Christmas Cake

[FlutteryButterfly]

Anyone made a start? I'm gradually getting the ingredients in and will be feeding the fruit from Halloween 😂. I go for good old Delia's recipe bur with personal tweaks. Only undecided is this year's decoration- tacky or sophisticated ......?

Mary Berry's here for me!

Made it a few weeks ago, will feed it every 2 weeks and decorate it very retro with the marzipan and royal icing peaks.

We do Delia, but later than you. Still tastes delicious, hasn't failed me yet.

I'm not doing one this year as we still don't know where we will be living, DH always insists I make one one but I loath the marzipaning and icing due to dyspraxia ( aka being all fingers and thumbs or as clumsy as hell)

When I do I usually do one of Delia's or the creole Christmas cake.

I will be making a giant stollen courtesy of the Hairy Bikers and hope I don't pour molten marzipan all over my fingers again.

I used to make 2 and send one to my mum. Last time it cost me £15 to post it. Not happening again.

A year! Wow. Years ago I was talking to a woman who had relatives in the Caribeean who started soaking the fruit for next year's rum cake on Boxing Day. You could give them a run for their money by the sound of it.

Started, fruit currently soaking in Amaretto 👌

Always, always Delia here. For a few years I did her lighter, glacé fruit cake for a change. However, we have reverted back to the classic. You can't beat it really. We made ours two weeks ago niw. Which reminds me I must get on and feed it.

Don't know yet what to do with decoration. I am not very skilled with a piping bag. TBH if it was down to me I wouldn't bother with marzipan and icing I would do a decorative nut topping. But I know if I suggest that there will be forlorn expressions from DH and DD. Probably I will buy ready rolled marzipan and fondant and then stick some simple decoration on the top.

I made mine today using Delia’s recipe. The fruit was only soaked since yesterday (I’m obviously an amateur). All wrapped to store but I expect my DH to start eating it next week, if the past is anything to go by! There’s only him who eats it so I’m not too bothered

I don't like icing and I'm rubbish at cake decorating so I normally do a dried fruit and nut topping like this @5foot5 . It's very easy and quite effective I think. Plus I can kid myself that it's quite healthy 😁. Photo shows one from a few years ago. Please ignore the plastic cake box lid it's sitting on and general kitchen mess...

That looks brilliant @boobashka I am very impressed. See, I would love to try something on those lines but the rest of the families preference seems to run to icing! Ho hum.

Ah that's a shame @5foot5 as it's really so simple. But no point if no-one is going to eat it! 😁

Pleased to hear you dont separate the eggs, what stage do you put them in the mixture? This looks fantastic

I do it in two stages, @soupfiend, which makes it all a lot more manageable. (TBH, most of these fruit cakes are like this.) First there's the soaking of the fruit. Then I make an ordinary cake batter. I have an electric hand mixer so I either do it as an all in one mix and beat everything else in one go before adding the fruit, or I start by creaming the butter and sugar and then add the flour, spices etc and beaten egg alternately. Either way I add the soaked fruit last. I don't think it makes much difference to the end result. It comes out very moist but quite dense.

Cake now baked went I the oven 8am and out at 1pm. Still on the cooling rack a little to warm for it's first feed so I'll do that before I go to bed. House starting to smell like Christmas!