Last minute Christmas cake

[1]

With Christmas just under a fortnight away, this is the last chance you will get to make your Christmas cake, though it is too late to soak your dry fruits in alcohol.

While we try to keep to traditional recipes for festivals, it’s good to deviate from the beaten path once in a while and sometimes necessary as well. We will thus look at a Christmas cake recipe that does not use rum or sherry, but orange juice.

Orange Juice infused
X-Mas cake
While no alcohol is used in this cake, everything else, the dry fruits etc. is as per tradition.

Ingredients
175 gm raisins
350 gm glace cherries (available in stores)
500 gm
currants
350 gm
sultanas
150 ml orange juice, plus a little extra
Zest of 2 oranges
250 gm butter,
softened
250 gm brown sugar
4 eggs
75 gm almonds, blanched and chopped
1 tbsp baking powder
225 gm plain flour
1½ tsp grated nutmeg

Method
In a large container with a lid, add the dried fruit, orange juice and the orange zest. Mix well with hands, cover the lid tightly and leave to soak for at least three days, giving it a stir every day.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 140°C. Grease and line a deep, round tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper.
In a large bowl that is big enough to hold all the ingredients, ads the butter, sugar, eggs and almonds and beat well. Add the flour, baking powder and grated nutmeg and mix further. Now stir in the soaked fruit. Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and level the surface with the back of a spatula.
Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for four and a half hours or until the cake feels firm to the touch and is a rich golden brown. Check after two hours, and if the cake is of the right colour, cover with foil. A skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin.
When cool, pierce the cake at intervals with a fine skewer and feed with a little extra orange juice. Wrap the completely cold cake and store in a cool place for as long as possible, adding a bit of orange juice every other day.
To decorate, you can use almond paste, icing sugar and royal icing available in packets.