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1. Baking the rich fruit cake
Watch Paul prepare, mix, then bake his very own rich fruit cake recipe. He’s taken bits of other recipes and put them together with his own unique twist to bring you this delicious rich fruit cake.
See the Tools and Ingredient tabs below and you’ll find the Method in the Templates tab.
Learn how to make Rich Fruit cake with Paul Bradford
Learn how to make rich fruit cake the Paul Bradford way. Paul likes to soak his fruit well in advance to really bring out the flavours and give the cake that moistness often lacking in a fruit cake.
In this tutorial you will learn how to…
- Soak and prepare the fruit
- Mixing the ingredients to the right consistency
- Add the fruit
- Bake to perfection
- and much, much more
There are lots of important techniques to learn so don’t forget to share your interpretations of this wonderful cake with Paul and the rest of the CakeFlix community on our Facebook group.
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Paul’s Rich Fruit cake downloadable tools & ingredients
Other US to metric and metric to US
8″ square fruit cake
- 500g currants
- 350g sultanas
- 400g cherries (chopped)
- 250g butter
- 250g muscovado sugar
- 250g plain flour
- 175g raisins
- 100g chopped almonds
- 50g mixed peel
- 5 medium eggs
- 1 tablespoon treacle
- 1.5 teaspoons of mixed spice
- 1 teaspoon of almond essence
- 0.25L Cointreau
- 0.25L Scottish whisky
- Zest of one orange
- Zest of one lemon
- Mixer
- 8” square cake tin
- Bowls
- Spatula
- Wooden spoon
- Bamboo skewer
- Baking parchment or grease-proof paper
- Scissors
- Oven
- Oven thermometer
- Digital scales
- Sharp knife
- Measuring jug
Paul Bradford
Paul Bradford´s mission is to ‘Empower people to achieve their cake decorating dreams’ by providing a range of cake decorating courses and online tutorials through their website, which currently teaches 195,000+ students.Method
Soak the sultans, currents and raisins with in the Cointreau and Whisky for approximately 10 days. Make sure the fruit is fully drained before adding to the cake mix.
Preheat your (fan assisted) oven to 130C (300F) or 150C (325F) in a conventional oven.
- Beat your butter, sugar and eggs on a slow speed for a couple of minutes or until mixed through.
- Add the treacle and mix for a further minute.
- Now add the flour, almonds and mixed spice then mix for 2 minutes then scrape down and mix for another minute.
- Add the fruit, cherries and mixed peel to the bowl and mix thoroughly using a wooden spoon.
- Double line your 8” square cake tin.
- Add the mix making sure that you stay around 1” from the top of the tin and that the mix is spread evenly.
- Place in the oven for 4hrs, but checking at 2hrs then 30 min intervals until the cake is cooked right through.
- Leave to cool in the tin.
- Once cool wrap in greaseproof paper and tinfoil.
- Pierce the top of the cake with your skewer, which will allow you to feed the cake with an alcohol of your choice. So long as the cake is stored in a cool, dry place the cake can be baked and fed three months beforehand.
Comments
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what kind of spices are in “mixed spice”
Paul used Mixed Spices which included; Coriander, cinnamon, Cloves, Ginger, Nutmeg, Fennel and Cardamom.
Hi David, can you pls let me know the measurements for the different ingredients used for the mixed spice. Thanks a lot
Mixed Spice comes from an off the shelf pack. There will be small variations from brand to brand, country to country, but as the portion is so small ay taste difference would be negligible.
Hello, just wondering if there will be tutorials of cakes I can see in the background.
Thanks.
The Safari Party and Playful Dragon cakes are the ones Paul’s designed for teaching in 2019. Once he’s done the teaching rounds with them I’m sure they’ll be filmed as tutorials.
Very observant 🙂
Just has another look and spotted the Santa’s Present cake which will be released tomorrow (13th Dec 18) and two wedding cakes from Natalie Porter which will be released in the first half of 2019.
Thank you so much!, I can’t wait. Your tutorials have helped me a lot
The cake looks lovely =). Just a question reference soaking the fruit. I made my first fruit cake 3 yrs ago. The customer wanted no alcohol in the cake, so I soaked the fruit in orange juice for 2 days. Only issue was I misunderstood, and used enough OJ to cover( and i mean cover lol) the fruit. I drained the fruit, baked the cake ( was huge took 6 hrs), stick came out clean. Lovely right? Wrong.3 weeks later when I was putting supports into the cake, the dowel came out with cake that looked raw on it. Not wanting to serve this I had to call the bride and we decided on a different cake. The long of this… what went wrong? Did the juice from the fruit cause an issue in the weeks it rested or ? I only ask as Paul seems to have soaked his fruit in a good amount of alcohol (where my recipe says like 3 tablespoons) . Thank you =) Tammy
Hi Tammy, the main problem will be that the alcohol will evaporate during the baking process, whereas orange juice likely won;t to the same extent.
If the bake was ok in the centre when it came out the oven, then later went soggy, it would like be down to the orange juice I’m afraid.
In the past for customers who didn’t want alcohol, we just cleaned and drained the fruit in water, left to dry, then added to the mix.
Always best to try next techniques on a small test batch to see how it goes.
Good luck! David 🙂
David … could I soak the fruit in tea? if so, is there a type you would recommend AND would I drain the tea off after soaking? Will the cake then be dry due to not using drink to soak the fruit? sorry for all the bothering with this. I am not having much luck with fruit cake and its costing me a fortune in getting it wrong hahahah ( 12″ round and 4″ so far one has burnt, and the other slightly burnt on edges though covered top and then when removing from tin broke in half and looked just slightly under done in centre though skewer was clean) . Can you and Paul just come make it for me lol 😉 thank you for all your help xx
Hi Tammy, unfortunately I’m out my depth with that one.
Please post to our Cake Q&A page (link below). When you post you get notified of the answer and I know our super user: madeitwithlove will know the answer…
https://www.cakeflix.com/questions
thank you 😉 sorry to have been a pain. for some reason realllly struggling with this large fruit cake. I appreciate all your help. thank you
Are the measurements/ingredients the same for an 8 inch round tin Thanks
This recipe is set for an 8″ square tin, which requires more ingredients than an 8″ round tin.
To make the change type click the link below then select Paul’s Rick Fruit Cake in the Use Your Own Recipe drop-down. Move the sliders to the size you are looking to bake and you’ll get the revised ingredient list from there:
https://www.cakeflix.com/cake-size-calculator
Cheers !! Thanks v much ?
Me again =) couple questions. Can I use dark verses light M.sugar, and my cake needs to be 5″ deep ( 12″ round) wowzers right? I knowww. Anywho, I have the recipe from the file ( thank you). I am guessing this beast will take days to cook lol. Is it possible to split the batter and do 2 cakes and stack to make it the correct height or is this frowned upon? Thought maybe I could put a layer of marzipan between ? I don’t get asked often for fruit cakes and have never been asked for one this large, so just looking at options. Thank you =)
Hi Tammy, Yes you can use the sugar no problem, I think I’d back one big cake…The thought of marzipan in the middle doesn’t sound good. Just bake it on a slightly lower heat than recommended for a longer time! When I worked in the old bakery we used to switch the oven off and leave the cake in the oven over night! It always seem to work.
Hope that helps.
All the best, Paul
Thank you Paul/David. I wasnt sure the best way to go about baking such a large cake. I will give that a go =). Thanking you once again for always being here for us all =)
Your recipe uses plain flour without baking powder or bicarbonate of soda raising agents……..is this correct?
Hi Daniel
Paul’s Rick Fruit cake uses plain flour. No self-rising agent or bicarbonate of soda is used.
I’m going to try and bake Paul’s rich fruit cake in a 6”, 8”, and 10” round tins. Can you let me know how long I need to bake them for and at what temperatures? Many thanks
Paul’s recipe creates an 8″ square cake. The best way to work out different baking times is to work out the portions.
An 8″ square cake has 64 portions … https://www.cakeflix.com/portion-calculator/
6″ round = 28, 8″ round = 50. 10″ round = 78.
Paul said that his guidance on the template notes will work for all sizes…
Place in the oven for 4hrs, but checking at 2hrs then 30 min intervals until the cake is cooked right through.