Quick Christmas Cake

WillyNelson · 21 Nov 2013 at 11:12

By quick, I man one that doesn't require me to have started 5 months ago and have been feeding it alcohol like a Glaswegian tramp.

I need to knock together a cake for a christmas bakeoff and I'd like to do something reasonably traditional. Ideally it'd be a dark, moist fruitcake and the inclusion of ginger would be an advantage as it'd tie in with the decoration.

Any suggestions welcome. Thanks

Edit: I found this one which sounds good but I could do with it being a touch darker http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4825/gingery-christmas-cake

malolo · 21 Nov 2013 at 15:01

I've used Mary Berry's Christmas Cake recipe this year. You soak the fruit in alcohol for three days before baking the cake so I don't think you'd necessarily need to keep feeding it if you didn't have time and wanted to serve it straight away. If you wanted to make it taste more of ginger then you could probably just substitute the mixed spice for ginger, or try replacing some of the glace cherries with glace ginger. Using dark muscovado would also darken the cake a bit more.

I've never tried it so don't know how successful it is but apparently freezing a fruit cake for a few days helps it mature quicker so you could always try that too.

Alternatively if you want more of a ginger flavour you could mix the fruit of a Christmas cake through a gingerbread cake batter and see how that goes.

WillyNelson · 7 Jan 2014 at 14:26

Slightly overdue update but...

I made a spiced ginger fruit cake, adapting a bbc Good Food recipe with mixed fruit, dried cranberries, sour cherries and glace ginger, all soaked in ginger wine. Decorated with a gingerbread forest house.

I didn't win best looking cake

but I did win best tasting

Danthus · 7 Jan 2014 at 14:28

That look really good, can I have a slice?

WillyNelson · 7 Jan 2014 at 14:36

Thanks

It all got sold for the school, 50p a slice. I had to pony up to see what it tasted like, and as one of the mums said "**** me, that's good!"

I made another one for our xmas cake at home. Ate most of it but forgot to bring the last 1/3 of it home from my folks after new year