Christmas Cake

A spicy fruitcake that soaks in booze for weeks on end – but enough about me let’s talk about the cake x

Christmas cake has a lot of h8rs out there (including myself) but this one is actually a bit of alright. Each year I try to do a different christmassy design, I’ve put some piccies below of my faves. This time it was angels (even though we all know I’m the real angel here x)

Christmas cakes are traditionally decorated with a simple layer of marzipan but I like to do marzipan AND fondant because more is always more.

You can make the cake weeks or even months in advance and spoon brandy over it, resulting in a moist and highly flammable cake.

Anyway enough jibber jabber, this is a big boy recipe so fasten your seatbelts we’re in for a long ride…

(recipe inspired by https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/classic_christmas_cake_04076)

Ingredients

For the cake

350g glace cherries
75g Raisins
500g currants
350g sultanas
150ml brandy plus extra for yourself and soaking
zest of 2 oranges
250g butter
250g muscovado sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp black treacle
75g blanched almonds
275g plain flour
1½ tsp mixed spice

For the decor

3 tbsp apricot jam
500g marzipan
Icing sugar
1kg fondant icing (ready to roll icing)

Method

chuck all of the fruit in a bowl and drench in the brandy and zest.
You’re meant to leave this for a few days to properly soak in but honestly who can be bothered with that so just leave it for a few hours and it’ll be reyt
Grease and line your baking tin – this is really important or you actually won’t get it out
Bang that oven on 140C, we like it low and slow babyyyyy
In another bowl beat the butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds together well
add the flour and spicezzz
plop in our thoroughly soaked fruities
My mum always told me to coat them in a tablespoon of flour before mixing them in the batter so they don’t sink, so you can do that if you want
Chuck in the oven for 4hours!!!!! Yes you heard, that means time for a nap
But check it after 2 hours and cover the top with foil so it doesn’t get too tanned
Once cooled and out of the tin, spoon over a couple of tbsps. of brandy every day until you’re ready to decorate
DECORATING
Mix the apricot jam with 1 tsp of water and heat for a few seconds in the microwave to make it more liquidy
brush all over the cake
roll out the marzipan and smooth over the cake
Trim off any excess bits, you can eat these or use them to decorate as you like
do the same with about half of the fondant and smooth over the cake
then you have free rein to decorate as you like!
You can colour the fondant using food colouring and get creative

So I’ve been thinking of doing blogs about decoration tutorials e.g. making fondant figures – would anybody be interested in that or nah? Will probs do it anyway so your opinion is a bit irrelevant lol.

It’s nearly my time to go, so I’ll leave you with this week’s kitchen goss

Kitchen Goss

I love a club photo as much as the next person, but I’ve actually taken hounding the photographer to another level. That man in the pic is in fact the mystery behind the lens. We asked for a selfie, he delivered. Big shoutout to the best photographer ever – no arguments x x x x x x