Rebecca Woollard started her culinary career as a chalet cook. She is now a food stylist and recipe writer with 10 years of magazine experience.
See more of Rebecca Woollard’s recipes
Rebecca Woollard
Rebecca Woollard started her culinary career as a chalet cook. She is now a food stylist and recipe writer with 10 years of magazine experience.
See more of Rebecca Woollard’s recipes
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Ingredients
300g sultanas
200g currants
150g raisins
zest and juice of 1 orange
zest and juice of 1 lemon
175ml whisky (or rum or brandy, if you prefer), plus extra to feed
100g crystallised ginger pieces, diced
100g stem ginger in syrup, diced, plus 4 tbsp syrup from the jar
1 x 200g tub glace cherries, chopped
100g blanched hazelnuts
250g very soft unsalted butter
250g plain flour
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground allspice
70g-100g light muscovado sugar (100g if you’re making it to mature and 70g if you’re eating it right away)
100g dark muscovado sugar
4 medium eggs
3 tbsp black treacle
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Step by step
Put the dried fruit, citrus zests and juice in a large bowl, stir, then cover and microwave on high for 2 minutes, stirring halfway through – this is to plump up the fruit. If you don’t have a microwave, put everything in a pan, stirring often over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Stir in the whisky, diced gingers, ginger syrup and cherries and mix together. Set aside to soak for a couple of hours, or overnight. Spread the hazelnuts on a baking tray and bake for 8-10 minutes until golden, then cool, chop roughly and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 140°C, fan 120°C, gas 1. Oil or grease a 20cm diameter, 7cm deep cake tin with a removable base, and line the base and sides with baking paper, making sure it comes at least 3cm above the top of the tin to hold all the cake mix. Cut an extra sheet to cover the top of the cake.
Put the butter, flour, spices, sugars, eggs and treacle in a large mixing bowl with a good pinch of salt and beat together with an electric beater for 2-3 minutes until combined. Add the soaked dried fruit and any remaining liquid, plus the hazelnuts, then mix everything together with a metal spoon. Transfer to the cake tin and level the top. Crumple up the sheet of baking paper, then smooth it out and place loosely over the top of the cake tin (crumpling the paper helps it to mould slightly over the tin and stay in place).
Bake in the middle of the oven for about 4 hours, until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out reasonably clean – it might have some fruit on it but shouldn’t have any uncooked mixture.
Leave the cooked cake in the tin for 20 minutes, then turn out upside-down onto a wire rack and remove the baking paper and base of the tin.
Leave to cool completely, then wrap the cake in 2 layers of baking paper, then foil, and keep somewhere cool, dark and dry. Every week or once a month, unwrap the cake and feed it with a few spoonfuls of whisky or rum, with the last feeding about a week before you ice it, so that it isn’t too wet. If you’re making it to serve straight away, it will need a night to firm up before it’s covered with marzipan, and then another night after that before being iced. The cake will also freeze for up to 3 months – wrap in the same way as above, adding a layer of clingfilm over the top. Defrost at room temperature.
Tip
How to make it gluten free Replace plain flour with GF plain flour, adding 1⁄2 tsp xanthan gum. It’ll need more liquid, so add the juice of an extra orange when you make the cake batter.
For a smaller cake ... halve the ingredient quantities and bake in a deep 18cm round cake tin for 2-2 1⁄2 hours.
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For a non-alcoholic version, you can replace the alcohol with cold tea, fresh orange or apple juice. You can then feed the cake with either: Cold tea. Fresh orange or apple juice.
Whiskey serves as a great substitute for brandy in a fruitcake. Although whiskey comes from fermented grain mash while brandy is made from fermented grape mash, the process is so similar, that the flavor will be similar as well.
+ While brandy is the traditional partner for fruit cake, you could also try using a dessert sherry such as Pedro Ximénez. It's an intensely sweet, dark sherry made from the Spanish grape variety of the same name. Perfect in festive cakes, puddings and custards, you can find it in liquor stores.
What alcohol should you use? Strong, flavourful spirits with a high ABV are ideal for feeding fruitcakes. You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.
A good two or three months in advance is ideal. This allows time for the fruits and flavours to mature as you feed the cake regularly in the lead up to Christmas Day, giving the beautiful richness that Christmas cake is known for.
Some say you should make your Christmas cake 6 weeks before eating, but the advice given on Nigella.com is that 12 weeks before is the optimum time to get baking. Your Christmas cake should be fed every 4 to 6 weeks but in the meantime, after baking, it should be stored away in a secure, air tight container.
Wrap the cake in greaseproof paper or baking parchment then wrap it in kitchen foil. Store cake in a second layer of foil or in an airtight tin. You can repeat the feeding process every couple of weeks for three or four feeds. However, if the cake makes the work surface damp, appears wet or stodgy, discontinue feeding.
As long as you're confident it's fully cooked, I don't think you've anything to worry about, especially as you'll be adding liquid. The only danger of over-cooking at low temperatures would be drying out, and that will be remedied.
It may be wet because of the alcohol depending when you last gave it a feed. Is it very wet or just a little sticky. Sometimes if fruit cake has not cooled sufficiently and is wrapped up it can cause a slimy wettness. If your cake is not slimy it should be fine.
Cool completely. Keep the cake well wrapped, then feed once a fortnight with 1-2 tbsp sherry. Poke holes into the cake with a skewer and slowly spoon over the sherry. If you don't have time to do this, this cake is delicious freshly made, and can be covered and decorated as soon as it has completely cooled down.
However you do need a fairly deep tin for all sizes of Christmas cake. A regular sandwich tin (cake pan) will not be deep enough - you ideally need a loose-bottomed cake tin or springform pan which is around 8cm/3 1/2 inches deep.
Nigella suggests bourbon or brandy but you can use many other alternative alcohols. Bourbon is a type of whiskey, so the Scotch whisky may be the best alternative. However, the ginger wine could also be used as there is ground ginger in the cake.
I'm not sure if you are wanting to avoid alcohol or just don't care for the taste of rum, but here are some of the other liquors that work for fruitcake: Brandy, sherry, cognac, amaretto, orange or coffee liqueur, and hazelnut schnapps.
For the pudding and the cake, you could substitute the alcohol with apple, orange, red grape or prune juice. The cake can be made ahead but don't feed it.
Rum – White grape juice, pineapple juice, or apple juice in equal liquid amounts as called for in the recipe. Can also use these juices with 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of non-alcoholic rum, almond or vanilla extract added.
Introduction: My name is Nicola Considine CPA, I am a determined, witty, powerful, brainy, open, smiling, proud person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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Prep time: 45 mins
