The time has come!  You’ve been lovingly stirring and looking after your boozy fruit and after six weeks soaking it’s ready to be turned into your Christmas Cake!

Ingredients:

1 x Boozy Fruit Soak

225g butter, softened

150g light muscovado sugar

75g dark muscovado sugar

2 tbsps treacle

5 eggs, large

285g plain flour

2 tsp mixed cake spice

100g whole almonds (optional of course if you don’t like nuts!)

150ml brandy, for feeding the baked cake

Before we get onto making the cake read through the top tips covering frequently asked questions!

Christmas Cake Top Tips:

• If you haven’t prepared your boozy fruit do it now (and then come back and tell me why you didn’t do it when I posted the recipe – bad Pink Whiskers!)  Soak it for at least a week, more if you can.  Once you’ve soaked it there may still be excess liquid with the fruit, heat the mixture gently in a pan until the majority of the liquid has gone, then continue with the recipe.
• If you’re outside the UK can’t get hold of treacle, molasses is a good substitute.
• Make sure your tin is deep sided (3″ deep), a shallow tin won’t do the trick here!
• Be sure of your oven temperature, a long slow bake is what is called for to stop the cake from drying out too much and baking evenly.
• Position your cake on a shelf about 1/3rd of the way up from the base of the oven.
• Keep an eye on the baking – start checking your cake for doneness from 2 and a half hours in.  Insert a skewer in the centre and it should come out clean when it’s completely cooked through.  If your oven temp is any different to 110c then it may be done sooner, but it may also take longer if your oven runs cool.  You need to employ your cake testing skills!
• When it comes to feeding the baked cake, you can miss this out completely if you would rather, wrap the cake well as described and set aside to mature.  The flavours of the cake still intensify and the fruit in the cake will soften and be delicious.
• If you would rather you can feed with apple juice or tea for a non-alcoholic cake.
• If you don’t have a tin big enough to store your cake it will be fine wrapped well with baking paper and foil alone.

You can also split your cake mixture into a batch of cakes of different sizes. Continue reading →