Chocolate Fruit Cake With Alternative Fruits

Asked by alcontreras. Answered on 10th November 2014

Full question

I'm not fond of the traditional Xmas fruit cake and my prayers were answered when I found this chocolate alternative. However raisins, prunes, sultanas make my son ill, he just can't bear the sight of them the poor thing. Is it ok to substitue them for other dried fruits eg. mango, pineapple, apricot etc? Thanks.

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Fruit Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) is often popular with those who do not like standard rich fruit cakes and it is also a good last minute cake as it is very moist so doesn't really need the maturing and "feeding" time of a traditional cake. It is made with quite dark dried fruits and unfortunately it would be difficult to substitute different dried fruits in this recipe as they absorb different quantities of liquid.

However we would recommend that you look at Nigella's Gorgeously Golden Fruit Cake (from Christmas and also on the Nigella website), which Nigella describes as "the fruity blonde sister" to the Chocolate Fruit Cake. This cake is made with dried pears and apricots. It does contain golden sultanas (these are blonder than the regular supermarket sultanas and sometimes known as golden raisins) which we hope may be acceptable for your son. If not then you could try using dried mango chopped into pieces, though we haven't tried this ourselves so cannot guarantee the results.