Vegan Fruitcake Recipe

writ­ten 12/14/2024, updat­ed 12/31/2024

Adapt­ed from King Arthur

What

Less tra­di­tion­al fruit­cake than cake with fruit. Made with­out eggs.

Ingredients

Supplies

Servings and Time

Directions

Fruit

• In a heat-safe bowl, pre­pare Dried Fruit (1½ — 2½ cup) by chop­ping either by hand or in a food proces­sor
• If lat­er using option­al Can­died Cher­ries (⅔ cups), Pecan/Walnuts (1 cup), and/or Fruit Leather (⅓ cup), then sub­tract that amount from the 2½ cup Total

Cake

• Pre­pare Egg Replac­er (2 Large Eggs)
• In large mix­ing bowl or stand mix­er, beat But­ter (8 Tbsp, soft­ened) and Sug­ar (1 cup) until fluffy
• Beat in Bak­ing Pow­der (1 tsp), Salt (½ tsp), and Extract (⅛ tsp — either Fiori di Sicil­ia or sub­sti­tute)
• Beat in Egg Replac­er, half at a time
• Using a spoon or spat­u­la now, stir in one-third of the Flour (1¾ cup Total)
• Add half of Orange Juice (½ cup total), stir
• Stir in the sec­ond one-third of the Flour
• Stir in the rest of the Orange Juice
• Repeat for the last of the Flour
• With­out drain­ing it, stir in the soaked Fruit and if using, Can­died Cher­ries, Nuts, and Fruit Leather
• Pre­heat oven to 325F
• Light­ly grease a loaf pan
• Pour bat­ter into loaf pan
• Bake for about 2 hours
• Check to be sure it’s not burn­ing, tent with foil if exte­ri­or starts to burn and inside not done
• When done, cake should be ful­ly brown and an insert­ed skew­er or tooth­pick will come out clean­ly
• Cool the cake in the pan for 10 min­utes
• While wait­ing, com­bine the Fruit Juice (2 Tbsp) and Sug­ar (2 Tbsp)
• Microwave for 45 sec­onds
• Turn the cake onto a cool­ing rack
• Brush the Fruit Juice com­bi­na­tion all over the warm bread
• Let cool com­plete­ly, even overnight

ENJOY

Pictures

Notes

• Attempt 12/14/2024: Used WAY too much fruit and liq­uid (about 2 cups total). Tried to add anoth­er two-third cups of flour to com­pen­sate, but the cake did­n’t bake well, being too wet, and even after half-hour increase, end­ed up very wet and not ful­ly done. Cake cracked, and while it most­ly held togeth­er, eas­i­ly fell apart. The trick is wait­ing overnight for it to hold togeth­er. Then it’ll feel like your typ­i­cal door stop­per. In the end, the Orange Juice brush on at the end left a real­ly unde­sir­able per­fume taste all around the exte­ri­or of the cake. The inside was good, but the out­side fra­grance left an off-putting aro­ma that ulti­mate­ly destroyed the cake. Would rec­om­mend NOT orange juice but a fruit juice wash, like cher­ry. The exces­sive fruit did not end up tak­ing away from the cake. In fact, that’s how I like fruit­cake: full of fruit. Next time, I would cut down a bit, how­ev­er.