Halal fruit cake?

[DrSeuss]

A friend and I have a recipe swap afternoon planned - I teach her something in British cookery and get to learn a traditional Pakistani recipe in return. I thought about fruit cake as she has asked me about this in the past but will it work if I leave out the alcohol? She was horrified to discover that vanilla essence contains a small amount of alcohol and will now only use it in things that are to be baked so that the alcohol burns off, so the traditional brandy drenched version is no good! Can you make a teetotal fruit cake? Will it mature in the right way?

Fruit cake will be absolutely fine with no booze. You could soak the dried fruit in tea beforehand to add some extra moisture. Overnight is ideal but an hour or two would do.

Ta, Milk.

If you want to mature it to keep it moist try feeding it with sugar syrup, or pineapple juice, or a mix of hot water and glycerine (1 part glycerine to 2 parts water). You can soak the fruit in pineapple juice too.

You will need to soak the fruit in something before you bake as it will be a very dry cake otherwise.

Yes, fine, soak in hot tea, and leave overnight so the fruit gets really plumped up.

As an alternative to vanilla essence, try a vanilla pod, just scrape the beans out or Jamie has been using a vanilla paste that I must try, this may not have alcohol in.

btw - What a wonderful idea to share recipes in that way.

Here's my delicious tea loaf recipe - no fat in it except for the egg. Its good spread with butter and improves with keeping.

Tea loaf

for a 20.5cm/8 inch loaf tin

250ml tea
250g mixed dried fruit and peel
100g walnut pieces
butter for greasing
250g self raising flour
125g muscovado sugar ( dark is best )
1 large egg

Boil kettle, make tea, chuck in dried fruit and peel and leave to soak for a few hours or overnight. Add the walnuts once the tea is cold. Preheat oven to 180c/350f/Gas 4. Grease or line loaf tin. Beat flour,sugar and egg into tea mix. Pour into tin and bake for 1 hour. Lower heat to 150c/300f/Gas 2 after that and give it 30 mins more. Don't serve until cold. It matures very well, wrap in foil and leave in airtight container for a few days.

Thanks everyone. Has anyone experimented with different teas eg Earl Grey?

my mil makes a lovely fruitcake that uses tea for soaking, it works really well. I have used orange juice and that worked really well too.

As for vanilla pods, get them in large, much cheaper quantities from ebay, they are good quality and you can just scrape the sees out as Tafettasplat says. I usually do this instead of using vanilla extract.