Hardstyle fruitcake?!!??!??!!??!!?
Might've invented "hardstyle fruitcake" and while that sounds like a contradiction in terms you'll soon understand... This fruitcake makes minimal use of kitchen contraptions. Instead it requires you to rely on the strength and tenacity of your hands, a heavy chef knife, a fork, and a wire whisk. Were you to get lost in the wilderness but had some of these little fruitcakes, you'd probably be ok for a while. This might be one of the most macho fruitcake recipes you've ever seen. I really should have smashed some of the ingredients with a rock instead of cutting them.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup almond meal I like the Bob's Red Mill kind for this
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 2 egg protein 2 scoops of True Protein's Egg Protein - plain
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp baking powder Aluminum free tastes better and is better for you anyway
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder more for color than anything, but its always good
- 1/4 cup honey local if you have it
- 1/2 cup coconut oil melted
- 2 eggs pastured if possible
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut shredded (optional)
- 1 1/2 cup dried fruit chopped (or 2 cups - I tend to go crazy.)
- 1 1/2 cup nuts raw and chopped (make sure there's some pecans in there)
- 12 pecan halves for decoration if you wish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 Degrees Fahrenheit - or if you have an "angry vintage oven" like I do, you may need to adjust accordingly.
- Ok. I sure hope you're not expecting some kinda cupcake recipe with pink sprinkles because this is the exact opposite - serve this with some goat milk kefir and black coffee (in different containers, not mixed) and you'll have a complete meal. A meal to keep you going for a WHILE. Because the "dough" here as inspired by Nicole's recipe is essentially used to hold all the glorious trail mixy ingredients together.
- In a large bowl, combine the almond meal, coconut flour, cocoa powder, egg protein powder, salt and baking powder with a wire whisk. Wire whisk! No countertop! RAAARRR!!! Isn't this better than having to clean up not only a mixing bowl, but storing a mixer, and then having to clean more stuff - not to mention I don't have any spare counter space. Obviously as you see I've set the mixing bowl in the sink! You do what you have to do!
- Egg protein powder - I like the kind from True Protein, it's very neutral flavored. You can choose to leave this out - just make sure to add a combination of almond meal and coconut flour to equal about 1/4 cup. It also doesn't matter if you use egg white protein or whole egg. A friend of mine bartered this giant 3lb canister of egg white protein and so I try to cook it into things as much as possible as I don't want it to go bad. I prefer other plain protein powders for shakes.
- This is my favorite salt - and not just because it says "primordial" on it - though that was a word that appealed to me. You marketers and your words... anyway. As you can see I have opted to use my hand and not a measuring spoon, having inherited my great-grandmother's knack for cooking by sight. Don't do this unless you have this skill. I'm very grateful for this knack because it means that at the end of any given cooking project I have less things to wash. The flip side of it is when I make recipes to share, I end up having to weigh things out after adding "just enough" so you'll see me create things with the bowl on the scale, zeroing it out after each ingredient "looks right." But enough of my secrets... back to the recipe!
- Hurrah for friends with farms and backyard chicken coops! These gorgeous eggs were from heritage hens, and collected by my pal's preteen son. Hence I washed them again, since they were said to be washed, but said to be washed by the aforementioned preteen son. And we all know what a boy's idea of "clean" can mean! ACK!
- Crack the eggs into another bowl, beat with your trusty fork, add in the coconut oil, the honey, vanilla extract. Mix thoroughly. You may find it easier to keep the coconut oil melted if you've let the eggs come up to room temperature before mixing them into the melted oil. Likewise don't heat the oil so much that it cooks the eggs. It's a balance - be careful with this step.
- Combine the two mixtures, don't be afraid, it'll all come out ok, I promise. Just get out your handy wire whisk and your fork. Do what needs to be done.
- OK FINE. Get out the fork. It makes a thick dough - that's normal.
- Prepare the fruit - I've chosen a selection of unsweetened (be sure to check for this or you'll make some sort of vomitous candy-filled horrible mess. Pictured below - dried bing cherries, dried pineapple, dried prunes, dried apricots. I minced them up pretty small.
- And "Because It's Christmas" I added in a roughly chopped 1/2 bar of Green & Black's 85% Cacao chocolate bar...
- I mean... look at this stuff.. it's going to be very hard not to eat it by the fistful, but I promise, its worth mixing into the dough
- OK add it to the bowl of dough, and politely begin with a fork, but here's the deal - you'll soon find it works best to get in there and just mash it into the mix with your hands. Work quickly though because you'll make the coconut oil all melty if you have warm hands.
- RARRR! Girya Girl CRUSH!! You're going to be tempted to eat this dough or to lick your fingers, don't forget there's raw egg in there - if that effects your decision. Just saying. If you overdo it with adding in dried fruit, nuts, chocolate etc like I do, there may be some bits that don't all stick into the dough. That's ok as we'll be piling it all into 12 muffin tins - and you can smash it into them at that point. The dough doesn't rise all that much, so you won't have to worry about it bubbling up and over or anything like that.
- By the way, don't worry about greasing the muffin tins, there's enough oil in the dough to do it for you. Technically these are baked, but what's really happening is that they're frying themselves.
- A good strategy is to divide the dough up between the tins, and then go back and add the extra - topping each off with a pecan half. Place in the oven for approx 12-15 minutes - check on them, if you bake them too hard they'll dry out, not enough and they'll be kinda... not right. You basically want to cook the egg and solidify the little cakes.
- They can be a little darker on the bottom if you wish. I like them about like this. Let them cool before storing in a sealed container on the countertop if you're going to eat them quickly, OR in the refrigerator if they may last more than a few days. These are DENSE and intense - both in terms of flavor and calories - so use accordingly - yum.
Notes
All of this started when Nicole Du Cane shared her fab beyond fab Paleo Cookies Recipe, which I tried and loved. (Un)fortunately or fortunately or I don't even know at this point, when I made her recipe I modified it a bit because I was out of some of the ingredients and was being stingy with others. Also I cut the sweet parts way back because apparently, I can get a sugar rush off of things like... oh I dunno.. BANANAS these days. And well I just had this local tupelo honey on hand, and while I love it, it's expensive. They came out more scone-like and I decided to expand on that until they were more somewhat fruitcake-like. You'll see in the recipe below that I do a lot of things in the interest of economy, and in the interest of me not having to clean extraneous kitchen gadgets. By the way these are gluten free, grain free, and Primal Blueprint compatible.