Christmas Cake

350g prunes, scissored or chopped
250g raisins
175g currants
175g soft butter
175g dark muscovado sugar
225g (175ml) honey
125ml Tia Maria or other coffee liqueur (i used 100 ml dark rum and 25 ml strong coffee instead)
juice and finely grated zest of 2 oranges
1 teaspoon mixed spice
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 eggs, beaten
150g plain flour
75g ground almonds
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 Preheat the oven to 150°C/gas mark 2 and prepare a 20cm x 9cm deep, round, loose-bottomed cake tin by lining the bottom and sides with a double layer of baking parchment, as for the Traditional Christmas Cake on p.172 (though I find that if you use one layer of that tough, reusable silicone baking parchment, my beloved Bake-O-Glide, it does the job well enough, and as the cake is so dark, you don't see if it catches a little).

2 Put the fruits, butter, sugar, honey, Tia Maria, orange juice and zests, spice and cocoa powder into a large, wide saucepan and gently bring to the boil, stirring as the butter melts.

3 Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes, then take off the heat and leave to stand for 30 minutes.

4 When the 30 minutes are up -- it will have cooled a little, but you can leave it for longer if you want -- add the beaten eggs, flour, ground almonds, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula to combine.

5 Pour the fruit cake mixture into the prepared cake tin. Place in the oven and bake for 13/4--2 hours, by which time the top of the cake should be firm but will have a shiny, sticky look. If you insert a cake tester or skewer into it, the cake will still be a little gooey in the middle.

6 Put the cake, still in its tin, on a wire cooling rack -- it will hold its heat and take a while to cool; once cool, take it out of the tin and, if you don't want to eat it immediately (like any fruit cake it has a long life), wrap it in baking parchment or greaseproof paper then in foil and store in a cake or other airtight tin.

7 You can also poke holes in the cake with a toothpick and feed the cake some brandy/rum, till its ready to be iced.

Makes at least 10 generous slices

To decorate:

500g marzipan
750 gms ready to roll icing
2 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade or honey diluted with 1 tsp of hot water

1 Unwrap your cake from the paper and foil you've been storing it in and set it on your worksurface.

2 See whether it is level, if it isn't, you'll need to level it with a knife. use a large serrated knife for this.

3 Prepare your cake board/plate and position your cake on it so that the cut side is downwards.

4 Check that you're happy with your levelling and adjust if necessary.

5 Using a pastry brush paint the outside of the cake with a thin layer of jam/marmalade/honey (avoiding any bits!).  So now the cake is nice and sticky and will be ready to glue on the marzipan layer.

6 500g is enough marzipan to coat an 8" cake.  If you love the taste of marzipan you can make this layer thicker but you will need more to do so.  Knead gently on your worksurface to 'warm' the marzipan which will make it easier to work with.

7 Take half of the marzipan and shape into a rough sausage shape.

8 Dust your worksurface with icing sugar and roll out the sausage into a long strip to reach around the outside of the cake.  Measure with string to help you know how long it needs to be.

9 Again with the string measure how tall your collar of marzipan needs to be and cut to the right height.  It should be 5mm above the top of the cake.


10 Position around the outside of the cake and trim neatly where the two edges meet.

11 Gather together the trimmings and the remaining half of marzipan and roll out to about 5mm thick on your worksurface.

12 Using the tin you baked the cake in as a template cut out a circle for the top of the cake.

13 Place the circle on the top of the cake, gently sealing together the edges where it meets the marzipan collar.

14 Use your hands to smooth the seanms of the marzipan.  Smooth the top and the sides working out any major lumps and bumps.

15 Now you need to leave it to one side to dry a little - 24 to 48 hours.

16 Once the marzipan has set, you can work with the ready roll icing.

17 Dust the worksurface liberally with icing sugar.  Knead the sugarpaste to warm it up making it much more pliable.

18 Measure across the cake with a piece of string from the board, over the top and back onto the board again and cut the string to the right size.  Dampen the marzipan with a pastry brush dipped in a little bit of water.

19 Begin to roll out the sugarpaste making sure you have plenty plenty of icing sugar on the worksurface, once it sticks it's gameover and you have to start again.

20 You can turn the sugarpaste when rolling but don't flip it over.

21 Measuring with your piece of string keep rolling out, into a rough circle until the sugarpaste is just over the right size.

22 Polish the top of the sugarpaste with the flat of your hand to smooth it out.  Take any rings or watches off first as they always catch and rip up your hard work.  You will feel what I mean as you polish - the sugarpaste takes on a shine and will be super smooth.

23 Place the rolling pin in the middle of the rolled out icing and flip it over.   Use the rolling pin to lift into position on the cake. Flip over the sugar paste and remove the rolling pin.

24 Starting on the top, ignore the sides for now, polish the top of the cake with the flat of your hand again.  When you are happy with the top start working the way down the cake with your hands, smoothing the sugarpaste into position.  Go slowly and work from the top of the cake down towards the board.  If the sugarpaste starts to crease lift it away from the cake and smooth from the top down again.
If the sugarpaste begins to crack you can 'polish' out the start of any cracks with the palm of your hand.

25 Eventually you will have worked all the way down to the board. With a sharp knife trim off the excess sugarpaste at the base of the cake.  Wrap up the excess in clingfilm and save it for now.

26 Set your cake to one side and leave overnight to firm up.  Again this is important before we start adding the decoration as the icing is soft it is really easy to nick and mark it with your hands.

27 Once the icing has set, you decorate it any way you like. I put some red colour in a bit of the left over icing, rolled it out and cut out red stars. I also rolled out some plain icing to get white stars. these I fixed on the cake by wetting the base of the stars with some water.

28 I also set some silver cachous on the cake and drew a snow flake design on the white stars with some chocolate fudge icing.Finally, I wrapped some ribbon around the cake and held it in place by brushing on some water where the edges of the ribbon would sit on the cake.

Recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson's "Christmas".