Recipes: Mum's Christmas Fruit Cake

i keep one christmas cake for the following thanksgiving ... slowly steeping in its' fruit and alcohol for an entire year. we opened the tin yesterday to a wonder - almost a pudding ... lovely crumb, beautiful texture and taste and aroma. we passed it around for the first quarter of an hour simply sniffing! :O) now I notice, dear readers, that I have left the recipe at home!! then tomorrow for the recipe. my mum always got the cake much denser, almost black ... llike the plum pudding ... but sadly she is gone and taken the secret with her into the clouds. poka! katrin

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fruit must be soaked a month in advance. you can add to it.
for two small (8 inch) cakes i use 2 kg of mixed fruit.
this is left in a sealed container to soak in molasses, brandy, rum, brown sugar, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and orange juice - with just a splash of balsamic vinegar. :O) fruit and nuts are candied orange and lime peel, dried dates, apricots, prunes, half walnuts, half almonds. this is my own taste, so you could simply use one type of nut and one type of dried fruit as you will. i have made the cake simply with dried dates and almonds as well.

the cake pans are lined in brown paper which keeps the cake from sticking or burning and also means you can store the cakes in this paper wrapping for the length of time until you eat them. the cake batter is topped with a round of brown paper before it goes into the oven.

I do not use a bain marie in the oven to bake the cakes, though i used to. Oven temperature is 120 degrees celcius convection oven. Cakes are baked for 2 hours - until the toothpick is clean.

Ingrediants for cake:
4 cups sifted flour with 2 tsp baking powder.
12 eggs, 400 gram sugar, 400 gram butter.
beat together butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, add wet mixture to dry.
then fold in fruit mixture to cake batter.
split between your two cake tins.

you can make the entire batter into one cake. cooking time would then increase to 3 - 3,5 hours depending on your type of oven.

when cool, place in tin and seal with tape until christmas, or next christmas, or next christmas ...

merry christmas! :O) katrin