Alternative Christmas Cake

dipdip

Hi. I am looking for some suggestions for an alternative Christmas cake. I don't mind if it needs to be made well in advance or the day before.

I love a well-made traditional Christmas cake but my husband doesn't. The problem is he's not a fan of dried fruit (although he does like cranberries.) I'd love to make a festive, special cake for Christmas that goes easy on the fruit but has lots of Christmassy flavours, like cinnamon, port etc.

If anyone has any suggestions I am all ears.

janmaree

I looked up one of my favourite books for you, "Best of Cooking in South Africa" by Lynn Bedford Hall as I remembered a recipe there for "Instant Spice Cake". It calls for seedless raisins but I guess you could substitute dried cranberries if that's what he likes. I'd probably use half and half crystallised ginger and cherries soaked in Amaretto but then I'm weird. :rolleyes:

Anyway, here it is verbatim, I hope it helps.

Instant Spice Cake

A large, moist, stick-to-the-ribs sort of cake, with a delicious flavour. One of my favourites, especially when in a hurry, as it is mixed in minutes.

10 ml baking powder
500 ml brown sugar
2 eggs
4 x 250 ml sifted flour
350 ml buttermilk or yogurt
250 ml oil
10 ml ground nutmeg
5 ml ground cinnamon
1 ml ground cloves
10 ml bicarbonate of soda
250 ml seedless raisins
250 ml chopped nuts

Icing: 100 g soft butter
4 x 250 ml sifted icing sugar
10 ml mixed spice
20 ml Van der Hum (orange liqueur) or to taste
a little thin cream or milk to moisten


Put baking powder, sugar, eggs, flour, buttermilk, oil, spices and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater on medium speed for about 1 minute or until well blended. Fold in raisins and nuts and pour into a deep, oiled 22 cm ring tin. Bake at 180 deg. C for one hour. Stand for 5 minutes before inverting onto cake rack.

To make the icing, cream butter and icing sugar. Add mixed spice, Van der Hum and cream or milk. Frost top and sides of cake, swirling with prongs of fork dipped in hot water. Cover and stand for a day if possible.


The picture in my book shows the cake to have piped rosettes of the frosting around the base and top of the cake as well.

I haven't actually made this one myself but I've had great success with other recipes from the book so I hope it helps!

Good luck.

Woshy

I hate most dried fruit too but I made a Christmas cake last year that gave you a choice to use any fruit/nuts/booze that you want. I used cranberries and apricots because those are the ones I like - plus nuts because I like them.

Here is the recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/850633/asyoulikeit-christmas-cake

It was a nice cake. I need to think about making this year's one soon actually.

dipdip

Thank you both so much - both recipes look great. Cheers.

sandy_c

I'm not a massive fan of fruit cake either but this is yum, i even gave it to fruit cake haters and they loved it too. It was one of the layers that i made for my wedding cake too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolatefruitcake_84675

Ingredients

350g/12oz dried soft prunes, chopped

250g/9oz raisins

125g/4oz currants

175g/6oz unsalted butter, softened

175g/6oz dark muscovado sugar

175ml/6fl oz honey

125ml/4fl oz coffee liqueur

2 oranges, juice and zest only

1 tsp mixed spice

2 tbsp good quality cocoa

3 free-range eggs, beaten

150g/5¼oz plain flour

75g/2½oz ground almonds

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda



Preparation method

1.Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas mark 2.

2.Line the sides and bottom of a 20cm/8in, 9cm/3½in deep, round loose-bottomed cake tin with a layer of bake-o-glide or other reusable silicon-baking parchment. When lining the tin with the bake-o-glide, cut the material into strips that are twice as high as the tin itself (it’s easier to use two shorter strips of bake-o-glide, than one long strip); the height of the strips protects the cake from catching on the outside of the cake tin.

3.Place the fruit, butter, sugar, honey, coffee liqueur, orange juice and zest, mixed spice and cocoa into a large wide saucepan. Heat the mixture until it reaches a gentle boil, stirring the mixture as the butter melts. Let the mixture simmer for ten minutes. Then remove the saucepan from the heat and leave to stand for 30 minutes.

4.After 30 minutes, the mixture will have cooled a little. Add the eggs, flour, ground almonds, baking powder and bicarbonate soda, and mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula until the ingredients have combined.

5.Carefully pour the fruit cake mixture into the bake-o-glide lined cake tin. Transfer the cake tin to the oven and bake for 1¾-2 hours, or until the top of the cake is firm but will has a shiny and sticky look. At this point, if you insert a cake tester into the middle of the cake, the cake should still be a little uncooked in the middle.

6.Place the cake on a cooling rack. Once the cake has cooled, remove it from the tin.

7.To decorate, place the chocolate covered coffee beans in the centre of the cake and arrange the gold starts around the perimeter of the top of the cake. Then sprinkle some gold mini-balls over the whole of the cake. Sprinkle the Disco Gold Hologram Glitter over the top of the cake.

dipdip

Thanks Sandy, I appreciate that you say non-fruit-cake-loving-types will enjoy it, but he won't eat it if he knows it's full of prunes, raisins and currants.