Festive fruit & nut cake
By Sara Buenfeld
Cooking time
Prep: 30 mins - 40 mins Cook: 2 hrsSkill level
EasyServings
Cuts into 12-16 slicesThis fabulously moist and nutty Christmas cake is baked with a syrup and nut topping - a bit like a Florentine biscuit
Nutrition and extra info
Additional info
- Freezable
Nutrition per slice
- kcalories
- 780
- protein
- 14g
- carbs
- 95g
- fat
- 40g
- saturates
- 14g
- fibre
- 4g
- sugar
- 28g
- salt
- 0.67g
Ingredients
- 250g butter, at room temperature
- 140g light muscovado sugar
- 6 large eggs, beaten
- 280g plain flour
- 85g ground almonds
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 700g luxury mixed fruits (including raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed peel and glace cherries)
- 3 tbsp dark rum
- 140g white marzipan, diced
For the florentine topping
- 50g each whole skinned hazelnuts and blanched almonds
- 85g each Brazil nuts and flaked almonds
- 140g whole glacé cherries
- 100g golden syrup
To decorate
- 1 metre of wide ribbon
Buy Ingredients
Buy the ingredients for this recipe now via:
Want to know how this works? Read all about it here.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4/fan 160C and lightly grease and line the base and sides of a deep 22-23cm round loose-based cake tin with Bake-o-Glide or baking parchment (see overleaf). Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, ground almonds and spices until thoroughly mixed and creamy, preferably with an electric beater or in a food mixer.
- Measure off 100g/4oz of the cake mixture, put in a bowl and set aside. Fold the fruit and rum into the remaining mixture, then gently stir in the marzipan. Spoon this mixture into the prepared cake tin and flatten with a spatula to make a smooth even surface, then make a slight dip in the centre of the cake. This simple trick will give the finished cake a nice flat top. Bake for 11⁄4 hours.
- While the cake is in the oven, make the fruit and nut topping. Mix all the nuts, cherries and syrup into the remaining cake mixture (see tip overleaf). Spoon the mixture on top of the part-cooked cake (once it has had its 11⁄4 hours), evenly distributing the mixture of nuts and cherries across the surface of the cake. Loosely cover the top of the tin with foil.
- Return to the oven for 40 minutes more, then take off the foil and bake for another 10-15 minutes, so the nuts can turn golden. Keep an eye on them, so they don’t get too dark. To test the cake mixture is cooked, insert a fine skewer into the cake – if it comes out clean then it's ready. Cool in the tin then turn out, keeping the lining on, and wrap with foil. (The cake will keep for up to 2 weeks or can be frozen for up to 2 months.)
- To serve, remove the cake from the foil and strip away the lining. Place on a board or serving plate and tie with a decorative ribbon.
Recipe from Good Food magazine, December 2002
Comments, questions and tips
Comments
I made this cake for my husband for his birthday as he's not mad on icing.He absolutely loved it and told me to make sure I didn't loose the recipe.I am just about to make one for my Mom for Mothers Day.The only thing I did as an extra was to soak the fruit in rum overnight as well as adding rum into the cake mixture.A big thumbs up for this cake I think.
I tried this cake out for the first time this Christmas and have already made 4 more, as gifts, because it has proved so popular! I have never eaten fruit cake so I haven't tried this, but the number of people who have asked for the recipe is amazing. Hoops51 did you remember the syrup? It does make it look like the photo.
As recipe had loads of good comments I had a bash at it. Flavour-wise it was very nice indeed - I'm always disappointed though when the camera-man has been given artistic licence, as there is no way the topping could look like it did in the picture with 4 oz/100g of cake mix stirred in with the nuts and fruit. Tasted lovely, but didn't look as good as I thought it would.
This recipe is amazing! Everyone who tries it loves it! 'Now our staple Christmas Cake. (Another fave is cranberry, pecan loaf.) I always scale this down to 3/4 of the ingredients otherwise its too big for my cake tin (20cm). I also often dont put the topping on and Ãts non the worse for that. Amaretto or sherry instead of Rum also makes it lighter. With the scaled down recipe I've made 6 small loaf cakes before (like to old penny loaf size not 450g / 1lb)! and they are great as presents. Go on, try it.
we loved the ginger flavour of this cake the first time i made it so subsequently added some stem ginger from a jar (about three pieces, coarsely chopped) into the topping mix, plus some of the ginger syrup from the jar, reducing the golden syrup by the same amount. also reduced the glace cherries in the topping to 100 grams.
Wow.... I made 3 of those as presents this year and even had the opportunity to taste one, it taste as good as it looks. I'll definetly make that one again. When i told my friend about it she decided to make a few too! So we are now really fast and good at making it! And also realised if you make a few mistakes it still taste really good! Thank you!