Can I rescue the Christmas cake??

[toomanyflatwhites]

In earlier easier childfree years I have made and loved Nigel Slater's recipe Christmas cake from his kitchen diaries - it's super fruit-laden with figs, apricots, cranberries as well as the usual dried fruits, plus hazelnuts, ground almonds - no booze as that's my family's preference! It ends up costing a lot and weighs a ton but is delicious and really appreciated by my parents, sister and me.

Decided I would make one this year - am currently pregnant with DC2 so knackered but for DD (2.5) to help as she loves "mixing" (let's not talk about the mess!) but the problem is I have accidentally overcooked it. The recipe is to cook for an hour at 160C, then turn the oven down to 150 and leave for 90 mins. I checked it just before the hour was up and it was looking quite brown already, so I turned the oven down and set the timer, then went to put DD to bed...
As often happens I fell asleep with her, and woke up looooong after the cooking was done Luckily the timer switched the oven off but to my mind it looked overdone for sure. This was on Friday, and yesterday I punched holes in it with a skewer (it felt really hard...) and poured orange juice in to"feed" it. Question is: how often can I do this? And will it save the cake if it's really dry??

If I were you I would try to cut into the cake with a round pastry cutter or sharp knife to remove a 'core' of cake to see what it actually looks like inside or even slice down middle to open up cake. You can 'glue' together with apricot jam and when iced no-one Will know. I wouldn't keep soaking it in juice without some idea of if it can be saved. You may be ok, I left mine in oven overnight after timer turned off last year and it was fine, that was a Jamie Oliver one and also has loads of dried fruit in.

I did that one year and just sliced a layer off top and bottom ( the sides seemed ok )
Marzipaned and iced it . It was fine .

Yes, absolutely slice in half to check - if you’re icing the top then no one will even know as you can as a PP said use jam to hold to two sides together.

I overdid mine a bit this year, but the bottom and the sides are fine, so I have just turned it over. I don't ice etc. But as PP saus check the middle, it may not be as bad as you fear. Maybe tweet Nigel and ask him!

Thanks everyone, I'm going to give it a go! And glad to hear I'm not the only one who's overdone it ;)

Last year I forgot to add any spices to the Christmas cake. The year before, all the raisins/sultanas had seeds, giving the cake the texture of sand! I reckon anything else is salvageable