Let them eat cake!

Merry Christmas, seasonal greeting and all that Jazz readers. I'm back visiting the family and thought a nice cake recipe would be perfect for this time of excess and over indulgence.

Firstly take 1kg of dried fruit mix and chuck in a bowl with a sprinkling of glacé cherries and mixed peel and soak over night (up to 24 hours, the longer, the better) in either port, sherry or brandy or if you're some kind of weirdo you can just use orange juice.

The fruit mix after its soaking in Port for 24 hours plus some lime marmalade

Take 400g of unsalted butter out of the fridge and leave it out for half an hour so it's soft and then cut it into small junks in a bowl then add a mixture of fine brown sugar and caster sugar (400g in total) to the butter and mix together.

Left: Mix the sugar and butter together...

Right: ...to make a thick batter.

Whilst you have your glamourous assistant mixes the sugar and the butter weigh out 110g of ground almonds and then add 350g of plain flour. Then create a well in the butter sugar batter and crack the contents of a large egg into it (crack open the egg into a mug first so you can fish out any bits of shell which finds its way in there) and add a heaped spoonful of the flour and almond mix and then mix together. Do this process with four more large eggs and then tip in the remaining flour and almond mix and mix thoroughly.

The egg in a well in the middle of the sugar/butter mix with a heaped spoonful of the plain flour/ground almond mix.

Now add the soaked fruit and any of the booze it was soaked in that wasn't absorbed and mix thoroughly. If the batter is the right consistency your should be able to scoop up a spoonful and which when turned upside should fall back into the bowl in fat lumps. If the batter is too dry it will stick to the spoon (slowly add more booze mixing thoroughly until the consistency is correct) and if it's too wet it will dribble off the spoon (slowly add more flour mixing thoroughly until the consistency is just right).

The completed cake batter.

Then spoon the cake batter into two deep, 8 inch diameter cake tins (you know the ones, they have a separate bottom bit) and decorate with blanched almonds. Then place in a preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius for approximately an hour and a half until golden brown and cooked through.

Left: Ready for the oven!

Right: Put the cakes into a preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius.

You've probably noticed that I used two loaf tins instead of a second round cake tin and that's because my mother doesn't have a second round cake tin so we used a loaf tin instead. Here below are the finished articles...

Happy baking and I hope to see you back here in the new year!