Are You a Christmas Cake lover?
I am! It doesn’t feel like Christmas if there isn’t a lovely big wedge of fruity, nutty dark cake topped with yellow marzipan and white icing and a big cup of warming tea. If you are a fan, then you will love my Fruit and Nut Christmas Cake Recipe which you can print off below.
When I lived in the Northern Hemisphere slices of Christmas cake would be carefully wrapped in foil and taken on long, cold walks across the moors or along a windswept beach. Now I live in the Southern Hemisphere, eating my Christmas cake treat sitting in the heat of summer, seems even more of an indulgence, but it just wouldn’t be Christmas without it.
The kids aren’t keen on Christmas cake but they do love the task that I set them every year to come up with a scene to decorate the cake on top. They especially love eating the fondant icing once we cut into the cake (which is good as I’m not a big fan of the icing – marzipan, that’s a whole different story!). Here’s a few examples of past cake decorations:
Anyhow, this recipe was adapted from Kim Morphew’s Fig, apricot and pistachio Christmas Cake which you can find here.
If you missed stir up Sunday, don’t worry, you can make this cake anytime right up to the last minute, it just tastes better the longer you can feed it alcohol!
Enjoy,
I’m sharing this post as part of the What’s on your plate link up party organised by Donna from Retirement Reflections and Deb at The Widow Badass. You can check out all the posts in the link up here here
Fruit and Nut Christmas Cake Recipe
Equipment
- 1 Food mixer optional
- 1 round or square baking tin approximately 20cm diameter or 20cm square
- 1 baking/greaseproof paper
- 1 Baking foil
Ingredients
Soaked Fruit
- 125g Chopped dried figs ensure wood stalks are removed
- 75g chopped dried apricots
- 125g chopped pitted dates
- 75g dried cranberries
- 250g sultanas
- 1 large orange zest grated and juiced
- 50 ml rum, honey mead, brandy or alcohol of choice optional
For the Cake
- 140g butter
- 140g dark brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tbsp golden syrup or black treacle
- 2 eggs
- 50g unsalted pistachios (shelled)
- 175g plain flour
- 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 3/4 tsp mixed spice
- 40g ground almond (meal)
Instructions
For Soaked Fruit
- Add all of the dried fruit, orange juice and zest and alcohol into a large mixing bowl. Mix well and cover with clingfilm to soak overnight.
For the cake
- Preheat the oven to 140C.
- Grease and line baking tin with baking paper. See note below
- Beat butter and sugar either by hand or with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
- Add the syrup, then gradually beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Stir the pistachios into the dried fruit mixture.
- Combine the sifted flour, ground almond and spices.
- Add the fruit mix, alternating with the flour/spices to the butter and sugar mixture.
- Get everyone to have a go at stirring and make a wish!
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, levelling the top off with a spoon.
- Bake in the oven for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.
- Check on the cake after about an 1 1/2 hours - if the top is browning too quickly, place a sheet of baking paper over the top of the cake to avoid it burning.
- Allow the cake to cool in the tin before turning out.
- Wrap the cake in two layers of greaseproof paper, followed by a layer of foil.
- Keep the cake in an airtight container, in a cool place. The cake can be made up to three months in advance.
- Feed the cake regularly by unwrapping, and making holes in the top and dropping small measures of alcohol into the holes. Rewrap and store again.
- When ready to serve, spread apricot jam on the top and sides of the cake. Encase the cake with rolled marzipan, followed by royal icing.
- Get the kids to come up with ideas to decorate the top, or decorate with Christmas themes using fondant icing or cake decorations.
Notes
If you are looking for other fruit cake ideas you could try my Vegan Tropical Fruit Loaf and a couple of other festive recipes are:
Festive Chocolate, Raspberry, Brazil Nut Overnight Oats
White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake
Ricotta Tiramisu Overnight Pots
Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding
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Hi Janine, how clever to give the kids a project of decorating the cake and I love the paddington one especially! I’m not a fan of making fruit cakes but I’ll always eat a slice 🙂
You can nominate yourself the official Christmas Cake taster!
Thank you for sharing this Christmas Cake recipe with us. I absolutely love the cake scenes that you and your children have come up with. So creative!
I must confess that I had not been a lover of fruitcake but…I tasted one made by Deb (the cohost to this linkup) and it was truly delicious. Perhaps I just don’t like most storebought ones? Yours looks very tasty indeed!:D
Ah you are very kind Donna. The kids do all the creative work – I just supply the base. It might be worth persevering with Christmas/fruit cake. There are lots of variations, some are more ‘cakey’, some more fruity and some can have lots of alcohol which makes a big difference to flavour and texture. Personally I don’t like too much alcohol in my mine and more fruity and nutty.
Hi Janine, yes I’m a fruit cake lover, yes I love nuts so this Christmas cake recipe is right up my alley. I’m making my Christmas cake today although now I’m thinking I should make the recipe you’ve written about. #WOYP
Hi Sue, apologies for my late response to your comment. Unfortunately you ended up in my spam box – not quite sure why. Anyhow, I hope you made your Christmas cake OK. Which recipe do you usually use?