Untraditional Christmas cake

Recipe source.

This is a fabulous recipe for a light-coloured, moist and quite delicious fruitcake that keeps well and impresses everyone. You need to start the preparations for the cake the day before you plan to bake it. You can bake it up to 4 months before Christmas (keep it in a cool dry place, well wrapped), but it doesn't have to mature if you are doing things at the last minute. You can marzipan and ice it in the usual way.

Ingredients

• 350g dried apricots
• 200g tin of pineapple (tinned with juice not syrup)
• 100g dried cranberries
• 100g glace cherries
• 75g whole candied lemon peel (or pre-chopped but whole is so much nicer)
• 75g whole candied orange peel (or pre-chopped but see above!)
• 100g glace ginger (crystalized ginger or stem ginger in syrup can be substituted)
• 200g sultanas
• 3 tbsp vodka (optional)
• 250g unsalted butter
• 250g caster sugar
• 5 medium eggs, beaten
• 300g self-raising flour
• 50g desiccated coconut
• zest of 1 lemon
• 100g whole almonds (blanched or unblanched according to preference/availability)

Method

1. Drain the pineapple (reserving the juice), roughly chop and put into a large non-metallic mixing bowl.
2. Roughly chop the apricots, cherries, cranberries, ginger and peel into sultana-sized pieces. You might find it easiest to do this with a few quick pulses in a food processor (taking care not to over-chop) or with a pair of scissors. Add to the bowl along with the sultanas.
3. Stir in the vodka and 3 tbsp of the reserved pineapple juice, or 6 tbsp of reserved juice if you prefer not to use the vodka
4. Cover the bowl and leave the fruit to soak overnight.
5. When you are ready to bake the cake, preheat the oven to 200°C
6. Put the almonds on a baking tray and toast in the oven for about 7 minutes — keep a close eye on them because it is easy to burn them.
7. Whilst the almonds are toasting, grease and base line a spring release 23cm round cake tin (line the sides too if you don't have a spring release tin).
8. Now take the almonds out of the oven and turn the oven down to 170°C and arrange the shelves so that you can fit your cake on a shelf in the centre of the oven.
9. Roughly chop the toasted almonds and set aside.
10. Put the butter in a large mixing bowl or food mixer and beat until it is soft and creamy. Add the sugar and beat hard until the mixture becomes pale and fluffy.
11. Gradually add the beaten eggs, bit by bit, beating hard after each addition.
12. Carefully fold in the flour with a gentle figure of 8 motion
13. Add the coconut, lemon zest, chopped almonds and soaked fruits to the cake mixture and stir gently but thoroughly to combine it all well.
14. Spoon the cake mixture into your prepared tin and smooth it out, making a shallow hollow in the centre of the cake so it rises more evenly.
15. Put the cake in the centre of the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.
16. After 30 mins turn the oven down to 150°C and carefully cover the top of the cake loosely with a piece of foil.
17. Bake for another 1 to 1¼ hours until the cake is risen, firm to the touch and lightly browned.
18. Cool in the tin for an hour then turn onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
19. Once totally cooled wrap in a layer of greaseproof paper and a layer of foil and store in a cool dry place.

This page was last modified on 13 November 2012.

This work by Matthew Blissett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.