A fantastic, juicy Christmas cake recipe

If you haven’t made your Christmas cake yet, don’t worry – it’s not too late. While a cake that’s been faithfully fed for months will deliver a rich and boozy result, our tried and tested recipe for Christmas cake produces a fantastic, juicy cake with just a couple of weeks of feeding.

Make it your own
You can substitute any of the dried fruit in this recipe with others of your choice, although avoid prunes and dates unless they’re chopped very finely. Drained and dried chunks of root ginger in syrup makes an excellent festive addition. Similarly, add more spices if you prefer.

This recipe had been tried and tested over many Christmas holidays, so enjoy.

Cooking time
Every oven is slightly different, and the cooking time for a Christmas cake can be up to an hour either way of a recipe’s suggested cooking time. Be flexible on timing and insert a skewer in the centre of the cake to test when it’s ready.

Method

1. Line and grease a 20cm round cake tin with baking parchment and butter.

2. Put the fruit and nuts in a large bowl. You can soak the currants, sultanas and raisins in brandy for a few hours in advance or overnight if you like a more boozy cake. If you do, dry the fruit before adding and dust in a little flour taken from the total flour quantity to stop the fruit from sinking in the cake.

3. Sift the flour, spices and baking powder into another bowl.

4. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon rind well in a bowl until it’s as light and fluffy as it’s possible to get it, ideally using an electric whisk. Add the eggs gradually and whisk in gently.

5. Fold the flour, baking powder and spices into the wet mixture, taking care to handle it as little as possible at this stage.

6. Add the fruit and nuts and mix everything together, adding a few tablespoons of milk if the consistency is too dry. Gently pour into the prepared tin, making sure there are no air pockets. Make a hollow in the centre.

7. Bake in a preheated oven at 150°c/gas 2 for three and a half hours. It may take more time, so test with a skewer and only remove from the oven when the skewer comes out of the centre of the cake clean. (If your oven is fan assisted bake it at 125°c/gas 1.75 for two and three quarter hours.) Cover the cake with a double thickness of baking parchment after the first half hour.

8. When the cake is cooked take it out of the oven and leave to cool in the tin for a little while, then transfer, out of the tin and unwrapped, onto a cooling rack.

9. Make holes in the top of the cake with a skewer and slowly sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of brandy over the cake before storing by wrapping the cake in a double wrapping of baking parchment and then in foil. Make sure you can open it easily to feed it twice a week for a couple of weeks.