1. Grind the spices to a fine powder.
2. Take 1 cup of Orange juice, you might require another 1/4 cup extra for soaking the fruits.
3. In a glass container with lid, take all the fruits mentioned above except the almonds , cashew and wall nuts. Take all the chopped dried fruits and add the orange juice to it. Mix well, cover it with a lid and refrigerate until you make your cake or atleast a minimum of 3 days and maximum till you want to make it.
4. On the day of making the cake, remove this soaking fruits and keep it on the counter an hour ahead of baking.
5. Preheat the oven to 170C and prepare cake pans, line it with parchement paper or grease it with oil and dust it with flour. I used 2 Of 7 inch pans and got 2 medium sized cakes.
6. In a large bowl, sift together, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, add the spice powder and brown sugar to this and mix well to a uniform mix.
7. In another bowl, take oil, buttermilk and Sprig vanilla extract, and add in all the soaked fruits with its juice, add 1/4 cup of water to the container, mix and pour that water too in to this wet ingredients. Mix well.
8. Now, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and using a spatuala mix to form a smooth batter.Also add the chopped nuts which we had not soaked as that tastes well with a little crunch.
9. Divide the batter amongst the prepared pans, tap it twice to release any air. Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
10. Remove the cakes from the oven, let it sit for 5 minutes in the pan. Then usign a blunt knife slowly loosen the sides of the cake from the pan, unmould the cake onto the wire rack and let it cool completely.
