Festive baking: The ultimate Christmas cake recipe

I used to hate Christmas cake until a few years ago. I have an issue with alcohol in food, especially alcohol that I wouldn’t usually drink. 

Brandy laced mince pies? Yuk. Chocolate liqueurs. Gross. Brandy cream. Why?

But then I stumbled upon a chocolate Christmas cake from the kitchen goddess herself, Nigella.

Now, I don’t want to disappoint you but the ultimate Christmas cake recipe is not hers [you can find hers here if you want to bake it – it’s beautiful with a chocolate ganache topping FYI] Nigella’s recipe was the one that turned me to the dark side. I now love fruit cake but there are two rules – 1. nuts don’t belong in it and 2. I don’t use brandy.

The ultimate Christmas cake is a blend of three different recipes. It’s a bit of an odd method [no creaming of butter and sugar] and there is a lot of dried fruit in it, but the end result is so moist and fruity and delicious!

Read on to get the recipe…

Ingredients

• 800g pre prepared dried fruit
• 100g sultanas
• 100g dried figs
• 300g glace cherries
• 75g stem ginger + 2 tbsp of the liquid
• 70ml sloe gin
• 160ml port
• 200g brown sugar
• 200g butter
• 4 eggs
• 1tsp each of cinnamon, mixed spice, ground ginger
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2tsp nutmeg
• 200g plain flour

Method

1. 48 hours before you are planning to make the cake, tip the dried fruit into a bowl along with the alcohol. Cover and leave.
2. Pre heat the oven to 160C and line a loose bottomed cake tin with two sheets of parchment
3. Melt the butter and sugar together
4. Add to the boozy fruit
5. Stir in the eggs
6. Combine the spices with the flour and add to the mix
7. Mix until just combined and then tip into the prepared tin and smooth
8. Bake in the pre heated oven for 3 hours – on the last hour you may need to cover the top to avoid over browning
9. Once it has cooked, leave to cool in the tin and then prick all over in readiness for the feeding stage!
10. The feeding stage means that every week you need to spoon alcohol onto the top of the cake and allow it to soak in – each week feed it around 1tbsp of port/gin

This year, I’ve slightly changed it up – I creamed the butter and sugar together like traditional cake making and reduced the amount of fruit in it. You can get that recipe here.

I’ll share some decorating ideas soon.

x

If you liked this post and it got you into the Christmas spirit and you haven’t yet done your gift shopping, then check out my small business gift guide!