Christmas Cake Recipe I A loved family tradition!

Ingredients

Ingredients:⁠

- 225g butter⁠

- 225g brown sugar⁠

- 1 tbsp golden syrup⁠

- 6 eggs⁠

- 340g flour⁠

- 1 tsp baking powder⁠

- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon ⁠

- 1 1/2 tsp mixed spices⁠

- 1 tsp vanilla essence ⁠

- 1 tsp lemon essence ⁠

- 1 tsp almond essence⁠

- 1360g mixed fruit⁠

Icing:⁠

- Jam⁠

- Almond paste⁠

- 340g Icing sugar (start with 226g)⁠

- 85g butter⁠

- Vanilla essence⁠

- Brandy⁠

Cooking Instructions

Soak the fruit mix in some brandy for as long as you can spare. This might be a month if I’m lucky, it might only get a day or two if I’m really busy and not prepared.

When it’s time to bake your cake:

Prepare your baking tin first. I line the tin with a layer of thin cardboard from a breakfast cereal box or similar on the bottom and the sides, sitting up higher than the sides of the tin. Then I do the same with about 6 layers of newspaper and finally I line it with greaseproof paper.
Preheat your oven to 150 degrees xelcius, normal bake (not fan bake).
Cream the butter and the sugar. Then mix the golden syrup, eggs and essences into the butter mix. In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder and spices.
Then take turns at adding some flour mix and then some butter mix into the fruit mix until all wet and dry ingredients are added. Scoop this out into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, I take a skewer and poke it randomly into the cake and then pour brandy over the top. The holes give it access to soak into the middle of the cake and not just run off the surface.
Leave it in the oven which is then turned off and the door closed until the next day when it will be completely cool. Depending on how long I have between cooking and Christmas I may then pour some more brandy on it or I may get straight to icing it.

To ice:

Brush the surface of the cake (and the sides if you also plan to ice the sides) with jam, I use strawberry but I don’t think it’s important, it just helps the almond icing stick.
Roll out almond paste thinly and place this over the cake.
Make your brandy butter icing by melting the butter and adding half the icing sugar. Then mix in about a teaspoon of vanilla essence and a little brandy and slowly add the rest of your icing sugar. I keep adding brandy and icing sugar until it gets to the level of brandy taste that I like and the consistency that the icing needs to be spread nicely on the cake.
Once it’s iced, decorate as you please or just get straight to enjoying it.