Oh Christmas Cake, Oh Christmas Cake!

My family has never had christmas cake at christmas before, because as far as i'd ever known it was horrible and alcoholic and only grandad liked it. However this year mum and I wanted to be more traditional and focus on food, so just over a month before christmas we decided to make our own christmas cake. My mum hates citrus peel so at least by making our own we were able to leave that out! We used a Mary Berry recipe and just changed the ingredients slightly to suit our own tastes; for the dried fruit we used currants, raisins, sultanas and apricots, as well as some chopped blanched almonds.

At this point I think I should let you in on a little secret...we didn't actually eat this cake for Christmas! That was definitely the plan, but there's so much food anyway that we didn't really want a rich fruit cake, so instead I covered it in leftover cream cheese frosting (from my next post) and used it for my birthday cake- that's today!

It was delicious but you don't want too much of it; our challenge now is to eat it all before the frosting goes off!

Mary Berry's original Christmas Cake Recipe

For the sponge:
175g raisins
350g glace cherries, rinsed, thoroughly dried and quartered (I omitted these and threw some dried apricots in instead)
500g currants
350g sultanas
150ml sherry, plus extra for feeding (I used port instead)
Finely grated zest of 2 oranges (mum hates orange so although we put this in originally, later on we rinsed the fruit to get rid of it!)
250g butter, softened
250g light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp black treacle
75g blanched almonds, chopped
75g self- raising flour
175g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp mixed spice

To finish and decorate: (as you know I didn't do this)
Around 3 tbsp apricot jam, sieved and warmed
Icing sugar
675g shop bought almond paste
Packet royal icing mix to cover 23cm/9inch cake

Method:

• Put all the dried fruit in a container, pour over the sherry and stir in the orange zest. Cover with a lid, and leave to soak for 3 days, stirring daily. Grease and line a 23cm (9in) deep round tin with a double layer of greased greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 140ºC/Fan 120ºC/Gas Mark 1.
• Measure the butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds into a very large bowl and beat well. Add the flours and mixed spice and mix thoroughly until blended. Stir in the soaked fruit. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and level the surface.
• Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 4-4½ hours or until the cake feels firm to the touch and is a rich golden brown. Check after 2 hours, and, if the cake is a perfect colour, cover with foil. A skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin.
• When cool, pierce the cake at intervals with a fine skewer and feed with a little extra sherry. Wrap the completely cold cake in a double layer of greaseproof paper and again in foil and store in a cool place for up to 3 months, feeding at intervals with more sherry. (Don't remove the lining paper when storing as this helps to keep the cake moist.)
• Decorate with almond paste and royal icing.

To prepare the Christmas cake ahead: Prepare the fruit and soak in sherry 3 days ahead - this is essential to plump up and flavour the fruit. Make the cake and wrap as in stage 4. Store in a cool place for up to 3 months, following stage 4. You could also freeze the cake before decorating, for up to 3 months; defrost at room temperature.