Christmas (Christian Winter Festive Event) Cake

 

Hello there!  Well, it's October 23rd and my first Christmas cake of the year is in the oven (with two days to spare by my target!).  Hurrah! Obviously I am calling this a Christmas Cake as I celebrate Christmas, but it's also a damn good general heavy fruit cake experience - no matter what your religious inclinations are.  

For the last couple of years I have used Mary Berry's Christmas Cake recipe and I love it - I can't see me changing it any time soon.  You can find it here on Mary's own website and it is lovely and straight forward.  For the first time this year I am making two cakes, one round and one square so today's weighing out ventures were more complex than normal as I wanted to weigh them out at the same time.  To handle this I decided to get a bit geeky and obsessed....

 I had planned everything in advance, of course and has done a Tesco Groceries order just for the occasion which arrived at 0925 this morning so everything I already had was out on the counter before that came.  

I decided to weigh out the ingredients into boxes, two boxes for each cake.  Box number one is all of the fruit, the peel and the brandy.  Doesn't it look lovely! The only tweak I make to Mary's recipe here is that I add some hot water with the brandy to open up the fruit a bit more and I added the peel here too.  

Box (or in this case bowl) number two is everything else, with the exception of the eggs which I added slowly as I had written that down last year... I have no idea why, sadly.  

If you are an obsessive lump remover I would also advise adding the almonds afterwards as I was getting a bit worried about the lumps... idiot!

Adding the eggs slowly worked a treat and it doesn't take lone to come together.

Now that all of the 'cake' ingredients are in together it's time to add the fruit box.  I did not look like this was all going to fit in my mixer at once, but it did - just!  If your mixer has a lid I stronly advise using that!

Once it's all nicely combined it's ready to go in the tin! 

After last years tears over lining the tin (seriously) I have been playing with some new ideas for making this easier and I think I have cracked it...

Tin lining kit:

• pen
• scissors
• grease proof paper
• string
• spray butter or oil
• cake tin

Making the lining is the easy bit!  Draw round the bottom of the tin and cut out the shape about 1cm in from the line from doubled ove grease proof so you have two shapes.  Spray the inside of the tin with oil or butter and smooth one shape in to the bottom of the tin, the spray more and add the second layer.  See how it sticks and sits smoothly?  This is amazing!!  For the outsides, cut a long bit of paper big enough to go around the tin and then a wee bit extra, fold in in half so it's still long, but not as deep.  Spray it inside a bit to stick the two sides together.  Do this again for the outside protective layer.  Now that you have two 'cuffs' spray one a bit and stick it to the inside of the tin, spraying and sticking as you go around.  Do similar on the outside of the tin and tie with some string.  Easy. No jumping spirals of paper, no tears and no needing my husband to rescue me!

Time to plonk the mixture in the tin now, and smooth it over.  You don't need to be gentle with this mix as there is very little air in it anyway.   Once it's smooth round the edges make a wee recess in the centre, maybe about as deep as from the tip of your pinkie to the first knuckle. This is a genius trip for making the top raise evenly.  If you put it in the oven flat topped the centre will rise more and give you a mountain cake - this prevents that.  And that't it really... fling it in the over as Mary tell us to and then tidy up (boo) and do something amusing for the next five hours...

So there we are, cake!  It's in the oven and it smells glorious!  And even better cake two is all measured out, the cake tin is ready, the mixer is clean and ready to go again and I get to lick more treacle from the spoon later on tonight. Whoo!

What's your Christmas cake tradition, do you have a favourite tin, recipe or any magic tricks?  If so please do share them in the comments or send me a photo on Instagram of your cake in action, I'm karenhtodd over there, come say hi!

Thanks for reading... decorating will be happening in December, meanwhile I'll feeding it with brandy!