I wanted to try making this recipe with gluten free flour and maple syrup this year. When it came time, I thought I either had apples or applesauce in the freezer. Turns out I had only a couple apples, so I pulled out some peaches and made peach applesauce. It turned out just fine.
Simple Fruitcake
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups applesauce
- 3/4 cup maple syrup
- ½ cup butter (light tasting olive oil or coconut oil should work fine for vegan)
- 2 ¼ cup flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Baking Blend)
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 8 ounces dark raisins
- 8 ounces broken pecans
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
- Pick over pecans to remove any shell pieces in grooves and break up into 6 or 8 pieces each.
- Boil together applesauce and maple syrup for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in the butter, pecans, and vanilla then set aside to cool.
- Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
- Prepare a 12 cup Bundt pan, or two loaf pans, or a mini Bundt pan tin.
- In a large bowl, blend together flour, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.
- Add raisins to flour mixture.
- Stir the liquid ingredients in thoroughly.
- Pour into prepared tins and bake, about 40 minutes for the smaller ones or up to 2 hours for the large cake, or until a thin knife inserted in center comes out mostly clean.
- This cake is best aged a bit, at least a few days.
- For the adults – I decided to try soaking and aging a half of the mini fruitcakes with blackberry brandy this year. The directions I found say to simply poke holes all over with a toothpick then brush with the alcohol and wrap. Reapply alcohol each week. We’ll see what happens.
