The ultimate Christmas cake recipe for 2020
Make your Christmas cake now for the perfect showstopper on Christmas day.
Image: Opies
Take the time in lockdown to make your own delicious Christmas cake this year. This recipe will create the ultimate showstopper as it is packed full of flavour and festive fun.
Ingredients
- 200g Opies crystallised stem ginger, roughly chopped
- 50g Opies cocktail cherries, roughly chopped
- 280g Opies Stem Ginger in Syrup
- 200g currants
- 75ml ginger wine, plus extra for ‘feeding’
- 200g unsalted butter, softened
- 200g dark muscovado Sugar
- 3 medium free range eggs
- 250g self-raising flour
- 1 tbsp ground mixed spice
For the marzipan
- 20g reserved stem ginger syrup
- 500g marzipan
For the royal icing layer
- 500g icing sugar
- 3 egg whites
- Juice of ½ a lemon
- 1 teaspoon glycerine
Read more: 4 delicious vegan Christmas recipe ideas
Method
- Place the Opies srystallised ginger, Opies cocktail cherries, currants and ginger wine into a bowl. Cover and soak for 2 hours (ideally overnight).
- Grease a 15cm cake tin and line with baking paper. Pre heat the oven to 150°C (140°C fan).
- Pour 20g of the syrup from Opies stem ginger and set aside. Place the rest of the jar (syrup and ginger pieces) into a food processor and whizz to make a puree.
- In a large bowl, cream together the unsalted butter with the dark muscovado sugar until light and fluffy. Whisk the eggs together and add to the mixture a tablespoon at a time, beating well in between.
- Gently fold the flour, mixed spice, soaked fruit and pureed stem ginger into the butter and egg mixture. Scoop the mix into the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Wrap the tin in a couple of sheets of newspaper and place a slim wad of newspaper on the shelf of the oven shelf to sit the cake on. Bake for 2 hours.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes. Turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
- To ice: Brush a thin layer of reserved ginger syrup over the cake. Roll out the marzipan to ½ cm thick and lay over the cake. Trim the edges and leave to set for a few hours.
- Place the icing sugar, egg whites, lemon juice and glycerine into a large bowl whisk until stiff peaks form. Cover the cake in icing ensuring it is spread evenly and use a palette knife to create some peaks.
Do you make a Christmas cake every year? Tweet us @goodhomesmag or post a comment on our Facebook page.
