Muffins with dried fruits. Cake with dried fruits and nuts, simple and delicious Crumble cake with dried fruits and nuts
This is the first time I have baked such a gorgeous cupcake with dried fruits! Bright, lush, fragrant!
I usually put a handful of raisins and a few pieces of dried apricots on a portion of the dough, that’s what I called a cake with dried fruits. And in this recipe there is almost more dried fruit than dough! Yes, so bright and colorful! In cross section it looks simply amazing. Perhaps only the English Christmas Cake is even richer in composition!
This cupcake is not only beautiful and delicious, it is also healthy! What you need to feed your kids raisins and dried apricots.
And in late autumn and winter, when fresh berries and fruits are still far away, the recipe is just a godsend. Let's try to make this wonderful cupcake!
Ingredients:
For the test:
- Butter – 120 g;
- Powdered sugar – 120 g;
- Egg yolks – 5 pieces;
- Wheat flour – 130 g;
- A packet of baking powder (I took 10 g);
- Lemon zest – 1-2 teaspoons.
- Dried fruits – 300 g.
To make the cake more colorful, take a little bit of everything:
- Light and dark raisins produce golden and brown specks;
- Dried apricots – sunny orange pieces;
- Dried cranberries – raspberry color;
- Prunes – deep purple;
- Figs look amazing when cut with their small golden grains!
Also, to soak dried fruits, you will need rum or cognac. And if you are cooking for children, you can take warm boiled water or tea with lemon.
How to bake a delicious and beautiful cupcake with dried fruits:
Wash the dried fruits, dry them, cut them into pieces.
Pour the dried fruits into a plate and lightly pour in rum - the pieces should not float in it, 2-3 tablespoons are enough to lightly cover the bottom of the dish. To ensure that the dried fruits are soaked evenly, stir them with a spoon from time to time.
Let's start preparing the dough. Fluffy and rich, it reminded me of the dough for the Capital Cupcake. First, beat the softened butter with powdered sugar using a mixer. I advise you to first stir with a spoon or whisk, and then beat, otherwise the powder will fly around the kitchen.
It is better not to replace powder with sugar: the powder is softer and finer, the dough will be more fluffy and rise easier, given the large amount of fruit. If you don’t have powder, you can make it yourself from sugar by grinding it in a coffee grinder or mill.
Separate the yolks from the whites. Add the yolks one at a time to the whipped butter and beat a little each time with a mixer.
After adding the fifth yolk, beat it thoroughly until you get such a fluffy, light mass.
Sift flour with baking powder into a bowl.
Add lemon zest.
Mix, but not completely, so that a little flour remains on the surface of the dough, and put dried fruits into the dough. The flour will absorb excess moisture. And so that there is less moisture (if the fruit has not absorbed everything), we do not pour them directly from the plate, but transfer them by hand, squeezing them a little.
At first it seemed to me that there were too many dried fruits for this portion of dough.
But after mixing it turned out to be just right. The dough turned out thick but fluffy.
Preheat the oven to 180C and grease the cake pan with sunflower oil - not too much so that the oil walls do not prevent the dough from rising - grease it with a thin layer, but carefully so that the cake comes out easily. Place the dough in the pan, smooth it out slightly and put it in the oven.
Bake the cake with dried fruits at 180C until it becomes high and golden brown, and a wooden stick remains dry when tested at the highest point. My cake took almost an hour and a half to bake, maybe less - the exact time depends on your oven.
Let the finished cake stand in the oven for 5-10 minutes so that it does not settle, then take out the pan and wait until the cake has almost cooled down.
Then carefully shake it out onto a plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Cut the cake into slices with a sharp knife.
And we admire the chic multi-color stained glass window made of colorful dried fruits!
Enjoy your tea!
A cupcake with dried fruits and nuts, like any other cupcakes (no difference, large or small), is, first of all, a successful dough recipe, and then the only question is choosing an additive to it. Lemon, banana and curd muffins can be considered the most delicious and popular, and the muffin with dried fruits can safely be classified as a “classic of the genre”.
It turns out very tender, bright and can be served without false modesty, for example, at Christmas, like, or Easter, like Easter cake.
You can use any dried fruits; make a mixture to your liking or purchase ready-made ones in the store. Nuts are ideal for dried fruits; you can add very small candied fruits. For this amount of dough products, add up to 0.5 kg of dried fruits.
To prepare a cake with dried fruits you need to prepare:
350-500 g of a mixture of dried fruits and/or nuts, in this case prunes, dried apricots and raisins;
- 4 medium-sized eggs, if the eggs are small, feel free to take 5 pieces;
- 150 g granulated sugar;
- 200 g butter, to prepare the cake you need to warm it to room temperature;
- a pinch of vanillin (replaced with a teaspoon of vanilla sugar);
- 3 tsp. baking powder for dough (yes, exactly three (!), no less);
- 250 g of premium flour, it must be said that the classic recipe uses 300 g, but usually 250 is enough.
The cake turns out to be quite large, so you need to choose the appropriate mold; the ideal option is a silicone mold the size of a regular loaf of bread.
Step-by-step recipe for making cake with dried fruits:
Dried fruits need to be washed and soaked for 15-20 minutes in hot water. Even if it seems to you that they are not too “dried”, washing and soaking are still needed. They will help get rid of unnecessary substances with which dried fruits were processed during storage.
After soaking, drain the water, rinse the dried fruits again in a colander and place on a towel to dry.
Then finely chop the large fruits. Dried fruits are prepared. If nuts are used, carefully separate them from the shell and membranes and chop them with a knife or rolling pin in a bag.
At this stage, you need to turn on the oven while the dough is being prepared, the temperature in it should heat up to 180-200 degrees.
Grind soft butter (leave about 0.5 tsp for greasing the pan) with sugar with a spoon.
Break the eggs into the butter mixture and mix everything until smooth. It is quite difficult to do this with a spoon, so it is better to use a whisk or mixer.
Add prepared dried fruits to the whipped mass.
Now add flour and baking powder and knead the dough with a spoon. It is better to add flour gradually so as not to overdo it, otherwise the dough will become “heavy” and will not rise. The mass should be stretchy, with the consistency of very thick sour cream.
Grease the mold with oil and place the dough into it.
The cake will bake for about 50 minutes; it is usually recommended to check the readiness with a match, but it is better not to open the oven again during the baking process. If the light in the oven and glass allows, then it is better to navigate by the color of the edges of the cupcake. Once the edges have become sufficiently rosy (brown), you can turn off the heat and remove the cake.
The cake should cool slightly in the pan, then it will come out very easily. The top of the cake is usually sprinkled with powdered sugar through a sieve, or topped with sugar or chocolate icing.
Dried fruit cake is ready!
And next time you can prepare small cupcakes using the same recipe using small silicone molds.
Christmas is the brightest holiday of winter. And even though it’s already behind us, you always want to have a recipe for a Christmas cupcake on hand, and you can also bake it for any other holiday. The most important thing is to prepare all the ingredients, nuts, dried fruits and alcohol. In my cupcake recipe I used Cointreau liqueur (40%), 200 g of nuts and 300 g of dried fruit. I know that they add even more fillings to the cupcake, but for my taste this is enough. But you can always diversify the composition, this will only make the cake brighter.
To prepare an English Christmas cake with nuts and dried fruits, take the following products.
And...
Wash dried fruits and chop finely. There is no need to wash candied fruits.
Pour the dried fruits with any strong alcohol, preferably rum, I used strong Cointreau liqueur, I call it orange vodka. Add a few drops of rum essence here. Stir and leave the dried fruits to swell for at least a day. The swollen dried fruits will absorb all the alcohol, become aromatic, and soften.
Fry the nuts in a frying pan, cool and chop. I just crushed them with a rolling pin.
Remove butter and eggs from the refrigerator in advance. Beat soft butter with sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
When all the eggs are beaten with butter, add boiled condensed milk. You can skip this step but increase the amount of sugar. I added condensed milk for a darker color since I didn't have brown sugar, which is much preferable for the recipe.
Then add baking spices. Ingredients include cinnamon, cardamom, star anise... something else.
Sift the flour together with baking powder and add to the dough, not all at once, but in parts. Leave a couple of tablespoons of flour for dried fruits.
Place the dried fruits in a sieve to drain all the alcohol, then sprinkle with the remaining flour. This is done so that all the dried fruits are well mixed in the dough and do not sink to the bottom during baking.
Lastly, add the chopped nuts to the dough. The dough turns out to be quite dense, the spatula can stand in it without falling.
Prepare a baking dish. I usually don’t grease it, but use parchment. First you need to wet the parchment, shake off the water and lay the mold inside. Place the dough into the mold. Place the pan with the dough in an oven preheated to 160 degrees. Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes, but you need to control the baking time according to your oven. If the top begins to brown quickly, cover it with foil. Check the readiness with a toothpick, pierce the cake in the center, and if it comes out dry, then the cake is already baked.
Leave the finished cake in the pan until it cools completely, and then remove it. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or pour over fondant, icing, chocolate. You can also soak the cake in alcohol by making holes in it. Typically, an English Christmas cake with nuts and dried fruits is packed in parchment and left to ripen, this is if the cake was baked in advance for Christmas.
And we cut the cupcake right away. You can invite everyone for tea. Enjoy!
