I know it's really really lame to post an eggless fruit cake recipe right after Christmas and I wasn't really meaning to do it. But then I realised I will have to wait a whole year and I was positive I would forget the recipe and my notes if I postponed this recipe that long so here goes.
I shared Omana Paul's Plum Cake Recipe last year and quite a few people have tried it and shared feedback. However, as with any other cake recipe, I also got a ton of requests for an eggless plum cake recipe.
I don't like slaving over anything in the kitchen and most of the recipes I saw online for eggless plum cakes were lengthy and required quite a lot of ingredients. So I decided to adapt what I thought looked good and make it simpler. I am super happy with the result although the top of my cake burned a little bit.
I should've covered the baking tray with some aluminium foil but I realised I was all out of foil and just had to leave the cake to its fate. It didn't turn out too bad though, the slight bitterness added more character to the cake 😉
I baked mini loaves of these eggless plum cakes to give away and kept just 3 pieces for TH and I. I didn't take step by step pictures either but will surely update it as soon as I bake these again. This recipe is loosely adapted from Food.com.
Check here for more Christmas recipes including no bake chocolate biscuit balls, chocolate crinkle cookies, tutti frutti cake, etc.
Eggless Plum Cake, Eggless Fruit Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour maida
- ½ cup of dark brown sugar white sugar may also work but colour will be lighter
- 1 cup of mixed dry fruits like raisins sultanas, dates, cherries, tutti frutti, etc
- 2 tablespoon of finely chopped cashew nuts
- 2 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon orange or lemon zest works better
- 1 teaspoon of mixed spices like cinnamon nutmeg, allspice, etc
- ½ cup of unsalted butter
- 2.5 tablespoon of any neutral oil like veg oil
- A pinch of salt
- ⅔ cup water
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350F / 180C. Grease and line an 8" cake pan or muffin tray / mini loaf pan, whatever you prefer.
- Bring the water to boil in a pan and add the dry fruits (leave out the tutti frutti if using them) and the sugar.
- Simmer for about 7-10 mins until the dates have softened ,yet don't turn mushy.
- Turn off heat, remove the pan and set aside for 5 mins to cool slightly.
- Then, add the butter, vanilla (or citrus zest) and baking soda. The mixture will foam a bit, that's normal and fine.
- Set aside to cool.
- In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Add the spice powders and mix well to combine.
- To this, add the cashew nuts and tutti frutti, if using. You can also add some chopped glazed cherries at this stage if you'd like
- Add the cooled fruit mixture to the flour mixture and add the oil.
- Gently fold until the batter has no flour streaks left in in it.
- Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake in the pre-heated oven for about 50 mins.
- If the top seems to be cooking too quickly, loosely cover the cake tray with aluminium foil and leave a slit in the middle for air to escape.
- Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
- Cool completely before slicing and store in airtight containers.
Notes:
- this eggless plum cake is denser than your regular cakes so don't expect light and fluffy. Think a moist, dense, and delicious fruit cake!
- you can add a tablespoon or two of rum or brandy to the cake and make it taste "better".
- the cake is sweet on its own but if you want to frost it, reduce the amount of sugar in the cake batter.
- I got a few questions on the colour of the eggless fruit cake. Mine is a darker brown because I used very dark and moist brown sugar. Also, my dates were a dark colour as were the raisins (and I used a lot of raisins). These are the two reasons why I feel the colour of the cake may be affected. I should also probably add that the top of my cake burnt a little giving it that almost black colour. Usually the colour of fruit cake comes from caramelising sugar which we don't do in this cake. You can definitely do that though, just follow steps in my Christmas fruit cake recipe.
For eggless fruit cake recipe in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Urdu, etc please use the Google translate button in the sidebar.
Rashmi
Tried this recipe with whole wheat flour and twice the amount of jaggery(instead of sugar) came out so damn good.. so moist and so tasty! Amazing recipe.. I added more of the spice powder and the orange zest to get more flavour.. it came out sooooo delicious 😋
Sini
I love your christmas cake with egg. In case I need to use caramalized sugar for this eggless recipe, do I just caramalise the sugar or also add water as in the christmas cake.
nags
same as christmas fruit cake recipe but reduce some sugar in the main recipe 🙂
Sarthak Gupta
I try this recipe mast bani thi
Dipali
Hi, I followed the recipe to the T. I found it slightly less moist. Anything I can change to make it softer and moister ?
nags
You can try adding more dates or another tablespoon of butter.
Smitha
Hi Nags,
It turned out beautifully. I didn't have brown sugar on hand, so had to use the regular one, and as the family expect cakes to be sweet, added 2/3 cup, but the cake came out brown on top, fluffy and moist inside. Definitely a keeper, thanks a lot, Looking forward to more eggless cake recipes,
Shweta
Hi, would it be possible to make this using wholewheat flour? I understand it would probably turn out more like a sweet fruit bread instead of cake and I'm ok with that.
nags
i haven't tried it myself but definitely worth a shot
Sapnabohra
How minutes in paper mould
nags
do you mean cupcake moulds? if so, reduce baking time by 15 minutes
aiysha
Instead of water can we use orange juice for soaking the dey fruits?
nags
sure!
Parul Sappal
Loved the recipe. Followed it to an inch. Only thing i felt was my sweetness content was slightly off, but the cake is moist and delicious. Would highly recommend!
Suggestion: instead of half cup brown sugar, i would go for atleast 2/3rd cup, esp if you have a sweet tooth like me!
I would give this recipe 5 stars!
nags
Thank you! pls leave a rating next time 🙂
Jitendra
Hello there, I found that I could not pour the mixture into the bake dish, it had formed into a dough. Though overall it came out well, I used your tin foil tip so the burning was avoided.
Great recipe, but will really live to understand why the mixture became too thick