Your new favorite winter cake

Marinated dried fruit for 24 hours in vanilla rhum, orange juice and a sweet sour grated apple! A combination to crave for that will make your cold days warmer.

Ingredients :

• a handful of dried fruit (you choose your favorite - for e.g. I used : figs, cranberries, raisins and apricots)
• 50 ml rum
• 1.5 orange (we will use the zest, juice from 1 orange and from the half few slices to decorate)
• 1 sweet sour apple , grated
• 1 full cup of flour
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 50 gr of brown sugar (you can either skip it or add more, depends on your preference)
• winter spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger etc)
• 75 grams unsalted butter at room temperature

Method:

1. The most important is to marinate well the dried fruit (I recommend doing it the evening before you plan to bake). Add enough rum to cover half of them and continue stirring them to ensure that they all absorb de liquid.
2. Start preparing the cake mixture by mixing 50 gr of butter with the sugar. Then add the eggs once by one and mix them well, followed by the flour. Continue mixing until everything is well incorporated. Add the orange juice, orange zest, salt, baking powder, winter spices, marinated dried fruit (incl juice if any) and the grated apple and stir them all together with a spatula. Make sure that all the ingredients are well incorporated. The batter will be thick.
3. Prepare a baking tray with greasing it with the remaining 25 grams of butter and a bit of flour. Then pour the mixture evenly. Decorate the cake with few orange slices
4. Bake the cake for 45 minutes at 180 degrees.

You can store it, but I am sure it will be eaten soon as it was in our case :)