Recipe: Any Fruit Cake
Do you have nectarines that are past their prime lurking in your fruit bowl? Or raspberries that desperately need to be used? Or any fruit for that matter?
Well, if you do, fear not. Here is a recipe by Fiona Smith from MAKE Studios that can turn your past-prime fruit into a delicious cake. You can use virtually any fruit you might need to use up.
Ingredients:
– 1/2-3/4 cup sugar
– 1/2 cup olive oil
– 2 eggs
– 2 tbs orange juice
– 1 cup self raising flour
– 1/2 cup almond meal (optional, if not using, increase the flour to 1 1/3 cups)
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1/2 tsp salt
– About 2 tsp spices, depending on the fruit, eg:
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
– About 500g of fruit, cut into small chunks, eg:
500g stonefruit (plums, nectarines, peaches),
3 apples, grated or cut into small pieces,
quince, pre-poached,
pineapple, pre-roasted with some honey.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and flour a cake tin.
Beat together olive oil and sugar. Slowly mix in eggs.
If using grated apple, add it now.
In a separate mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.
Combine wet and dry ingredients and orange juice. Stir until well-incorporated, but don’t over-beat.
Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, and level the top with a spatula. Place the fruit chunks on top - they’ll sink in as the cake cooks.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 min or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Test a few spots - the fruit chunks can hide pockets of raw batter!
Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
