It's Christmas Cake Time!

At the beginning of October my girls and I made our Christmas cake. It’s a tradition we do every year and I like to get the girls involved. I have a nut allergy so our cake doesn’t include nuts. My favourite part about making Christmas cake is getting to decorate it! Here’s how we made ours!

Ingredients

Makes on 8″ round cake
150g raisins
125g stoned dried chopped dates
125g sultanas
100g glace cherries, rinsed
150ml brandy
225g butter (room temperature)
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
Grated rind of 1 orange and 1 lemon
1 tbsp black treacle
225g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice

Method

• Soak the fruit in the brandy overnight in a bowl – I don’t put it in the fridge
• Pre-heat oven to 110 celsius
• Grease 8″ round tin and line with greaseproof paper

• Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until fluffy

• Beat in the eggs
• Stir in the orange and lemon rind
• Add the black treacle
• In a separate bowl – Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and mixed spice then fold into the egg mixture
• Fold in the fruit and brandy

• Spoon the mixture into the cake tin 

• Bake for at least three hours – May take longer depending on your oven. I found it took just over three and a half hours for ours to cook
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then take the cake out of the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack

• Once cool wrap in greaseproof paper, then cling film and store in an airtight container until ready to decorate
• I feed my cake a tiny bit of brandy each week

Top tips for the best results!

• Make your Christmas cake at least 3 weeks in advance
• Feed your Christmas cake weekly with some brandy. It will keep your cake nice and moist
• Wrap your cake in greaseproof paper then cling film, never foil and store in an airtight container until you are ready to add your marzipan
• Marzipan your cake the second week of December and then ice it the following day. You shouln’t leave marzipan for longer than 24 hours without icing it because marzipan is porous and air may get in which can cause mould growth.
• Once you have added marzipan to your cake, store it in a cardboard box. This is because once marzipan is on, it forms an airtight seal so the cake will sweat and breed bacteria if it kept in airtight container. It needs air around it to dry it out
• Before icing your cake, brush the marzipan with alcohol or cool boiled water and make sure you cover every bit otherwise you’ll get air bubbles in between the marzipan and icing
• Once you have iced your cake store in a cardboard box