Steamed Fruit Cake

The Malay festives is here! Wishing all Muslim visitors "Selamat Hari Raya and Maaf Zahir Batin".

I noticed lately that a lot of supermarts & hypermarts are stocked with loafs of fruit cakes. From what i understand is during the fasting month, all Muslims will break their fast with some thing sweet, hence the dates and fruit cakes bazaar.

I have a lovely Muslim colleague who made fruit cakes for sale. According to her, she actually steamed the cake for 4 hrs!!! How tedious! And she said the water must be boiling hot prior steaming the cake and each addition of water into the steaming wok/pot must be boiling hot. That is why, buying homemade fruit cake can actually cost a bomb...

I have tasted my colleague's steamed fruit cake and was totally amazed by the moist texture...the kind of melt-in-mouth. I'm not a fruit cake fan, maybe because most of the time, the cakes i bought are kinda dry in texture and the culprit behind it could be the baking process.

But because I am totally swept away by the yummy steamed fruit cake, I decided to give it a try on steaming a fruit cake. I found this lovely recipe from thestar.kuali...a truly superb recipe. However, i ran out of sultanas, and here's what i substitued with : cherries, prunes & organic raisins. Although the time needed to steam the fruit is only half the time my colleague does, but it seemed darn long to me. I practically stood in front of the stove for the last 30 minutes, couldn't wait to dig in the fruit cake.

Oh my god. I love it! Truly amazing recipe by Amy Beh. My dad luvs it too (he's an ardent fan of fruit cake...:S) but he said if i could cut down the amount of sugar used, the cake would have been perfect. So peeps, take note ya if you don't have the sweet tooth.

Recipe Extracted from Kuali. com

Ingredients
200g butter
180g castor sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
200g mixed fruits

Sifted
265g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
70g castor sugar
60ml water

Method
To prepare caramel:Cook sugar in a saucepan until the sugar turns golden brown. Remove saucepan from the heat and pour in water. Stir to dissolve the sugar until a caramel is formed. Set aside to cool completely. Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in the essence. Fold in sifted dry ingredients and add in mixed fruits. Add the caramel to mix. Turn batter into prepared cake pan and cover the top with a piece of aluminium foil. Steam over rapid boiling water for two hours or until cake is cooked through when tested with a wooden skewer.