A rich Christmas spiced fruit, cherry and nut cake covered with a layer of marzipan and finished off with festive decorative icing and edible glitter
Makes 8
Ingredients
200g currents
200g sultanas
175g raisins
150g cherries
100g walnuts
100g hazelnuts
75g dried apricots
Zest and juice of one orange
100ml brandy
300ml brandy for topping up pudding once cooked
1 tsp grated nutmeg
2 tsp mixed spice
175g melted butter
2 tbsp black treacle
1 tbsp golden syrup
150g fresh breadcrumbs
150g self raising flour
3 medium eggs beaten
200g dark muscovado sugar
1 large air tight container
FOR THE ICING DECORATION
1 x 250g red regal icing
1 x 250g green regal icing
1 x 2kg white regal icing block
1 pot gold edible paint
1 pot edible gold glitter
1 thin pastry brush
As I like to top up my cake up with way too much brandy over the weeks up to the big day I do not soak my fruit overnight as trust me the cakes are going to get a generous soaking before icing!
In a large bowl add the currents, sultanas, raisins, cherries, walnuts, hazelnuts, apricots, zest and juice of orange, all the spices and brandy and mix well. Melt the butter gently in a pan and add to the fruit mix with the golden syrup, treacle, muscovado sugar, bread crumbs and flour again mix well, now add the beaten eggs and sugar.
Grease with butter 10 mini pudding moulds and fill almost to the top, cover with a pleated sheet of foil and place in a deep roasting tray, 3/4 fill with boiling water and simmer in the oven for 1 hr or until your skewer comes out clean from testing. You may have to top up the water to keep it at the half way level for simmering the pudding cakes.
Take out of the dariol moulds and wrap in baking paper and place in a air tight container and give a little drizzle of the extra brandy. Repeat this extra drizzle every week for 3weeks and turn over the cakes each time you drizzle.
Now you are ready to ice and decorate. First I roll out some marzipan to the thickness of a pound coin and cover the mini cakes and then I repeat this and roll out the white regal icing to the thickness of a pound coin, and then just place over and tuck under the ends. For the red strips, I just roll out a square of the red icing and slice even strips and then lay them on the cake starting at the centre on the top, dropping the red stripe down for evenness. I love the use of edible glitter as this makes a prettier presentation effect for the finished Christmas cake.
For the Ivy leave this time I did have a ivy cutter, if not just cut the shape or use a real ivy leaf to indent the shape and cut around, I then made a couple of berries to go with the leaves.
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