Mango and Cranberry Fruitcake: an Australian Christmas cake

I know that fruit cakes divides people. There are some that find it possibly the vilest cake on earth and others that adore it, soaking their fruit for months and polishing off pennies to put in the cake. I always think of grandmothers as the keepers of the fruit cake. They're the ones I usually see making them although I can't say that either of my grandmothers ever did so, one notoriously preferring to socialise than cook.
So please do allow me to throw another variation into the mix. Something a little more Australian that your traditional English fruit cake. For our Christmases, we have a bounty of fresh fruit and one of the best fruits in season is the Mango. A tray of these juicy, sweet mangoes can be yours for $20 which is one of the best things about Christmas (my husband going so far as to request a tray of these last Christmas).






If I could urge any fruit cake lover to do anything, it's to make this cake. You will be duly rewarded in your endeavor with an incredibly moist, dark, rich cake that is unusually light too. The darkness comes courtesy of the muscovado sugar and the lightness comes from the method including the bicarb and the rest of it. My husband, a fruit cake enthusiast (read=maniac) claims this is the best fruit cake he has ever eaten.















Viola! All the meat removed from the pip and no stringy mango between your teeth
I used an Oxo Good Grips Mango peeler to help remove the pip from the meat and found that it worked a treat in removing almost every bit of the meat from the pip. Macadamias are also an Australian ingredient and whilst I know that cranberries aren't exactly Australian but they are certainly festive looking. I also found that the Analon Suregrip Square Springform Cake tin was a much easier way of easing out the cake. As it's somewhere in between a heavy fruit cake and a regular cake, I didn't want to risk it using a non springform cake tin.






This won't be one of those cakes that you sit in the living room until Christmas. Like most things around Christmas, making a fruitcake falls to the wayside while you are battling Christmas queues in a last dash attempt to avoid buying Christmas presents from a petrol station. You can make it a week or a few days ahead and it will be good as it's so moist, but you will need to keep it in an airtight container in the fridge.












Mango and cranberry fruitcake
• 500g mixed dried fruit (premium mix)
• 150g dried cranberries
• 100ml rum
• 1 large fresh mango (400-430g)
• 100g chopped macadamias
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 large eggs
• 150g muscovado sugar or dark brown sugar if not available (or 200g if you like your fruit cake quite sweet)
• 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of bi carb of soda


1. Soak the dried fruit and cranberries with the rum overnight or for as long as you have patience for.
2. Prepare an Analon Suregrips Square Springform 22x22cms baking tin with greaseproof paper. Using a Mango peeler, remove all of the flesh from the mango and chop it up into smallish pieces.


3. Preheat oven to 160c. In a large saucepan, place dried fruit, cranberries, mango, rum liquid and water and bring to the boil and simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes. Cool.
4. Add sifted flour, bicarb and crumbled muscovado sugar.


5. Lightly beat 2 eggs and add them to the mix. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. I decorated these simply with blanched almonds although you could continue the theme with some bought honey roasted whole macadamias. To blanche almonds, pour boiling water over almonds and rest for 5 minutes. Then slip the skins off by rubbing them with your fingers. You can also bake them briefly in a low oven to dry them out.