...the BEST Vegan Fruitcake Ever...

...many years ago...when I was teaching...the Japanese teacher brought in a fruitcake made of graham crackers and condensed milk and regular fruitcake candied fruit...

...I'm not a fan of the fruitcake fruit...bright green and red...but I wanted to try to make a vegan version of the fruitcake...

...so the first thing I did was open a couple of cans of fruit...one tropical...and one just regular mixed fruit...

...and I spread those out on the dehydrator...

...and dried them out...

...maybe a little too much...they were so crunchy and good though...I'm definitely going to do this again...just for snacks...

...set those aside...while I made some vegan sweetened condensed milk...

...I was using what I had on hand...and that was about 3/4 cup of soy milk...and I wanted a cup and a half...so I mixed it with some homemade almond milk...

...added some vanilla and 1/4 cup of sugar...in a big pot so it would evaporate faster...

...and stirred and cooked...and cooked and stirred until it had reduced by 2/3...and I was left with 1/2 cup of very sweet thick vegan milk...

...I ground up a sleeve of vegan graham crackers...in the food processor...

...and chopped up a cup of pecans...

...and then just dumped everything into the pot...

...gave it a good stir...it looks pretty crumbly now...but it will stick together when I pack it into the dish...

...I lightly oiled a loaf pan with some safflower oil...

...and dumped the mixture in...

...pressed it down...pretty well...

...to form a nice loaf of fruitcake...

...added a row of pecans as decoration...

...let it set up in the fridge for a couple of hours...and then sliced it...

...definitely the BEST fruitcake ever...

~Have a lovely day!