Santa is on his way - Rum fruit cake

All set and ready? enjoying the bling bling and the redness?. Oh I'm loving it. City has completely turned white and with minimum day light (no complaints) it is glowing with numerous lights and huge decorated Christmas trees. It's fantastic to see many merry people around, shopping, exchanging gifts, excited about their vacation, pretty much the list goes endless. Am sure it's the same with you guys too! I already received three Christmas gifts :)), so during the weekend was wrapping mine, all to be give this week, excited! I love exchanging gifts and may be I sound like school kid, but I'm very impatient until the gift boxes are opened ;p

What have you all been baking as Christmas home made gifts?...I made rum  fruit cake, one of my fav cakes, have made it already 6 times still feels fresh whenever I bake them. Have made them as individual muffins, easy and fancy to pack as gifts....This cake has longer life time (well packed and stored-one month). The taste and flavor enhances as it ages, personally I prefer to have them after couple of days. As always I can't resist warm cakes out of the oven but have noticed the difference as the days goes by.

Ah is anyone missing in the pictures below? Yes Santa!...He is all set and ready, reindeer is waiting for him... very soon he will visit ur house with loads of gifts and happiness. Stay tuned :) 

Ingredients

For caramel:
175 gram sugar
110 ml water

For cake
275 gram  all propose flour
140 gram butter
140 gram sugar
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp baking powder (I usually use 2 1/2 tspn during winters)
1/4 tsp nutmeg powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon powder(You can change the spice powder amounts according to ur preference as well)
1/4 tsp clove powder
1/4 tsp cardamom powder
200 ml caramel
15 ml dark rum (I used Bacardi)
15 ml of red wine
300 gram mixed nuts+dry fruits+raisins+tutti fruity (according to ur taste, you can add more also)
2 tbsp flour

Method

Caramel

Heat wide heavy bottom pan (maintain at medium heat), gently spread the sugar in the pan evenly. Slowly the sugar will start to melt after couple of minutes. Don't even dare to touch or stir the sugar, they will recrystallize. Just leave them to be on their own. When sugar is completely melted, they usually have beautiful amber color, now you can either use it right away or heat them for couple of more minutes till turn light brown (I prefer them with a tad bit of brown as it gives amazing color to the cake and the sweetness gets reduced very mildly). Take the pan out of heat, take them near your kitchen basin, keep it far away from you, pour in 100ml of water. Warning: expect a small chemical reaction, melted sugar is at very high temperature and with water they will almost try to explode, keep children away during this process, don't panic it isn't that dangerous.
After reaction cools down (within couple of seconds) now slowly stir in water until thick caramel blends well with water, let them rest for a while until it reaches room temperature. If some of thick caramel settles down, don't worry.

Cake
Separate yolk and egg white
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (7 to 10) minutes. Now add egg yolk one by one and beat for about one minutes between each addition until they are smooth. Next add vanilla essence and mix well.
White egg whites until single peaks are formed.
Prepare the dry mixture. Combine flour, baking powder and sieve. Mix all the spice powder and combine well. Gradually, gently fold in the dry mixture and egg white alternatively to the cake batter (in 3 to 4 batches) until well combined. Now pour the gorgeous thick caramel, rum and wine. Again very gently fold in the bake batter.
Next, add two tbsp of flour to the nuts and toss them well with hands (every piece of nuts should be uniformly coated with flour, this process will prevent the nuts from sinking). Now add the nuts to the cake batter and combine them very gently.

Butter the cake pan and dust it with flour. Pour batter to 20-23 cm prepared cake pan. Bake in preheated oven at 170 degree C for about 50-70 minutes. After 50 minutes check every 10 minutes with tooth-pick until the cake is baked. It's very dense cake, takes very long time to bake. Don't open the oven before 45 minutes, the nuts in the cake will sink.

If you are planning to make muffins like me, pour in the batter to muffin mold/tins till it is half filled and bake in preheated oven at 170 degree C for about 25 to 30 minutes.

NOTE baking timing may vary slightly according to the oven you are using, so kindly keep a check after three quarter of specified timings.

Cool the cake on the rack till it reaches room temperature and dust caster sugar if needed.