Boiled Fruit Cake

This is the perfect fruit cake to whip up when you’re short on time. With only 15 minutes prep and an hour in the oven, afternoon tea is looking mighty good with this fruity delight on the menu.

How to make a boiled fruit cake: key tips

This is a wonderfully simple recipe. After boiling the fruit mixture together, make sure that you cool it to room temperature before adding the egg and flour – you won’t want these to ‘cook’ before the batter goes into the oven.

Bake your cake in a greased and lined 20cm round cake pan (it can be a springform pan, if you like), for about an hour at 180C, or until the top is dark golden and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake. Cool in the pan before turning out.

Key ingredients in this boiled fruit cake recipe

Choose your favourite mixed dried fruit for this recipe, with or without glacé cherries and peel. You can use caster sugar for the sugar component, or brown sugar (for a deeper flavour), or use half and half.

The bicarb soda creates a light, airy texture in this cake. It also neutralises the acidity of the dried fruit, ensuring the crumb is lovely and tender and moist.

Mixed spice complements the mixed fruit and adds warmth to this cake. If you like a lot of spice, you can double the amount in the recipe.

Here are some tips on preparing your pan for a fruit cake, as well as a last-minute rich Christmas cake to try.

This recipe was originally submitted by kalmy, a member of the Australia’s Best Recipe community. Introduction and additional recipe notes by Natasha Shaw.