How to make a traditional Christmas fruit cake

A FRUIT cake is an obvious addition to your Christmas lunch.

However, not everyone is familiar with how to make one. So, if this is your year to shine and you’re not sure what to do, you’ve come to the right place because we’ve got you covered!

Recipe created by: Alicia Wilkinson of the Silwood School of Cookery

Makes one 20cm round or 18cm square cake

Prep time – 40 minutes

Cooking time – 5 hours

Ingredients: 

• 200 g treacle sugar (sticky brown sugar)
• 125 g butter
• 1 cup water
• 75 g stoned dates, broken into small pieces
• 170 g raisins
• 140 g currants
• 170 g sultanas
• 100 g candied peel
• 60 g nuts, chopped
• 100 g crystallized fruit
• 100 g cherries, halved and washed under hot running water then drained and dusted with flour
• 1 t bicarbonate of soda
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 240 g cake flour
• 1 t baking powder
• ¼ t salt
• 2 T brandy, plus extra for dousing the cake
• medium-cream sherry

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For the marzipan layer and icing:

• 1 sheet marzipan big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake
• icing sugar
• apricot jam, for brushing
• 2 egg whites
• 500 g icing sugar, sifted
• sugar decorations

To make the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C.

2. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, gently heat the sugar, butter, water, and dates until melted. Bring the raisins, currants, and sultanas to a boil.

3. Simmer for 7 minutes before adding the candied peel, nuts, crystallised fruit, and cherries and continuing to cook for 3 minutes (or until the fruit has plumped up and the dates have disintegrated).

4. Remove from the heat and stir in the bicarb while it is still warm. Add the well-beaten eggs once the mixture has cooled enough not to cook them.

5. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together and fold into the mixture. Finally, stir in the brandy and pour into a foil-lined tin.

6. Fold at least 12 sheets of newspaper to a height of 30cm, wrap around the tin’s circumference, and tie with string. Place the tin on 24 layers of newspaper and cover the top with a sheet of foil that has been sprinkled with water on the underside.

7. Bake for an hour, then reduce to 120°C and continue to bake until done (up to four hours), sprinkling the inside of the foil lid with water every 20 minutes.

8. Remove from the oven, allow to cool from hot to warm, and then drizzle with a mixture of 1/3 brandy and 2/3 sherry. To store, remove the foil and wrap the cake in plastic wrap.

9. After a week, gently douse the cake’s underside with proof alcohol and rewrap it. Continue to feed the cake lightly with brandy at weekly intervals, alternately on the base and then the top, until the cake is ready to decorate.

To make the marzipan layer and icing:

Roll out the marzipan with icing sugar to keep it from sticking (if the marzipan is too hard, add a little egg white and almond essence, or some icing sugar if it gets too moist).

Brush the cake with apricot jam and use your fingers to firmly press the sheet of marzipan over the top and sides of the cake, filling in gaps to make a smooth finish.

Add the icing sugar to the egg whites gradually until they can no longer absorb any more. By adding lemon juice and beating well, you can adjust the texture to a dropping consistency.

Place the cake on a cooling rack placed on top of a mixing bowl. Pour the icing over the cake, allowing the excess to drip into the bowl.

Then, thicken the icing with icing sugar and apply another layer to the cake in peaks.

Decorate as desired.