Holiday Fruit N Nut Cake - Tis the Season!

The holidays are my favorite time of the year. Even though the days are shorter, I am eagerly waiting for the dark evenings so I can see the beautifully decorated lights everywhere. From Santa Claus, reindeer, snowflakes,  icicles to multi-colored string lights, you get to see lights of every kind. This time of the year also brings fond memories of childhood. Cakes were a must during Christmas and New Year. Since, initially I did not grow up in the city, it was a ritual to bake cakes at home and it used to be a daylong affair. A look at my mom's kitchen and state of mind, you could tell something was baking that day :) But once the aroma of the freshly baked cake filled the house, all stress would go away and we would indulge in the goodies for the next few days to come.

On moving to the city, cakes were readily available at the various bakeries.  To this day, the smell of a freshly baked cake brings a certain nostalgia to my mind. Every year around this time, I want to follow the same tradition at home. And while there is an abundant of good bakeries in the country where I reside, there is a different kind of fun in baking at home. In addition, these become great family/couple projects (hint, hint) :-)

Ingredients:

Pillsbury classic white cake mix - approx. 2/3 packet (approx. 280-300g)
Eggs - 3 (4 if using only egg whites)
Butter(molten)/white oil) - 3 tbsp
Dates pitted & chopped: 15
Dried cranberry: 1/2 cup
Walnuts (cut into small bits): 1/3 cup


The first step was to preheat the oven to 350F. In a blender, I added all the ingredients and mixed all them under the 'whip/puree' setting. If the batter is too thick to be removed from the blender, some water/milk can be added. Note that the batter should not be runny at all. I used a 9" round non-stick baking pan and placed a sheet of non-stick parchment paper on top. Then, I poured the cake mixture from the the blender onto the parchment sheet. This was baked for roughly 45-50 minutes, checking twice in between by poking the cake with a thin skewer to see if the middle portion of the cake was cooked. If the skewer comes out clean (without any batter sticking to it), it is ready to be taken out of the oven and cooled to room temperature. The next morning, coffee tasted blissful with this accompaniment.