Before I marzipanned the first cake I trimmed it as the edges looked a little over done and gave them to Cyclo who pronounced them dry and over cooked. Since then I have been worried that the cake will be awful. Pretty on the outside, in a rough sort of way, but not so good on the inside….
I decided to have a back-up cake. Both Delia Smith and Mary Berry have a cake recipe made using mincemeat – I didn’t find my versions on-line, but in my old recipe books. I decided to go for Mary Berry and added luxury mixed dried fruit instead of the dried fruit she lists. I made it in my newly purchased round tin, on Friday.
The cake was easy and cooked well, and I had been storing it in a tin until yesterday, when I applied the marzipan. Now, you’re supposed to wait a few days for the marzipan to dry out, but when I considered this option I knew this was really my last chance, and less than an hour after adding the marzipan I had applied the icing. The risk of this is the leaching of oil from the marzipan, which may stain the pure white of the icing. I applied my icing thickly, however and that should stop that problem, at least in the time frame that the cake is likely to last! The icing is less crumbly this time, Christina….
(Since I made the new cake, BTW, we have started the other one and it tastes pretty good…. though I say it myself, but is a touch drier than I’d like, in an ideal world, but still better than a bought one. I shall have to wait to see if this one was more successful)
The weather outside is frightful. Lets stay indoors?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Hello Pseu: Nice looking cakes
We started way before you but now we are way behind.
I made my cakes as per the directions of my grandfather who was a baker all his life. He always made his Christmas cakes beginning in late October. After baking the days bread he used the heat of the oven to cook about a dozen cakes each day, accumulating a couple of hundred or so for the Christmas season, he kept them in an old wooden cupboard in the bakery, where they were brandied, wrapped and turned periodically until early December. Then he marzipanned (?) and iced, they were always good.
Here’s our two attempts pictured last month, and they are still naked but well brandied, we are little behind schedule and as you say, allowing time for the marzipan to fully cure means we will not be eating them before the New Year. Always fun and an annual event for us. Impossible to buy good fruitcake in this country, stuff is just sugar and flour.
I’ll give you an update on taste and texture of these sometime in the New Year.
Pseu, that looks in a different class!
Various tips to help with the various problems-
Marinate all the fruit and nuts previous to making the cake for 48 hours in a 50/50 mixture of orange juice and cheap brandy. You will be amazed at how much liquid is absorbed by the fruit, keep adding liquid if there is none in the bottom of the fruit, stir often, just leave on the counter with a cloth over it so it is stirred by everyone who goes by.
To stop the aureole of overcooked dry cake that ruins so many, double line the inside of the tin with parchment, take some new, stout brown paper, double layer and clad the outside of the tin, you will need to tie this on with cotton kitchen string. This brown outer layer can be kept on from year to year, mine must be at least ten years old!
Cook the cake at 300F. whatever the recipe says! It will take hours, but so what?!
Make the cake by mid November latest. Turn upside down, stab with a toothpick and feed brandy, wrap in foil and just stuff it in a cupboard, no need to bother with specific storage.
Glue marzipan on with melted apricot jam.
If you are concerned about grease break through and have to ice it too quickly, after the the marzipan is to your satisfaction take a handful of icing sugar and burnish it into the surface of the marzipan gently, this effectively acts as a grease barrier and you will have no trouble.
I punted around trying different recipes for years and was never particularly satisfied. About 20 years ago tried something new which I have stuck to like glue ever since. If you would like the recipe I’ll type it out. It is not quite so dark as the Victorian recipes and even the Yanks who hate fruit cake scoff it up! I always make at least two. One disappeared completely, eaten up by non fruit cake eating Americans at my party last week. Amusing, every year for the party I make the same cake and every year the same people eat more and more of it as they finally realise that fruit cake can be edible! Ditto for the egg nog, most people buy it and add booze whereas I start from scratch. I have a huge punch bowl of the stuff and it disappears like Scotch mist.
Today I am making chocolate roulades where the chocolate acts as the flour, very light, will dress with Tia Maria and stuff them tomorrow with fresh cream and pecans, coated with a chocolate ganache already made in the fridge. We are attending two dinners, 25 and 26th. I do the desserts mainly as an act of self defence as the NW Pacific’s ideas of desserts are as about as interesting as watching paint dry. I’d rather just drink! Plus christmas pudding (home made) brandy butter, rum sauce and oranges in caramel and Cointreau Tonight in church will pray they can make a main course without screwing it up!!!!
I shall also make Florentines just for fun, the weather is so awful here that all that is left is recreational cooking!
Let me know if you would like the cake recipe.
LW, do let me know!
Christina, I did most of the things you suggested for the first cake, it just overcooked!
300f is 148c: so maybe my oven was a little warmer than that, plus it’s a fan oven, so yes I’ll turn it down next time.
I did the brown paper trick and mine is also a few years old now. My marinading was just brandy, not OJ. I stabbed it with a darning needle and dripped brandy on it….
Anyhoo, it will be interesting to see how this alternative turns out. And YES PLEASE, I’d like your recipe.
Ah yes, fan ovens! I vaguely remember that you need to turn it down 20% or so to get the right temp, jolly good for roasts, not so good for cakes. I think I would leave a wad of brown paper on the top to negate the drying effects of the fan. Never liked them much, had one fitted in the house in Stonor and always regretted it, when I redid the house in Pembs I went back to an old fashioned boring oven that I found much less tricky!
May not get to the recipe today but will get to it in the next couple of days.
Poor old cakes being stabbed all round! (Makes a good substitute for not stabbing the current model!!!)
Hope it eats well it looks appetising.
Remember that when you have marinated the fruit and you test it with a skewer or whatever you use it will appear a lot more wet that can be confused with not being done. If the liquid is clearish and brown it is done, only if you can see the whitish flour is it still in need of further cooking, can be a bit dodgy to judge.
Safest to leave it to cool in the tin, it keeps the edges soft and any residuals tend to just finish themselves off.
Personally I prefer to press the top, they feel sort of different when they are done, more resonant.
lots of useful tips. Look forward to the recipe….thank you
Heavens, where do you find the time, Nym?
This one looks and sounds excellent. I don’t do cakes. Well I have done some but I always have the same problem; how do you know how they taste unless you cut a slice?
I suppose it’s trial and error, but my mother and my mother in law always used to provide the cake and the pudding, so I haven’t had to try, and I’m not sure I want to!
there are many saying the same. Maybe I should offer a Christmas cake service next year?! Hahahaha!