I try not to think about Christmas until December, but unfortunately, if you want a home baked Christmas cake to blow your socks off you’ll need to bake it now.

Ingredients

700g of luxury mixed dried fruit

300g Mixture of Ready to Eat Prunes, Figs & Cranberries

Zest and Juice of 1 Orange

Zest and Juice of 1 Lemon

150ml Brandy/Sherry/whiskey or rum plus extra for   feeding – I always use Brandy

250g pack of butter

200g light soft brown sugar

175g plain flour

100g ground almond

½ tsp. of baking powder

2 tsp. mixed spice

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

¼ tsp. ground cloves

100g flaked almond

4 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Method

Put all the dried fruit, zest and juice, alcohol, butter and sugar in a large pan over a medium heat. Bring to the boil and lower the heat to simmer for five minutes.

Tip the fruit mixture into a large bowl and leave to cool for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 150C/130c fan/Gas 2.

Line a deep 20cm cake tin with a double layer of baking parchment and then wrap a double layer of newspaper around the outside – tie it with string to secure. (This will stop it burning.)

I then mix the remaining ingredients and then add this to the cooled fruit mixture.  Tip this into your prepared tin, level the top and bake in the centre of the oven for 2 hours.

Remove from the oven and skewer the cake all over poking the skewer all the way down the cake. Spoon over 2 tbsp of your chosen alcohol.

Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin.

To store, I pop the cake and the baking parchment into a tin.  I feed the cake with 1 tbsp. of alcohol every week. Don’t feed the cake for the final week to give the surface a chance to dry before adding the marzipan and icing.

I am famous for this cake – it is lethal come Christmas.  I think this is because I generally make it during the October school holidays, whereas traditionally it is made near the end of November.  This allows my cake additional weeks for feeding – gosh it’s good.