Brandied Fruit, Chocolate and Spice Christmas Cake

Fruit: Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover and refrigerate until ready to use. Stir daily.

To assemble and cook: Preheat the oven to 150 ̊C and set the rack one level below the centre of the oven. Grease and fully line an 8 cm deep x 20 cm square cake tin with 3 layers of baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. The sugar will not be dissolved. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoonful of the flour with each egg. This stops the mixture from curdling. Combine the remaining flour, baking powder, spices and chocolate in a bowl. Stir the orange zest, juice and baking soda together in another bowl. Using a large metal spoon, fold both mixtures into the butter along with the soaked fruit.

Spoon into the tin and smooth the top. Cover with a piece of baking paper, pressing it onto the mixture. Wrap a thick piece of brown paper around the outside of the tin, securing with kitchen string.
Bake for about 2 hours or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Make sure it’s not just melted chocolate on the skewer. Cool in the tin.

To serve: The cake can be left unadorned or can be iced with a traditional icing or chocolate ganache. It’s also delicious served with fresh berries and mascarpone. Makes 1 cake.

Alternative presentation: Not everyone needs a whole Christmas cake, so a good idea is to cut the 20cm cake into quarters and individually wrap them as a gift as we have done in the photo.

I wanted a smaller, round cake as well as the square cake in the recipe above. I doubled the recipe and filled a 6 cm deep x 15 cm round cake tin to 1 cm from the top. I then put the rest of the mixture into the square tin. Follow the cooking instructions as above.