Boiled Pineapple & Carrot Fruitcake

A few weeks ago one of my sister-in-laws sent me a recipe for boiled pineapple and carrot fruitcake. It is very similar to the recipe for boiled fruit cake that I already use except it has grated carrot in it. I thought this sounded nice and would make the cake a bit healthier. I usually only use sultanas in my fruit cake as I’m not a fan of the dried peel in mixed fruit. However my sister-in-law mentioned that she was using extra cherries and dried apricots and omitting the carrot. I don’t know why I had never thought of adding other dried fruit before. It seems obvious now. Anyhow, I used some dried apples and dried apricots and loved it, especially the dried apricots. The recipe uses crushed pineapple in syrup but I only buy tinned fruit in juice. The cake was plenty sweet enough (syrup is sweeter than juice). Also, I changed the spice mix in the recipe from mixed spice and nutmeg to mixed spice and cinnamon as I love cinnamon.

Both my original recipe and the recipe from my sister-in-law advise the cooking time as 1 3/4 hours but my cakes have never taken this long to cook - this one took 1 1/4 hours. I don’t know if it is because I am impatient and don’t let it cool enough - I did let this one cool for about 45 minutes, or another reason. It’s not my oven as I have a new oven since the last time I made a boiled fruit cake. Anyway that is why I have put such a variation in the cooking time in the recipe below.

I am starting to turn my husband into a sweet tooth. He has never been a big cake eater but lately he has been eating some of every cake I make, including this one, which he says is a winner!

The recipe shown below is with my modifications.