Aura's Fruitcake

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Loads of dried fruit with just enough juice sweetened, whole wheat cake to hold it all together. The dried fruit creates a delectably, crunchy yet slightly sticky crust. It is just incredibly delicious!

Ease: involved Type: dessert Prep Time: 45 minutes Total Time: 4 1/4 hours Yield: 20 - 40 slices

Cook's notes

Try to use Meyer lemons, they are much sweeter.

Make sure that you buy applesauce with no additives or sugar. It should contain apples and that is it!

Be sure to buy only unsulphered dried fruit. Also, except for the cranberries, the fruit should contain no added sugar.

Instead of grating the zest off of a lemon, I get dried lemon peel in granulated form. It saves me a huge amount of time. You can get it at natural food stores or at Frontier Co-op

I like to use the organic blackstrap molasses made by Wholesome Sweeteners. It has loads of minerals, no chemicals, and is a bit sweeter than other molasses.

Ingredients

3 c whole wheat pastry flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t mace
1/4 t cloves
1 c applesauce
1 T organic molasses
2 t dried, ground orange peel or zest from 1 orange
About 7 T orange juice (Juice of one large orange)
2 t dried, ground lemon zest from 1 lemon
about 3 T fresh lemon juice (juice from 1 lemon)
3/4 c sweet Jewish wine
2 1/2 c diced mixed dried fruit (Roughly about 5 T dried apricots, 1 c + 3 T cranberries and 1 c prunes.)
2 c chopped walnuts
1 1/2 c date pieces
1 1/2 c thompson raisins
1 1/2 c golden raisins

Steps

• Prepare a 10" tube pan or angel food pan by greasing and lining the sides, bottom and tube with wax or parchment paper. This is an important step as any fruit directly touching the sides of the pan may burn. No need to grease the inside of the paper. Greasing the pan helps the paper to stick better. Preheat oven to 300° F. No convection.
• Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace and cloves.
• In a large bowl, beat together apple sauce, molasses, orange zest and juice, lemon zest and juice and wine. Stir in the flour mixture just until blended.
• Stir in the dried fruit, walnuts, dates raisins and golden raisins.
• Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for 3 1/2 hours. the cake may look done at 2 1/2 hours but ignore this.
• Let the cake cool in the pan until completely cool to the touch, about 1 hour. Invert the cake carefully and serve at room temperature.

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