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Vegan Gluten free Christmas Cake Fruit Cake full of nuts, dried fruits, dates, seeds, candied ginger. Soft, Flavorful and great for gifting. Vegan Soyfree Recipe.
I am not sure why fruit cakes have a bad rap. They used to be a treat we would wait for around Christmas. Soft, Sweet, full of fun stuff for us kids I guess. Maybe we just lucked out with a fabulous bakery. 🙂
I make versions of my Spelt spiced fruit cake if not baking a load of cookies every year. This version is adapted from spelt flour version. I use almond flour and rice flour to keep it gluten-free. The cake keeps well refrigerated for a few weeks if you use liquor or a week with orange juice. Serve as is or with a bourbon/rum glaze! Add nuts or seeds that you like, some dates, apricots, cherries. I also added some roasted sunflower seeds and chia seeds, so the cake is also great to snack on.
More gluten-free baking from the blog
- Gluten-free Cinnamon Roll Bread yeast-free.
- Sweet Potato Crumb Cake.
- Gluten-free Brownies
- Sweet Potato Blondies.
- Gluten-free Lemon Donuts
- And many more here
If you make this cake or any of the above gf bakes, let me know how they turned out! Send me pictures, Tag me on social media.
Soak the nuts, seeds, dried and candied fruit in orange juice or juice + liquor.
Whisk all the dry ingredients, them combine with the wet.
Vegan Gluten free Christmas Cake - Fruit Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup orange juice or a combination with liquor, (upto half cup of rum, brandy, whiskey or a mix)
- 1.25 to 1.5 cups dried fruits and nuts, (I use pecans, cashews, walnuts, roasted sunflower seeds, candied ginger, currants, chopped dates, candied orange peel, cherries/apricots etc)
- 1 tbsp chia seeds, (not optional as they help thicken the leftover orange juice. You an use 1.5 tbsp flax seed meal as a sub)
- 1/4 to 1/3 cup light brown sugar
- 2 tbsp oil, (I use organic safflower)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup white rice flour
- 3/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup potato starch
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp citric acid, , optional **
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Instructions
- Add juice, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and chia seeds to a bowl and mix. Let sit refrigerated for a few hours to overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Line a loaf pan with parchment or grease it.
- Take the juice bowl out from the fridge. Add sugar, oil and vanilla to the bowl and mix in until sugar is combined. In another bowl, add the dry ingredients and whisk. (You can omit the citric acid from the dry. I like the air it adds to gluten-free baked goods. See my glutenfree cinnamon roll bread post for details about the use of citric acid)
- Combine the dry and wet and mix to make a batter. Drop in parchment lined pan.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes. Check with a toothpick from the center of the cake. it should come out almost clean. Bake longer if needed.
- Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan. Cool completely before slicing (cool lightly covered by a towel). Store on the counter covered for upto 2 days, refrigerate for upto 10, freeze for upto 2 months. If using liquor, you can store the cake on the counter and refrigerator for longer.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Does rice flour make it gritty?
Can I sub oat or sorghum flour instead?
Does oat make it sticky or slimy?
Use oat
Any substitute to potato starch?
Any starch will Work
Can u use regular all purpose flour?
Use my regular flour Christmas cake recipe https://fettabbau-trim.today/spiced-fruit-and-nut-christmas-cake/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Direct subs between Glutenfree and regular flours don’t work most of the time, so usually have separate recipes
On the fruit cake above can you use the Bob’s red mill 1 to 1 baking flour instead of rice and almond? Does the rice and almond flour make it have that gritty sandy texture or taste that some of these flours have? Can you use oatmeal flour with xanthan gum? How much xanthan gum if so on the oatmeal flour? Thank you. Making these tomorrow ..soaking fruit today.
Hello ,
Is it blanched almond flour that is being used here or just grounded almonnds ?
Also what is the best sub for tapioca flour ?
Thanks
Yes ground peeled almonds
Made this for a friend and she loved it!
This fruit cake was awesome! I adjusted flour by using Bobs Red Mill GF 1 to 1 Baking Flour for the rice flour and potato starch because it’s basically the same thing and I still used almond flour per the recipe.
Another adjustment I did instead of citric acid, which was optional, I reduced the baking powder to 1 teaspoon and added 1 teaspoon of baking soda along with a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to the batter, to react with the soda and help it rise.
I did use coconut sugar instead of light brown sugar. All in all, I think these adjustments worked very well here. Thank you for a wonderful recipe. I’m really happy to have found this.
awesome
Thank you!
I have made this recipe 3 times substituting arrowroot flour for the potato starch (only because I can’t buy it). The last 2 times I have doubled the mixture because I am trying to perfect it for when it will be the Christmas cake. The last time I soaked the chia seeds separately in 1/2 cup of water overnight- I didn’t have orange juice otherwise I would have used that. The next day, the day of baking, I mixed them into the fruit mixture that had soaked in orange juice for a few hours then followed the recipe. The cake is light and fluffy for g.f – I can’t believe it. I think this is a really good recipe- the cake is moist as well – often g.f. cakes are dry especially the next day after baking.
Awesome!!! Yes gluten-free baking can easily dry out. the mix of flours, citric acid etc here help keep that mosture in
Thank you for your reply. So the citric acid is in the recipe for moisture content? I thought it was there for flavour.
Citric acid is for adding some air in the batter before baking. this allows for moisture to stay in the batter rather than evaporate which it does more quickly with gluten-free baking. It does add a slight citrusy flavor but thats complimentary to the overall flavors in the cake. The main reason though is for lightening up the batter before baking
So can citric acid be added to all gluten-free baking if it complimenting the flavour profile?
yes
Hey, just wondering what ingredients I remove if I want to use spelt flour instead of gluten free?
use my spelt flour version here https://fettabbau-trim.today/2012/12/spiced-fruit-and-nut-christmas-cake.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Thank you! I have now found the potato starch in the shop so I can follow the full GF recipe now 🙂