I was helping out my Mum on the weekend by cutting up the extra fruit for a fruit cake she was baking for homemade Christmas gifts, and was super stunned when the recipe had ONLY 3 Ingredients. Seriously?! Usually recipes that claim to use few ingredients rely on a well stocked pantry – but not this one! Take that 4 ingredient cookbooks! So I’ve decided to share it here for your baking pleasure. A little warning though – it works out best if you leave the fruit soaking over night, so this isn’t a great cake for those situations requiring baked goods on short notice.

MUM’S AMAZING FRUIT CAKE
Makes 1 square cake or 2 bar cakes

INGREDIENTS:

1 kg Dried Fruit
600ml Iced Coffee
2 cups Self-raising Flour

1. Combine dried fruit, and iced coffee in a mixing bowl. Cover with cling-film, and refrigerate overnight (a few hours works but it is way tastier if you do it the night before.)
2. Preheat an oven to 180C. Grease and line your selected baking pan – a square cake tin or 2 bar tins. Personally, I only own 1 bar tin, so I either bake it in 2 batches, or half the recipe. Go nuts.
3. Add sifted self-raising flour and stir to combine. You made need some muscles for this.
4. Fill baking tin and bake for 2 hours (checking after 90-mins) if using the square tin or, 1 hour (checking after 45-mins) if using bar tins. I use the skewer test to check my cake – a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Now, you don’t have to stop at 3 ingredients if you don’t want to – there are loads of ways to customise this cake to add your personal spin or a bit of holiday flair. It can even be adapted to become gluten free!

OPTIONS

• I like glace cherries, so I add some of these.
• You can add some cinnamon, other spices, or nuts.
• For a super decadent option, use Bailey’s or Tia Maria as your soaking liquid
• For a gluten free version, subsititue 1 cup almond meal (or halzenut meal), and 1 cup + a bit extra gluten free plain flour, and gluten free baking powder (according to manufacturers directions i.e. mine says 2 tsp per cup, so I’d add 4 tsps for the volume of dry ingredients).
• If you have dairy related issues, try using a fruit juice – I like Golden Circles’ Sunshine punch.

Rest assured that even if you decide not to pimp out your cake, you will have an incredibly moist, and super tasty traditional cake. Enjoy!