Mini Christmas Cakes

These were another creation for my Christmas gift hampers. I also took some into work as the batch made 24 of the little beauties. I used a mini Victoria sandwich tin, which has loose bottoms (don’t we all?!) and straight sides, but otherwise looks very much like a muffin tin. If you don’t mind your mini cakes having angled sides then I’d just use a muffin tin. I’d had my eye on the mini sandwich tin for ages though and when it was reduced to less than half price, I just had to have it. I have a cake tin addiction, you might have guessed.

Ideally, you should soak the fruit for a few days to a week, until it stops absorbing brandy. If you end up making these on the spur of the moment then you can gently boil the fruit in the brandy to get a similar effect, the fruit doesn’t quite have the same boozy impact though but still tastes pretty good.

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Christmas Cake – The Whole Story

This post is a compilation of the 3 stages of making and icing a Christmas cake.

Grandma’s Christmas Cake Part 3- Icing the Cake.

So you’ve soaked the fruit, made the cake and been feeding it up for months and it is time to ice that boozy slab of yumminess.

Grandma’s Christmas Cake, Part 2 – The Cake

This weekend I got around to baking my Christmas cake. The fruit had stopped absorbing any more brandy (see Part 1 for that stage) and it was looking plump and smelling delicious. I’m delighted that my cake cooked evenly and took on a lovely golden tone. I used gluten free flour and it appears to have held together perfectly. I find cakes cooked with gluten free flour can be a bit dry but given the amount of moisture in the fruit and also that it will be ‘fed’ with brandy between now and Christmas, I don’t think there’s much to worry about. I shall proceed with the recipe and the tips passed down to me from my Grandma, via my mum. Make sure you’ve got an old newspaper handy!

Grandma’s Christmas Cake, Part 1 – The Fruit

Now is, believe it or not, the perfect time to start making your Christmas cake. In fact, you’re already late! In an ideal, very organised world, my mum likes to have her Christmas cake baked by April/May so that she can feed it for a good few months, before icing it. First (before baking), the fruit needs to be soaked in brandy for a week or so. Throughout the next few months I am going to do step by step posts on making a Christmas cake, as I make mine. This recipe is my grandma’s recipe and whilst I never  got the chance to try hers (not in memory anyway), mum has made it every year and she is famous for it; I had friends at university begging me to bring some back with me after the Christmas holidays. It is boozy, decadent and every year my mum makes two, because the first one never makes it to Christmas day. This year I am making my own, as it is my first Christmas not living at home. I’m still going round on Christmas day, of course, but I’m excited to create my own Christmas too this year. Also, I’ve found the most amazing festive bundt tin and I will be making an almond bundt cake this year, for those crazies who don’t like Christmas cake (or greedies who want more than one cake – me!).

I’m going to attempt to make my Christmas cake with gluten free flour. I find gluten free cakes can be quite dry but given the amount of liquid (brandy) in this cake, I don’t see that happening. Fingers crossed it’ll work out. Eek!