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Print recipe Peachy's Christmas cake for lazy bakers from PeachyTentativelyPosting

Category	Cakes and desserts
Serves	Many
Prep time	12 hours to soak, 40 minutes to prep hours
Cook time	3.5 hours

Mumsnetter ratings

Ease of finding ingredients	7
Ease of cooking	10
Success with kids	n/a
Success with adults	n/a
Overall Mark	4.25

Ingredients

500g each sultanas and raisins
200ml amaretto (armagnac or brandy would also work)
100g cranberries or other dried red fruit
250g good quality prunes, chopped but not too carefully
Grated zest and juice of a lemon and an orange
100g molasses sugar
150g darkest brown sugar
250g unsalted butter, softened; make sure you have extra for greasing
4 large free range eggs, beaten
250g plain flour
1 tbsp treacle
1.5 tsp mixed spice
0.5 tsp ginger

Handy Hint

I find this is a good recipe to batch bake for fetes etc, but you will need very large containers indeed! I feed quitre a bit more alcohol than the recipe recommends- this makes it crumbly but heck, who cares by then? [wink], tastes nice anyway. The nut free status assumes using a choice of alcohol that is nut free, clearly.

Method

Place fruit and 150ml of the alcohol in a large non-metallic container with the citrus zest and juices, cover and then leave overnight.

Next day

Preheat oven to 150 degrees.

Line a cake tin (9 inch but I found this recipe also worked well in a silicone tray designed for large muffins which made lovely mini cakes).

Whisk sugar and butter together until fluffy.

Beat in eggs bit by bit, if you think it might curdle add a touch of the flour (I tend to anyway to minimise risk).

Beat in treacle.

Sift in flour, a pich of salt and spices.

Fold gently with large metal spoon.

Fold in fruit /alcohol mix.

Tip into tin and level.

Wrap some brown paper twice around outer edge of tin to protect.

Bake for 3.5 hours or until knife appears clean, then cool for ten minutes before placing on rack.

Feed 10ml alcohol after a fortnight; additional feeding as you wish.

This recipe is an amended version of a GHI one I like to use, the original uses armagnac and sour cherries but I found these hard to locate here in Wales. Keeps for up to 3 months.

Mumsnetter Reviews

From: rachmc on Sun 25-Oct-09 19:56:43 Overall rating: 8.5

sounds nice will give it go

From: PeachyTentativelyPosting on Wed 07-Oct-09 14:44:45 Overall rating: 0.0

show all comments

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