Christmas Cake

Ingredients (makes one 10-inch cake)

450g raisins
450g sultanas
450g currants (or, I use mixed fruit, eg currants, raisins, sultanas and a little mixed peel)
170g glace cherries, chopped into quarters
6 tbsp brandy - plus more for soaking once cake is made
285g softened butter
225g dark brown sugar
2 tbsp dark treacle
Grated rind of 2 oranges and 1 lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
6 eggs, beaten
285g plain flour
1 heaped tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp mace
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Wash all fruit with boiling water and drain, place in a large bowl, and pour over the brandy and leave to soak for up to a week, stirring every other day.

Before you start the cake, prepare the tin: line it with 2 layers of buttered greaseproof/baking paper, greased both sides to help it stick together. Then (the tricky bit!) get 10 sheets of newspaper together and cut so that when surrounding the tin, it just reaches the top. If using a square tin, cut the corners to enable you to wrap the tin up like a parcel and tie round with a string to hold in place. It is essential to do this so that the outside of the cake stays nice and moist and doesn’t burn.

How to make:

Heat oven to 140 C.
Cream together the butter, sugar, treacle, lemon and orange rind. Mix the spices into the flour in a separate bowl.
Add the eggs gradually, and once half are added, start to add a few spoonfuls of flour/spices too, as you add the rest of the beaten egg.
Continue and fold in the remaining flour and soaked fruit, and stir until well mixed.
Pour the mixture into the tin and level with a knife. Then, over the kitchen floor, twist the tin and drop it from a height of about a foot, to level the cake and remove any air bubbles. Then wet your hand with cold water and with your hand outstretched, pat all over the top of the cake; you may need to do this twice. This stops it rising unevenly and enables you to end up with a nice flat-topped cake.
Place in the oven. It can take 3 hours to cook, but check it after 2.5 hours or so, depending on your oven. The paper doesn’t burn, or never has done ye,t because of the low temp, but of course, keep an eye out!
When cooked, remove from the oven and leave in the tin to cool completely. Remove from tin and wrap in 2 layers of tin foil.
After a week, turn the cake over and pierce the bottom with a skewer lots of times all over. Pour over some brandy, rub in and leave to soak in. Re-wrap in foil and repeat the brandy step at least once more. I leave it wrapped in foil for a good couple of weeks before eating.
If you are covering/topping with marzipan, do that about a week before Christmas and ice it a few days later.