Christmas Calendar 2013 Day 2 - Christmas cake English style

In the wonderful baking book "Season Baking" by Fiona Cairns, which I brought on my last shopping expedition to England. And in this book I found there is recipe on traditional English Christmas cake full of raisins, nuts and alcohol. The good thing about this recipe is, that you do have to make it months away from Christmas, as a maturation time of one-two weeks is sufficient, however a couple of month as maturation time would also be OK according to this recipes.

I made a few changes, as this gave me the opportunity for using smaller amount of leftovers available in my kitchen. Hopefully this will not ruin my cake !!! Replaced with sherry with white port wine, used more currants and less dark raisins, used a mix of hazelnuts and almonds to clear up nut left overs instead of only almonds and finally replaced glacé cherries with Amarene cherries.

Already now I have decided, that I will not try my hands on making the advanced decoration with marzipan lid, royal icing, sugar paste and small eatable roses and leafs, as I know I will be messing up this part of the cake. So here I will bake a ready-to-use marzipan and make no decorations at all.

Christmas cake English style a la "Season Bake":

• 170 g sultanas
• 155 g dark raisins
• 85 g currants
• 60 g pickled ginger - finely chopped
• 2 organic oranges - only the zest
• 200 golden syrup 
• 4 tablespoons white port wine
• 150 g butter - soft
• 50 g dark chocolate
• 100 g (cake) flour
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 60 g blanched almonds
• 150 g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 eggs
• nuts flour (40 g almonds and 20 g hazel nuts)
• 115 g Amarene cherries - removed from it´s syrup and halved
• 2 tablespoons white port wine
• Marzipan cake lid

1. Place the sultanas, raisins, currants, orange zest, golden syrup and white port wine in a mixing bowl.
2. Stir everything well together and place the mixing bowl, which it closed with a lid, before it is place in the refrigerator night over.
3. Roast the blanched almonds in a baking tray in the oven at 180'C for 8 minutes. 
4. Cold down the almonds and chop them roughly.
5. Blend the others with skin into fine flour.
6. Melt the dark chocolate, as usual I used the microwave oven for the purpose.
7. Sieve the (cake) flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder together in one mix.
8. Whip the soft sugar and dark muscovado sugar together for five minutes on relative high speed into a light and fluffy mass. I used the balloon whip on my KitchenAid - speed 6.
9. Add the eggs one by one and between the egg add spoon fulls of the flour mix. Here I used speed 2.
10. Be careful not to over whip the cake mass after addition of the last egg.
11. Fold the nut flour, chocolate, the sugar-alcohol fruits and Amarene cherries into the cake dough. Fold everything well together.
12. Cover a round tin (diameter 23 cm and height 7.5 cm) with baking paper.
13. Fill the cake dough into the cake form.
14. Bake the cake at 150'C for 2-2½ hours in the lower part of the oven, or until a cake tester comes clean out of the cake.
15. Cool the cake down in the form.
16. When the cake is cold, pinch holes in it and sprinkle it the remaining 2 tablespoons of white port wine.
17. Wrap the cake in baking paper followed by foil and place in a air tight container, and lets is mature for one-two weeks or several months, if you are out in good time.
18. Finally you will decorate the cake with marzipan depending on your capabilities with this area.