Christmas Fruit Cake

This week, I am repeatedly reminded to keep that faith and claim that promise and always have hope. The Christmas fruit cake is an annual bake this time of the year and for the past few years, I have been greedy and baked one too many cakes, so this year, I decided that there will be no leftover dried fruits and I will only bake enough. The boozy fruit soak was done over a week ago and I decided to bake the cakes earlier, so there is enough time for the cakes to mature by Christmas. This year, I used another recipe for the cake base from a recipe book. Here’s the recipe.

(Makes a 9 inch square tin and a standard loaf tin)

Ingredients

• 1 portion Christmas fruit soak (about 2100g)

Dry Ingredients

• 200g plain flour
• 200g brown sugar
• 30g ground almonds
• 1 tsp all spice

Wet Ingredients

• 220g unsalted butter at room temperature
• 6 eggs lightly beaten
• 4 tbsp molasses or treacle
• 4 tsp honey
• 2 tsp marmalade
• 300 ml whisky or brandy for feeding

Method

1. Drain the fruit soak and set aside.
2. Line the base and sides of prepared baking tins with baking paper and preheat the oven at 190 degrees.
3. Sift the flour, ground almonds and all spice together and set aside.
4. Cream the butter, sugar, honey, molasses and marmalade together using a paddle attachment till pale and fluffy.
5. Add the eggs a little at a time, mixing well with each addition.
6. Add the flour and mix till just combined.
7. Fold in the fruit soak.
8. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tins and bake in the preheated oven.
9. Once the cake tins are in the oven, reduce oven temperature to 160 degrees immediately and bake for 40 minutes before turning the tins around to ensure an even bake.
10. Bake for another 40 minutes or till baked. Insert a skewer to the middle of the tin and if it comes out clean, the cakes are baked.
11. Remove from oven and leave to cool completely.
12. Once cooled, poke about 40 holes in the cakes and start feeding the cakes with alcohol. I fed mine with cinnamon whisky.
13. Wrap the cakes with baking papers and then wrap another layer of aluminium on the outside.
14. Leave the cakes in an airtight container and feed them with alcohol till Christmas or till the cakes cannot absorb alcohol anymore.

I have not cut into the cake, but I think it will be yummy. Fruits and alcohol, what’s there not to like.