Christmas cake

I’m a little bit late in making my Christmas cake this year, but it is made, it is done and it is gently seeping in rum. I tried a new recipe this year, instead of the old family traditional one which starts, take one dozen eggs… These days we just don’t eat the same quantity of cake. My daughter doesn’t like fruit cake, I’m always conscious of calories and my husband watches his sugar intake!

Anyway… I saw this rather unusual recipe in a Waitrose free booklet and into the oven it went yesterday.

It was the strangest recipe; I had to soak the mixed fruit first… fair enough , I usually do that, but first I had to blitz them with the nuts in the blender with rum, then leave to soak for a week. The resulting mix was like fudge and actually looked quite delicious raw and uncooked. However the following week when I came to complete the cake it was as I had left it, a solid lump of mixed up goo!

The recipe continued in the usual way, mixing butter and sugar until light and fluffy but then add the eggs… one at a time, but the mixture became very very loose and on the point of separating. I continued, gently  adding the soaked fruit. The recipe said add the soaking liquor, well there wasn’t any because it was all in the fudgy mass of blitzed fruit and nuts… something wrong with the recipe I think!

After the fruit in went the flour and baking powder  then into the oven for 1 ¾-2 hours… except it was still wet on the top after 2 hours… yes, I mean wet. In the end I cooked it for nearly four hours. it looks OK .. and as the recipe suggests I’ve added more rum (yes, even more!)

I think I will decorate it with glacé fruits… I’ll let you see the results on Christmas Eve!