Caitriona Redmond's Christmas Cake Recipe -

It’s not too late to make my Christmas Cake Recipe! Simply because it’s designed to be frosted or iced traditionally. It’s not quite as heavy as old-style cakes, nor as sweet, because the shot of espresso adds balance to the flavours. This is a firm family favourite in my house. Since I iced our cake last week the kids have been begging me to slice it early because they love fruit cake so much!

Some of you may have spotted this Christmas Cake Recipe in Lidl Ireland stores in 2018. I’ve had many requests to put the recipe on the blog and here you go!

[recipe][recipe title=”Christmas Cake Recipe” servings=”20″ time=”3 hours” difficulty=”medium”]

Ingredients

165g Butter (unsalted)
110g Light Brown Demerara Sugar
2 tablespoons Black Treacle
3 Medium Free Range Eggs
165g Plain Flour
1 shot good quality Espresso
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
400g mixed fruit presoaked (at least overnight) in whiskey (100ml) & juice and rind from 1 orange
50g finely chopped crystallised ginger
50ml whiskey to sprinkle on the cakes while warm

Equipment

Mixing Bowl or Stand Mixer
Wooden Spoon
1 lined circular 25cm baking tin

Method

Preheat your (fan) oven to 150 degrees Celcius and line your circular baking tin.
Cream the butter and sugar together then add the treacle and mix in well.
Beat the eggs into the mixture one by one until the batter is smooth and not lumpy. If it is lumpy then add a small spoon of the flour.
Slowly beat in the flour, espresso, baking powder, cinnamon and ground ginger. The batter will become thick.
Stir in the soaked mixed fruit and crystallised ginger along with the juices from soaking.
Pour the mixture into a lined baking tin and bake in the preheated oven for approximately 1 hour 40 minutes (100 minutes) total.
After 100 minutes, using a cocktail stick test the cake by poking right into the centre, if it is baked then the cocktail stick will come away clean. If the stick does not come away clean then bake for a further 10 minutes and test again.
Once cooked remove the cake from the oven and sprinkle the top with whiskey and leave to cool covered with a clean tea towel.
If you’re going to freeze the cake, then once completely cool wrap well with baking parchment before putting it into the freezer to protect it from burn.
You can ice traditionally with marzipan then fondant icing, or you can frost it if you’re making this cake at the last minute. Here I’ve iced the cake traditionally using 1 roll of marzipan and 1 roll of icing from Dr Oetker Baking Ireland.
To ice/frost beat together 150g unsalted butter, 50ml full fat milk and 400g icing sugar. Flavour as you wish although perhaps a little whiskey in the icing might add a bit of zing![/recipe]

Disclosure: I received the roll out icing and marzipan in a sample package from Dr Oetker. I was under no obligation to mention or blog about their products. I just like using them.