Light fruit cakes made even more delicious with a wee dram of Scottish whisky and fresh orange juice. This recipe for miniature versions of Dundee cakes have a wonderful texture and are a complete delight. Make a batch to give away as Christmas gifts. Your neighbours, friends and family will be delighted.
This post is in the process of being updated, so I apologise if it doesn’t read as smoothly as you’re expecting.
Getting a Christmas hamper of goodies together has been my task this month. Among the components I wanted to include were some miniature Christmas cakes.
On browsing the wonderful blog Lavender and Lovage one day, I was inspired by Karen’s recipe for Wee Whisky Doused Hogmanay Dundee Cakes. Well mine are even weeer. I used a different method and some different ingredients – like chocolate 😉
When it comes to soaking dried fruit, our storage heater really comes into its own. I can place a large bowl directly on the top and the heat really helps the fruit to soak up all that delicious orange and whisky in a relatively short time. For this recipe, I only needed to soak the fruit for a couple of hours.
However, if you don’t have something similar and don’t want to turn the oven on, you can soak the fruit overnight instead.
I added a couple of teaspoons of orange syrup which I had leftover from making candied peel, but this isn’t at all necessary.
I was expecting good things from these miniature Dundee cakes and I wasn’t disappointed. These little cakes are nothing like a traditional Christmas cake, but they are festive. They’re only lightly studded with fruit, so that even CT finds them delicious. They’re beautifully moist from the orange juice, whisky and ground almonds and they taste phenomenal.
I’ve bought some nice Christmassy ribbon to border the edges when the time comes for presenting them. See if you can guess which one it will be?
Well I won’t leave you guessing for long. Here are some of the finished miniature Dundee cakes all wrapped up and ready to roll.
Miniature Dundee Cakes – The Recipe
Light fruit cakes made even more delicious with a wee dram of Scottish whisky and fresh orange juice. These miniature versions of Dundee cakes have a wonderful texture and are a complete delight. Make a batch to give away as Christmas gifts. Your friends and family will be delighted.
- Place 300g of mixed fruit into a bowl – mostly vine, but a few chopped dates, pineapple, papaya and cranberries.
- Add grated zest and juice of 1 very juicy orange.
- Stir in 50ml of Scotch Whisky.
- Cover and place in a low oven for a couple of hours or just leave it out at room temperature overnight.
- Cream 100g unsalted butter with 100g light brown raw cane sugar.
- Beat in 2 small eggs.
- Sieve in 150g self-raising flour, 50g wholemeal spelt, ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda.
- Stir in 25g ground almonds.
- Add 50g chopped 70% G&B dark chocolate and the fruit mixture.
- Mix well and spoon into two buttered six hole muffin moulds.
- Lightly press 6 whole blanched almonds onto the tops of each one.
- Bake for 35 minutes in a preheated oven at 150℃ (130℃ fan, 300℉, Gas 2).
- Leave to cool for half an hour then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- Wrap them in greaseproof paper and pack them away in a tin or other airtight container.
Choclette says
Johanna – annoyingly, I haven’t tried one of these, but I’ve had very good feedback.
Johanna GGG says
these sound great – having just tried chopped chocolate in fruit cake – I am sold on the ideas and love the look of these little individual ones
Choclette says
Dom – three per person per hour perhaps?
Katie – thank you. Like the idea of baked bean tins, except lining them must be a bit fiddly. Agree, mini things are very cute.
Jude – I’m impressed with all these blue peter baking tins. Trouble with using muffin moulds is that the sides weren’t straight so it was difficult getting the ribbon around.
JW – he he 😉
Kate – thank you. Three recipients got hampers of Choc Log Blog goodies on Friday – I was quite envious!
CaySera – thank you for your kind comments and for following.
Baking Addict – hang on to those ribbons for next year’s hampers and make sure you put some of your hot choc pops in there 😉
Janice – what an ignoramous am I? Sorry about that, I changed it as soon as you pointed it out.
Laura – thank you. The snowflake ribbon looked really good when wrapped around the cakes.
Jill – thank you. I’m sure I will and hope the same is true for you.
Karen – three of my hamper gifts were inspired by your blog posts. You have such lovely ideas.
Little Loaf – thank you. Am not so much restrained as still haven’t worked out who I’m giving what to!
Solange – thank you. Mini sized are especially fun.
Solange says
Oh lovely, give me anything minature these days and I will love it:)
thelittleloaf says
You are so restrained – I can’t believe you haven’t tried them yet! I’d be very happy to receive one of these as a gift – they’re gorgeous.
Karen S Booth says
OH wonderful! My mum, whose recipe the original one was, will be chuffed to wee whisky doused cakes! LOVELY cakes Choclette and I am so pleased that my post gave you inspiration….I love them! They will make great gifts.
Karen
XX
Jill @ MadAboutMacarons says
Love these so much as wee versions and gift wrapped is just the perfect Christmas treat. Beauties! Have a wonderful Christmas time.
laura_howtocook says
I would be over the moon to get hamper full of your delicious treats and these little cakes are quite something. I did like the snowflake ribbon too 🙂 x
Janice says
Wow these look delicious and with chocolate! Just one thing…I’m going to be a wee bit pedantic but ‘whiskey’ is Irish and ‘whisky’ is how we Scots spell the water of life. Okay will stop now and imagine the smell of your gorgeous cakies.
Baking Addict says
These look amazing. I love the idea of a homemade hamper. Think I’ll make that next year as have run out of time this year. I have the same white ribbon with the sparkly snowflakes!! I’ve got the red, gold and green one too! I seem to have a whole boxful of ribbons 🙂
CaySera says
first time here……that looks yummy ….thanks for sharing. very interesting blog.
Kate@whatkatebaked says
Such a lovely, lovely gift to receive…especially in a gorgeous hamper full of Chocolate Log Blog goodies!!
JavelinWarrior says
I love wee things and these wee cakes look fantastic. The blanched almonds are seem to have a hypnotic effect on my stomach 😉
A Trifle Rushed says
Lovely, I made mini ones as well, like Katie in baked bin tins. Don’t they make wonderful presents.
Katie says
These look adorable and perfect for going into a hamper. I love how chocolate even finds its way into your Christmas cakes 🙂
I’ve made mini ones in the past in baked bean cans, mini things are always so cute
Dom at Belleau Kitchen says
They are so adorable. I love how small they are. So thats what three per person?