christmas cake makers! when do you bake and what recipe do you use?

[Awoof]

I usually bake the first week of October ( the smells!), feed every couple of days, marzipan two weeks before and ice on the 23rd.
I use delias recipe from a scrap my dad cut out of the times 20 years ago ☺

Would love to hear everyone else's baking traditions!

[HeyMacWey]

I use a recipe from BBC good food. It's a lighter cake with fruit soaked in tea and brandy.
Bake in half term. Then feed regularly :o

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

I usually bake my cake around the beginning of December - later if I am disorganised - and feed it two or three times before I marzipan it and ice it. I usually marzipan it one day, and ice the next - usually on the 23rd and 24th!

I use Delia's recipe too - from her Christmas cookbook.

[chaplin1409]

I will be watching this thread, I have never made my christmas cake my mum used to always make it but she died 6 years ago and we have had shop brought cakes since but I have decided this is the year I need to start making them.

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

Ohhh the smell of a christmas Cake cooking .......

I do a version of the Delia cake -
but I use caster sugar not brown
orange and lemon fresh grated rind not candied peel
sultanas not raisins or currants
Amarretto not sherry/rum/whisky
No spices
Light nuts- almonds,Brazils,walnuts

The recipe I have is an old one and the cooking time is too much for my oven so I have to reduce it by an hour.
I soak the fruits in Amarretto for a week before in a sealed plastic tub.
Cook it early December and feed it with more Ammarretto then make my own marzipan and icing usually 22nd/23rd


I'm making a cake tomorrow, to take to my parents . Not as decadent as a full blown Christmas cake but it's all practice

[ConstantlyCooking]

I make BBC Good Food's simmer and stir cake during the October half term and the feed with brandy until 3rd week of December when I marzipan and ice. I like to make my own marzipan but often end up buying anthon berg from the supermarket. As I love almonds I am considering using amaretto this year.

[Paperblank]

Delia. Saint Delia. Always delicious.

I did once make a christmas cake which was drowned in Grand Marnier...twas also delicious.

[IslaMann]

Mid Sept, Mary Berrys recipe from BBC Good Food. Feed with Brandy once a week, marzipan a week before Xmas, ice Xmas eve.

[sooperdooper]

I usually aim for mid September and always use the Delia recipie that has the line in it something like, 'if it curdles don't worry, a cake with this many amazing ingredients can't fail to taste great'!!

[squeezed]

Normally use a Delia recipe in early September. However this year dd has developed toddler's diarrhoea so she can't have much sugar and definitely not fruit cake. I'm going to have to make a sugar free sponge with no icing instead.

[StubbleTurnips]

Usually on stir up Sunday, last year the national trust did tweet along thing - there's a couple of recipes there too: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/celebrate-stir-up-sunday-with-the-national-trust

[doleritedinosaur]

October this year with Mary Berry's recipe but I use amaretto not brandy.

Made my own mazipan but not icing. Was really, really good.