Healthy Paleo Christmas Cake
There is nothing more satisfying than baking your own cakes, puddings and biscuits for Christmas. Around this time of year I’m in my kitchen a little bit more than usual baking cakes and cookies and packaging them up as presents for friends and family. This is an extremely delicious and simple Christmas cake to make. It’s a part of my great Aunty’s recipe file along with other yummy healthy treats.
This is a dense and moist fruit cake with a high ratio of fruit, which means I don’t need to use any extra sugar in the recipe. I’m also using ground almond meal which replaces traditional white refined flours that make up most store bought cakes. The almond meal is also gluten free and adds moisture so I just need to add a small amount of heart healthy olive oil. I love the combination of vanilla, orange and cinnamon in recipes and my Christmas cake is the perfect recipe to marry the flavours together. Serve in small portions after Christmas lunch or dinner or warm it up and serve as a pudding with vanilla bean custard or thick natural yoghurt and orange blossom honey.
Serves 20 small portions
600 g mixed dried Fruit or a mix of the following (raisins, prunes, figs, apricot, currants, sultanas, dates)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract or paste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
zest and juice from 1 orange
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 eggs
200 g (2 cups) ground almonds
50 g walnuts
Preheat your oven to 150 C (fan forced)
Prepare a 20 cm round cake tin with baking paper lining the sides and the base.
Combine dried fruit, spice, vanilla, orange zest + juice, olive oil and eggs.
Add the almonds and walnuts and mix through.
Spoon Christmas Cake batter into your baking tin.
Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Check with a skewer to see if it comes out clean, if not bake for another 30 minutes.
Cover the top if necessary to prevent over-browning.
Cool, then remove from the tin and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month.
NOTE:
If you wish to soak your Christmas cake in orange liqueur, as soon as you remove the cake from the oven, skewer holes through the cake and drizzle over 1/4 cup orange liqueur so it can penetrate through the holes and infuse into the cake.
This cake can also be served as a pudding served with vanilla bean custard or thick natural yoghurt.
For nut allergies replace the almond meal for 1 CUP wholemeal or spelt flour and omit the walnuts. Add one more tablespoon olive oil.
Nutrition per slice:
Protein: 4.4 g
Total fat: 9.8 g
Saturated: 1 g
Carbs: 18 g
Fiber: 3.3 g
kilojoules: 740
Calories: 177
Perfect! i was just about to ask you for some christmas recipes when i saw you had added this! christmas lunch is always very meat focused in my family so as a vegetarian theres normally not too many options apart from salad! if you had any more lunchy recipes or suggestions from your book, id love to hear them.
so many thanks
kate.
p.s its so hard to decide which smoothie recipe to submit for your competition! i don’t think its possible to make a bad one – every combo tastes so good!
Hi,I this Christmas cake looks so yummy but I’m allergic to oranges,is there any alternative?
don’t use oranges Jenna if you can’t eat them and replace with same quantity of apple juice.
This sounds beautiful!! My daughter has a nut allergy, could I use flour instead of almonds??
Have a read of the notes at the bottom of the recipe for nut allergies Linda. The answer is yes you can but reduce flour to 1 cup.
Teresa thank you for, once again, providing a healthy, yummy gluten free option. This looks and sound wonderful.
Yummy yum! One question: Could I replace olive oil with coconut oil? Thought it might add to the flavour but don’t want to risk wasting all the delicious ingredients if I am wrong! Thank you for your delightful recipes – I have tried and enjoyed many!
Use olive oil Nicky. Lovely with the orange and vanilla + it’s full of wonderful anti-inflamatory fatty acids associated with a lower risk of heart disease.
Happy Holidays ! x
I used coconut oil and it works just as well!! Yummo what a great recipe
Hi Teresa,
How long will this cake keep for? normally i use brandy and let the cake sit in the fridge for a couple of weeks but if this recipe only uses orange juice will it last for only a week or so?
cheers,
max
The great thing about this cake Max is that it’s so moist and moorish that you don’t have to wait ages for it to mature. You can make it the day before consuming and it will be lovely, rich and moist. The cake will keep for a few weeks in the fridge wrapped up in an airtight container, Personally I don’t use any brandy or alcohol in my cakes as it detracts from the gorgeous vanilla bean and orange flavours the cake imparts on it’s own. Totally up to you though.
I love your recipes! If I use my own mix of fruits do we need to chop it up or do we leave the prunes, dates etc whole? I imagine it would be nice whole, but thought that might effect the way it holds together.
Megan, if you’re using larger fruits like prunes, dates and apricots, I would cut them in half – the cake will be lovelier to slice.
This looks amazing – I actually can’t stand traditional Christmas cake, but this looks right up my alley. I took my parents out to lunch at Avalon – we all LOVED it, best meal we had on our holiday by far
My in-Laws live up the hill, so I will be a regular at the cafe when we visit them for sure. Quinoa salad and power balls were my favourites!
Thanks for a wonderful recipe. Just finished baking this cake and can’ t wait to have a little bit. I did soak the fruits in brandy and I omitted the cinnamon as hubby doesn’t like the taste. I used 1 tsp of mixed spice and also added in 1/2 tsp of nutmeg powder. I only used the mixed dried fruits and not sure whether it will be sweet enough so I add in 50g of coconut sugar (to also give it a darker colour). Lovely cake and is gluten free!!!!
Hi Teresa baked xmas cake on the weekend oh my god its to die for have to hide it from my hubby used prunes,raisins,sultanas,fresh dates,and apricots soooooo tasty thank you for all your scrummy recipes cheers Meg from WA.
Hi Teresa,
Can’t wait to make this! Looks amazing! Do you have a recipe for healthy fruit mince pies?
Sarah
Hi Teresa,
I am intrigued by this cake and have bought all the ingreds including orange liquor to make asap. Can you soak the ingreds in the liquor before baking or is it better to do after cake is baked?ary
thanks
Mary
Mary, when I baked the cake this time around, I did not soak any fruit and ended up no using any orange liqueur – the whole cake was finished by my husband in a matter of 2 days !!! however, you can soak fruit before if you wish overnight or drizzle in the liqueur after the cake is cooked – it will be fabulous either way. !:)
I have at last made the cake – and cut a piece out from the cake tin whilst cooling – it is the best fruit cake I have ever tasted! My cooking time was less than suggested but all ovens vary don’t they? I drizzled half cake in orange liqueor and left the other half untouched – to see the difference in taste.
Just pulled out of oven .. Looks amazing . House smells amazing . Can’t wait to share it at tonight’s dinner party
Teresa, thank you for the lovely christmas cake recipe, i was never a fan of the traditional christmas cake and as I have friends who can only eat gluten free, this cake was perfect. First time I have ever bothered to make a christmas cake and I am so glad I did. The cake was also a hit down at the retirement village where my mother lives. Thank you
I have cooked this a couple of times now, each time with a different mix of fruit and nuts. We love it. It makes it easy to have something healthy available when you are time poor. It is so filling that I sometimes have a piece for lunch when I’m having a busy day and it gets me through to dinner. Last time I made a pretty pattern on top out of nuts.
This has become my favourite site for healthy recipes. Thank you.
hi Teresa, Merry xmas!
just wanted to thank you for this recipe. i made this cake on saturday and the whole house smelt delish! the cake was an absolute hit! and its been great to have a gluten free alternative. i patterned the top with blanched almonds and a cherry in the middle. love this cake and it makes you realise how superfluous to taste the use of butter, sugars, brandy etc can be – this cake also turned out much more moist and less dry and crumbly than more ‘traditional’ recipes. it was also much less sweet than other recipes too which i enjoyed as usually i find fruit cake, mince tarts and pudding can get quite sweet. thankyou for all your recipes that you post – they never disappoint and keep myself and my family engaged and connected with our health, body and wellbeing.
all the best to you and your family for the new year,
Kit.
Thank you for what was and still is the most delicious fruit cake and gluten free, a bonus for those of the family that are gluten intolerant
Hi there. I was frantic. Found this recipe in the newspaper, made it, we all loooooved it. Lost recipe and came on net. Here it is. Thank U sooooooooo much, U R a lifesaver. Tis now 2012, but, cake is needed. It is now the fruit cake we have to have. Thanks. Suzanne. PS. Will certainlly look up your recipes from now on Thanks heaps
What a great recipe – thank you!
I used orange flower water instead of the liquer, it worked well…