Helens Christmas Cake "The Real Recipe"

I had never made a Christmas Cake until around 15 years ago.  I had watched my mother making them every year and every year there was always the same sense of panic – is it cooked enough, is it cooked too much, or just maybe, is it cooked just right?

A hot cake would be taken from the oven, cooled a little and then a very small square taken from right in the middle to work out where on the above scale of “crookedness” it fell.  I can’t really remember what would happen after it was assessed but I can imagine it was more time in the oven, or more brandy poured over it as needed.

It also seemed to be quite a complicated process to cook a Christmas cake, time consuming as well as the stress involved over how it turned out. 

Needless to say, when it came time to cook my first Christmas Cake a similar level of stress started to build up.  In this case it was made even more so because it was taking over from my mother-in-law. 

All my husband ever wanted from his mother for Christmas was one of her Christmas Cakes and this was a ritual that had happened for years.  He would hardly ever eat anyone else’s cake, including my mothers, his mother’s was the one he loved and he would enjoy it piece by piece through Christmas and into the new year. 

Around 15 years ago she announced she would no longer be making her annual Christmas cake, she was retiring from the tradition.  The request made was to then pass the recipe to me so that I could take over – handing the reins to the next generation – and with it the stress of getting it cooked just right – or so I thought. 

Once the fruit had soaked in brandy for a suitable amount of time, the recipe didn’t seem too difficult.  The hardest and most time-consuming part was the lining of the cake tin.   Slow and steady with plenty of padding is the rule with Christmas cakes.  I use old cereal boxes (a couple of layers) and a section of the newspaper (half a dozen pieces thick) and then finally grease proof paper. 

The cake mix is finally poured into the middle of all these layers and heads off to slowly bake for 3 hours.  No fan, just good old “Bake” setting.

As soon as those 3 hours are up and the timer goes off, I poke quite a few holes right across the cake with a cake skewer and then pour brandy across it – the sizzle and the aroma are quite intoxicating, my favourite part of baking it.  The oven door closes again, and it sits slowly cooling overnight. 

Then when I can’t keep Wayne from nagging about when he can eat his cake it needs to be iced.  Jam brushed on, marzipan icing rolled thinly and applied, and the finishing touch is brandy butter icing. 

Well, the first year I made it I cut off the first slices for him, worrying about just how moist it would be and whether it was cooked just right but I certainly didn’t expect the response I got to the first bite.

“THIS ISN’T MY MOTHERS CHRISTMAS CAKE!!”

I’d been given the recipe from her, I’d followed it to the letter, no mention of how well it was cooked – just that it wasn’t the same cake he got from her every year.   I was mortified and I can’t remember if he even ate that one.

A phone call to his mother saying that the cake was nothing like hers got the following reply – “Well, I wouldn’t give her MY recipe!!”  I was sabotaged, my first ever time I cooked a Christmas Cake came with so much pressure that I couldn’t believe this had happened. 

This was quickly followed by giving me “her” Christmas Cake recipe.  It is written into my recipe cookbook with the title – Helen’s Christmas Cake (the real recipe!).

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Helens Christmas Cake (The real recipe!):⁠

Ingredients:⁠

- 225g butter⁠

- 225g brown sugar⁠

- 1 tbsp golden syrup⁠

- 6 eggs⁠

- 340g flour⁠

- 1 tsp baking powder⁠

- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon ⁠

- 1 1/2 tsp mixed spices⁠

- 1 tsp vanilla essence ⁠

- 1 tsp lemon essence ⁠

- 1 tsp almond essence⁠

- 1360g mixed fruit⁠⁠

Icing:⁠

- Jam⁠

- Almond Icing

- 340g Icing sugar (start with 226g)⁠

- 85g butter⁠

- Vanilla essence⁠

- Brandy⁠

 

Soak the fruit mix in some brandy for as long as you can spare.  This might be a month if I’m lucky, it might only get a day or two if I’m really busy and not prepared.

When it’s time to bake your cake: 

Prepare your baking tin first.  I line the tin with a layer of thin cardboard from a breakfast cereal box or similar on the bottom and the sides, sitting up higher than the sides of the tin.  Then I do the same with about 6 layers of newspaper and finally I line it with greaseproof paper. 

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celcius, normal bake (not fan bake). 

 Cream the butter and the sugar.  Then mix the golden syrup, eggs and essences into the butter mix. 

In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder and spices. 

Then take turns at adding some flour mix and then some butter mix into the fruit mix until all wet and dry ingredients are added. 

Scoop this out into your prepared tin and bake in the over for 3 hours.  After 3 hours, I take a skewer and poke it randomly into the cake and then pour brandy over the top.  The holes give it access to soak into the middle of the cake and not just run off the surface.

Leave it in the oven which is then turned off and the door closed until the next day when it will be completely cool. 

Depending on how long I have between cooking and Christmas I may then pour some more brandy on it or I may get straight to icing it.  

To ice: 

Brush the surface of the cake (and the sides if you also plan to ice the sides) with jam, I use strawberry but I don’t think it’s important, it just helps the almond icing stick. 

Roll out almond paste thinly and place this over the cake. 

Make your brandy butter icing by melting the butter and adding half the icing sugar.  Then mix in about a teaspoon of vanilla essence and a little brandy and slowly add the rest of your icing sugar.  I keep adding brandy and icing sugar until it gets to the level of brandy taste that I like and the consistency that the icing needs to be spread nicely on the cake.   

Once it’s iced, decorate as you please or just get straight to enjoying it.  

Merry Christmas everyone.

Melanie