Emily Jonzen is a London-based food stylist and recipe writer with almost ten years of experience working on books, magazines, packaging, advertising and television projects.
See more of Emily Jonzen’s recipes
Emily Jonzen
Emily Jonzen is a London-based food stylist and recipe writer with almost ten years of experience working on books, magazines, packaging, advertising and television projects.
See more of Emily Jonzen’s recipes
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Ingredients
2 x 125g packs dried morello cherries
300g mixed sultanas and jumbo raisins
250g dried prunes, diced
200g glacé cherries, roughly chopped
zest and juice of 2 oranges
175ml amaretto liqueur, plus extra to feed
100g flaked almonds
250g soft butter, plus extra to grease
200g light brown sugar
4 medium eggs
150g plain flour
2 tsp ground mixed spice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
100g ground almonds
1 tsp vanilla extract
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Step by step
Put the dried fruit, glacé cherries and orange zest and juice into a large pan and stir over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes, until the juice begins to bubble. Remove from the heat, stir through the amaretto and cover. Leave for 2 hours or overnight, for the fruit to plump up.
Preheat the oven to 140°C, fan 120°C, gas 1. Spread out the flaked almonds on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden; leave to cool. Grease and line a deep 20cm, loose-based cake tin with a double layer of baking paper, making sure that it comes up at least 4cm above the top of the tin. Wrap the outside of the tin in a couple of sheets of newspaper and secure with kitchen string. Cut another sheet of baking paper to cover the top, cutting a small circle in the centre for steam to escape during baking.
In your largest mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then sift over the flour and spices plus a pinch of salt. Tip in the ground and toasted almonds, the vanilla and the soaked fruits along with any liquid from the pan. Gently fold everything together, until just combined. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, making a dent in the centre of the mixture (to help create a flat top during baking).
Cover the top with the prepared baking paper and bake for about 3½ hours, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out almost clean (it may be slightly sticky but shouldn’t have any uncooked mixture on it). Leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack, removing the base and baking paper. Once cool, wrap in a double layer of baking paper, then in a layer of foil, and keep in a cool, dark place. The wrapped cake keeps for up to 3 months.
If you want to feed the cake with extra amaretto, poke a few holes in the top of the cake with a co*cktail stick and feed with 1 tablespoon of amaretto every week or two. If you’re going to marzipan and ice the cake, stop feeding it at least a week beforehand, to let the surface dry out.
Adaptations to try
Skip the booze and make an alcohol-free cake using apple or orange juice instead of amaretto, and add 2 tsp almond extract if you still want that rich almond flavour.
You can use pretty much any combination of dried fruit that you like in the cake, as long as it adds up to the same total weight.
The amaretto can be subbed with whatever’s already in your drinks store: fruit-flavoured liqueurs, sherry, port or brandy, rum or whisky.
Use up any combination of unsalted nuts that are hanging around in your cupboard; sniff and taste to make sure they aren’t stale, then toast in the oven to bring out their flavour.
Don’t worry if you don’t have light brown sugar; you can use any type (other than icing sugar or jam sugar); the darker the colour, the deeper the flavour it adds to the cake.
Most people use brandy. I think this tastes better. This cake does NOT need to mature for weeks to taste gorgeous - 6 days from start to finish is as much time as you need. Although, if you prefer a more leisurely pace, that also works.
Christmas cakes are also commonly made with pudding while a fruit cake uses butter, however there are Christmas cake recipes that do contain butter. The traditional Scottish Christmas cake, also known as the Whisky Dundee, is very popular. It is a light crumbly cake with currants, raisins, cherries and Scotch whisky.
Cognac is probably the best substitute for brandy in fruitcake. That's because cognac is basically fancy brandy. The naming is just a bit of technicality.
You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.
Some say you should make your Christmas cake 6 weeks before eating, but the advice given on Nigella.com is that 12 weeks before is the optimum time to get baking. Your Christmas cake should be fed every 4 to 6 weeks but in the meantime, after baking, it should be stored away in a secure, air tight container.
That honor goes to a 4,176-year-old cake that was found in an Egyptian tomb, according to the Guinness organization. It is on display in a food museum in Switzerland.
25 rolls around — a fact that gave birth to an unfortunate bit of old Japanese slang: "Christmas cake" was used to refer to an unmarried woman who was over 25 and thus, considered past her prime.
Whoever finds the fava bean in their slice is considered to have good luck for the coming year. Additionally, a small trinket or figurine is sometimes hidden in the cake, and the person who finds it is said to be the "king" or "queen" of the celebration.
Wrap the cake in greaseproof paper or baking parchment then wrap it in kitchen foil. Store cake in a second layer of foil or in an airtight tin. You can repeat the feeding process every couple of weeks for three or four feeds. However, if the cake makes the work surface damp, appears wet or stodgy, discontinue feeding.
In an oven that's too hot, the outside of the cake cooks at a much faster rate than the inside. A crust forms early on, but as the inside of the cake continues to cook and rise, this crack crusts. You might experience the same problem if the cake recipe has too much leavener or if you've used a pan that's too small.
If you are skipping the brandy because you don't have any - try a rum or whisky instead. They have a slightly different flavour profile, but not hugely different.
Traditional amaretto may have borrowed from this recipe, using brandy and burnt sugar along with almonds. Most higher-quality amaretto is now made with oil extracted from apricot pits, however, sometimes in an amalgam of various fruit essences.
Let's start with the most important part: All Cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is Cognac. Think of brandy as the umbrella category that comprises spirits that have been distilled from fruit — by definition, either grapes or the fermented juice of another fruit.
If you can't get your hands on brandy, another booze to use is Sherry, Wilson suggests. Sherry is a fortified wine that is similarly high in alcohol content to Cognac and, though not an exact match, can mimic Cognac's fruity, bright and sometimes sweet flavors.
Introduction: My name is Merrill Bechtelar CPA, I am a clean, agreeable, glorious, magnificent, witty, enchanting, comfortable person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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Prep time: 45 mins
