This quick Christmas cake without flour or sugar is super easy to make, really tasty and works well for little Christmas bites! See picture further down. Much better than eating large portions after all those heavy main courses.
It’s super easy to freeze in little squares for when you want something sweet with your afternoon cuppa. Read on for this recipe. If anyone’s following the paleo diet, this is a paleo cake too. NOT Keto though due to the all the fruit content.
Ingredients for Quick Christmas Cake
FRUIT PART
100 g of dates without seeds and 600 g of your fave dried fruit – see tips below
1 fresh large orange , you need the juice and zest from the skin.
NUT PART
200 g almonds or almond meal and 100 g of your fave nuts chopped up – see tips below
WET PART
3 eggs – medium
60 g of olive oil – see tips
Vanilla extract good quality 1 tsp but not essential
MONICA’S KADAK CHRISTMASY SPICES PART !
2 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tsp ginger powder 1 tsp cardamom (elaitchi) powder
1/4 tsp salt
How to make it
Set your oven to 150 degrees C
Chop up all the dried fruit and dates, keep separate and set aside.
Then combine your orange zest with your almonds and process to make orange flavoured almond meal. Would work with lemon or lime peel as well. All super easy in a thermomix. Click the link to find out more about what that is. Set the almond meal aside.
Combine your eggs, vanilla and orange juice, I substituted some of the orange juice for a glug of whiskey! Not essential if you don’t imbibe, but tasty. Whizz up the wet ingredients.
Add all your chopped nuts, NOT THE ALMOND MEAL, to the wet mixture. Whizz together
Add all your chopped dried fruit and dates to this mixture and whizz again.
Finally incorporate the orange flavoured almond meal, don’t over mix at this point !
Tip mixture into 8 inch by 8 inch square tin. I used a square silicone one. So easy to portion out, especially if you don’t want to eat too much. Easy to control portions like this. See our article on portion distortion.
Bake for at least 1 and 1/4 hours, keep checking after an hour or so. May look a tiny bit well done on the top, but that’s fine! Leave to cool in the tin.
Cooks tips for how we shop and eat now
Re the 600 g of dried fruit, use what you have at home, I used dried figs, apricots, prunes and some raisins. I used more prunes to make up the 600g as I didn’t want the cake too sweet.
Make it up to 600 grams and remember it has to all chopped up into small pieces. You may want to try omitting say 20 to 30 g of dates or use dates that are a little “less sweet”
Re the 100 g for your fave nuts, I used what I had at home, a mixture of almonds, cashews and walnuts.
Re the oil, the original recipe calls for macadamia or coconut oil, but this recipe works very well with olive oil.
Serving ideas
I made my cake in a square silicon tin and I cut into very small squares to serve on a platter sprinkled with raspberries.
People prefer a little sweet bite or two vs a big slice of something heavy.
But have fun with how you serve this quick Christmas cake. If you store your cut pieces in the fridge, try lightly steaming them, ideally using some baking paper then serving them warm.
The smell is gorgeous and you get soft little bites, great for cooler weather.
NOTE
The original recipe for this cake comes from Jo Whitton’s Quirky cooking book (I bought her Life Changing Food book) and I saw this cake being made at a Thermomix demo in Dubai.
More delicious recipes here, just click to have a look.
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