Making your own Christmas cake is great fun. Normally we stick loosely to the amazing Recipe from Mary Berry. However, we adapt ours slightly as we do not add nuts to the recipe.

Furthermore, we cheat a little! 😉

We only make the cake, we don’t make the Marzipan or fondant icing should we decide to use it and both come ready rolled to avoid the mess of using icing sugar.

Should you wish you can also buy tubs of Royal icing too. However, we always make ours as we need it for our Gingerbread house and the shop brought isn’t strong enough for the job.

Sometimes decorating a cake is fun without the time to make it. You can buy pre-made cakes ready to be decorated should you not be up for the hassle of cooking your own.

However, should you want to make your own, here is the Royal Icing recipe we use at the bottom of our Gingerbread House Recipe.

If you decide to give this recipe a go then please share your creation using the hashtag #wiltshiregiftschristmas
To find out what we create this year watch out for the Children’s house going up on Wiltshire Gift’s Instagram and Facebook social media pages.

Pictures depicting the making and decorating of our Christmas cakes.

Christmas cake

Ingredients

Step by step

  1. Place all of the currants, sultanas, cherries and the zest of the two oranges into a large bowl and cover with the brandy. Cover the bowl and leave to soak for 3 days 
  2. Grease and line a 23cm/ 9 inch cake tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper and preheat your oven to 120C (Fan oven) 140C (non fan) Gas mark 1
  3. Measure your butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds and beat them together preferably with an electric mixer.
  4. Add your flour and ground spice to your freshly beaten mixture and hand mix until until thoroughly blended together.
  5. Take your bowl of soaking fruit and stir them carefully into the other ingredients.
  6. Carefully spoon your mixture into the edges of your prepared cake tin leaving a fist sized dip in the middle of the mixture. (as your cake starts to cook it will fill the hole and ensure you have a level cake).
  7. Bake in the oven for about 4-41/2 hours until cooked through.
  8. Once cooked leave the cake in the tin, pierce the bottom of the completely cold cake in regular intervals and feed in some more brandy to get a deliciously moist cake.

We think this is Mary Berry best Christmas cake, what do you think? Remember to share a picture on social media and tag us and Wiltshire Gifts.

To check out more of the Christmas activities we have posted for Wiltshire Gifts you can find them all listed here.