Christmas Cake Tales

I’m in the process of making a tradition English Christmas cake.  And it is a process.  The end product should be a beautiful rich dense fruitcake covered with a sheet of marzipan icing, sprinkled with sugar and decorated with red berries.  The recipe was one of my finds in Fresh magazine (the English mag that jumped off the shelf and into my hands at the airport).  I’ve never attempted this before and after a second go, it’s possible I may never again.  It’s a six-week project.  The cake needs to be fed, with brandy weekly.  The brandy moistens the cake and loosens up all who eat it.  Although depending on the type of Christmas you have…those guests could be well on their way to being loose before the cake hits the table.  Yesterday, the first time, I followed the instructions (mostly) to the tee.  I just changed the fruit combo a little and used apricots, raisins and dried cranberries.  I also opted for light brown sugar, mixed it all together and promptly burnt the cake in the oven.  Well not so promptly since you bake the cake for two hours.  I refused to throw it out since when I looked at it all I saw were the raw ingredients and dollar signs in my head…like six eggs, one pound of raisins, cups of cranberries, ½ a cup of sherry.  But I also had the taste of the batter in there as well and that was heavenly.

 So this morning the gears are turning and I’m back at it.  I’m going to half the fruit and add a little baking powder, fingers crossed the batter will envelope the fruit so there will be more of a cake texture rather than just solid fruit, which I have to say this morning tasted really pretty nice with my coffee, just not what I was looking for and given it made a 12 inch square cake I will never get through the whole thing, brandy or not.

That's a lot of raisins!