Vegan fruit and nut cake/Christmas cake

This is kind of a practice cake for me to make few batches of it during Dec last week.My relatives are visitng us during that time and after that I would be visiting my native place. So I would be making atleast 4 loaves then. I planned to make a vegan cake and did not want to mess it up at the last moment. So made this cake to be sure that nothing goes wrong.

I adapted this recipe from three different sources...Jugalbandhi's fruit and nut war cake, Kitchen Mishmash's Fruit cake and JoyOfBaking's Boiled fruit cake. The cake turned out very good and I am going to use this recipe anytime I make fruit and nut cake.

I would also like to thank Vaishali whose writings inspired me to inculcate vegan habits into my diet.

I soaked the fruits and nuts for a week in orange juice. Raisins soaked in orange juice was a bit tart which I did not like, but others in the family just loved the cake as it was.

Here is the recipe

Ingredients to make a small sized loaf(around 12 slices)
All purpose flour/Maida: 1 1/2 cups
Brown Sugar/Demerra Sugar: 1 1/4 cup(I did not have that much brown sugar, I substiuted it with date syrup.)
Baking Soda: 1 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Water: 1/2 cup(if soaking the nuts in orange juice as you would get around 1/2 cup juice after removing the fruits and nuts. Otherwise use 1 cup water.)
Vegetable Oil or Applesauce: 3 tbsp(I used sunflower refined oil)

Fruits and Nuts (overal it should be 2 1/2 cups, any combination of it can be used)
Cashew: 1/2 cup(broken into pieces)
Badam/Almond: 1/2 cup(broken into pieces)
Raisins: 1/2 cup
Cherry: 1/2 cup(cut into small pieces)
Tutti fruiti: 1/2 cup
Orange juice: around 1 cup(I used freshly squeezed)

Soak the fruits and nuts in orange juice in a jar and refrigerate it for atleast a week. Its better to stir the fruits once daily. Next time I will not be soaking raisins.

Spice mixture
Powdered Caraway seeds/Shahjeera: 1 tsp
Powdered nutmeg: 1/4 tp
Powdered cinnamon: 1/4 tsp 
Powdered cloves: 1/4 tsp
Powdered cardamom: 1/4 tsp

Procedure
1. Pre heat the oven to 170 degree C and grease a cake pan or loaf pan with oil and dust with flour.
2. Sieve the flour, baking soda and salt together.
3. In a saucepan, over medium heat, bring to a boil the sugar, water, oil, spices, and raisins.( I did not boil raisins as I soaked them in orange juice. Next time I will not do this)
4. Boil for five minutes, remove from heat, and let cool till lukewarm.
5. Transfer the soaked fruits and nuts to a bowl and add vanilla extract and mix well. Keep the left over orange juice aside.
6. Transfer the lukewarm mixture to a large bowl and add the flour mixture 4 to 5 tbsp at a time and mix.
7. If the batter is too thick add the orange juice. Stir in the soaked fruits and nuts.
8. Transfer the batter to the loaf pan and bake for around 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

The cake tastes best when eaten the next day.(if you have the patience. :-)) Its moist, dense and hard to resist.

Advanced wishes to all you for a fun filled holiday season.