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Family Fruitcake

Thanks Geethu Akka and Mom. This is a family recipe from my maternal grandparents who lived in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India . I miss them and Lalli Akka.

Ingredients

4 Eggs
2.75 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 pound butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves (optional)
0.25 teaspoon ground cinnamon (if you want it)
1 teaspoon baking soda (or powder if you don't want your cake to explode when mixed with lemon juice)
0.5 cups dried currants
0.2500001 cups orange peel
0.2500002 cups dried plums
1 tablespoon almonds (optional)

Preparation

Blend the sugar and butter using a blender or a kitchen machine . Separately, add one teaspoon of baking powder to the flour and mix well. Then it is time to add the eggs and flour to the evolving batter. For each egg, first add the egg (without the shell) and while it is blending, add one fifth (1/5) of the two cups of flour to the mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time. Keep this up. Until, of course, you have no more eggs and flour.

Now, in sequence, while mixing, add the vanilla essence, the ground nutmeg and cloves, and then the dried fruit and nuts. Mix into the cake batter well. As an aside, if you have made it this far, I hope you have cut all the fruit and nuts into really small pieces. Otherwise, remove them from the cake batter and cut them up - if you can.

Coax the cake batter into a cake baking pan and shove it into the oven at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, maybe even an hour. I keep burning this cake so I would check on the cake often, after 30 minutes.