking powder
Whole Caramel syrup from the above recipe
1/4 cup canola oil or olive oil
All the soaked and roasted dry fruits
Thinly sliced glazed cherries. It should not be thick. If using thick slices, it may sink into the bottom while baking.
METHOD:
First of all take strained curd and sugar in a bowl. Mix well untill smooth. Add baking soda and powder. Combine well. I have used hand mixer. Leave aside for 5 minutes. It will double up in volume.
By the time curd mix is being raised, preheat oven at 160° c and grease a plum cake mould.
Sieve APF, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder and salt twice. Keep the bowl aside.
When the curd mix has doubled, add oil and caramel syrup. As it is winter now, you may see the thin layer of butter has creamed over the top of caramel. Just heat until butter melts and pour into yogurt mix. Mix all well.
Now add spice and APF mix into the yogurt mix in 3 portions with hand mixer. When all incorporated well, take blades out of the hand mixer. Add roasted dry fruits and fold well. Don’t mix them.
Sprinkle half tsp of APF on strained fruits and just shake them so that they coat all the fruits in the sieve. In this way all the juices excreted by them are soaked up by flour and they don’t sink down while baking.
Add berry mix keeping 2 tbsp aside into the batter and mix all well with spatula just folded.
Transfer the batter into the greased mould. Garnish with remaining soaked and APF coated berries and sliced cherries.
Transfer the batter into the greased mould and sprinkle the remaining berries on the top. Bake for 30 minutes at 160°c and at 150°c for 20 minutes. It may vary according to your oven’s voltage. But try to bake first 30 minutes at 160°c.
If it’s done, the tester or toothpick will come out clean.
Now take the cake out of the oven and cool at room temperature on the wire rack..
Enjoy with your friends and relatives 😍😍
KEEP COOKING!!
Superb Christmas Cake.