Rich Fruit Cake - An Attempt

I finally got courage to post this,  I was so fascinated by the various cakes , cookies and other baked products in different blogs and was pushed to the baking world. But baking never seems to be an easy/ comfortable area for me. May be one day i will also grow :) I loved cakes , cakes of all varieties ..i can still feel the fragrance of Elite cakes we used to buy from local bakeries in our childhood. As a true keralite we also celebrated Onam,Christmas and Muslim perunnals. For all christmas i eagerly waited for the icing cakes and the iced sugary flowers on top of it. It was a routine, on christmas morning pappa used to cut that small cake and share among us. The top flower was also cut into 5 and each got our own share..Though pappa is diabetic, i think still they cut the same style cake on all christmas .. aa again nostalgia..even i get bored of telling these nostalgia but to be true all food has its own associated feelings in our mind , right ? Anyways i was so fond of cakes at that time and i used to dream of marrying a bakeryman so that i can eat cakes everyday ..hihihi ...

Ovens were not so common in middle class families , so i never dreamt of buying an oven and make cakes our own..I start seeing ovens only after coming to Kuwait and here too ovens were only to heat food in winter times..When i wandered through the blogs i  got stunned seeing the various art works in cakes.. OMG how can one cut a cake like this  or this .. If i ever ever get a chance to make a cake like these, i will never cut it , will keep it in showcase :D , I am still wondering how they could make such such brilliant cakes..I think never in my life i achieve that stage.. Anyways we can make simple cakes right, yes and i tried ..the initial attempt was not a disaster , Thanks to my sweet little 3 yr , she ate it all wholeheartedly, she  is mother's daughter , no.:) Hubby dear also was encouraging, considering the fact that it's a first attempt.. That gave me some confidence and again my oven started rotating with cakes but didnt came out well. :(  Dont know what happened and where it happens , still the attempt continues... Hubby is now fed up with the attempts and he pushes me away from the Baking section in lulu :(

I told my Big sis  about the cake adventures and forced her to buy a gas oven..Again the pressure continued on her giving all theoretical knowledges from various blogs, She was asking me all silly doubts and the good 'Guru' searched frantically and found all tips for making double layer cakes, icing , apricot glazing and what not.. At last, she came up with a wonderful cake for her wedding anniversary..And it looked fabulous!! She is more creative than me and also a good artist, she made the cake so good that we all thought she was lying.. It looked brilliant. As Madhavan says in 3 Idiots, when a friend fails, we feel sad.. and when a friend score top than us, we feel more sad !! Here Guru is in the same stage now :(  At least Guru can find peace in watching how good her advices turned out right ..:)  yeah ..grapes are very sour...;)  Now after a research i reached a conclusion..the Gas Ovens are far better than this table top ovens..may be thats the reason why i am not succeeding in my cake/cookie adventures.

I made this cake  for Christmas..Followed so many blogger recipes basically Annitta's, caramelizing and all worked well and my cake got good color. I used a bunch of dry fruits (but didn't soak in rum and all) and after baking i found all dry fruits went down , so i turned upside down and clicked.. I kept it nearly 50 minutes and did the toothpick test , but toothpick came out a bit soaky so i put another 15 minutes..May be that made my cake a bit harder.. (Sigh) As the taste was not so appealing , i dont feel an excitement in publishing here..still this is an attempt, right .... One day i will also grow (Sigh Sigh) .........