Dry fruit cakes can be caused by many things: 1. The wrong ratio of wet to dry ingredients. Always be sure to weigh your ingredients with a digital scale so you use exactly the right amount. 2. Not lining the cake pan properly or having the oven temperature too hot. Fruit cake is baked for a long, long time and the oven temperature needs to be low. The pan also needs to be double lined. 3.Using a poor quality cake pan. 4. It got over-baked. All ovens vary slightly unless calibrated so it's important to keep an eye on your cake in the last half hour or so. 5. The cake was removed from the pan before it was completely cool and wasn't wrapped wrap in foil while it was cooling to trap the steam. 6. The cake wasn't fed properly after baking.