Easy Christmas Cake Recipe
Festive Fruit Cake
Ingredients
- 1 kg mixed dried fruit
- 250 g butter
- 200 g brown sugar
- 175 g plain flour
- 100 g ground almonds
- 100 g flaked almonds
- 150 ml of a spirit of your choice brandy or sherry works best
- 2 teaspoons mixed spice
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 orange zest
- 1 lemon zest
- 4 large eggs
- Extra brandy or sherry for drizzling on baked cake
Instructions
- Place the dried fruit, zest, butter, sugar and alcohol in a large pan
- Stir well over a medium heat until combined well and boiling.
- Lower the heat and allow the mixture to simmer for 5 minutes or so.
- Decant the mixture into a large bowl and leave to cool. Leave this for around an hour to cool.
- While the mixture cools preheat the oven to 150°C or gas mark 2.
- Line a 20cm cake tin using greaseproof paper, and surround the outside of the tin with two layers of newspaper. You can secure this with string.
- Add the rest of the ingredients to the fruit mixture in the bowl. Stir all the remaining ingredients in, making sure there are no lumps of flour.
- Place in the prepared tin.
- Use a spatula or spoon to level the mixture off so that is fills the space and is level.
- Place the cake mix in the oven and cook for 2 hours.
- Remove the cake from the oven and poke a few holes in the top. Be careful as steam may come out.
- Drizzle with a good splash of alcohol and set to one side.
- After it has cooled, peel off the surrounding paper and wrap the cake in cling film. This can keep for months, but we’d recommend topping it up with alcohol every fortnight or so.