Quick and easy mincemeat christmas cake

Want to have a home baked Christmas cake for your festive celebrations, but you've left it too late !

Over the years I have made various versions of mincemeat cakes when this predicament has occurred in our household, the mincemeat is a quick way to provide the moist fruitiness needed for celebration cakes, this recipe is by far the easiest I have tried. The other thing that is good about this recipe is that it doesn't actually require as long a bake unlike a traditional fruit cake.

I 'll cover decorating later in the post but first lets bake the cake.

Ingredients

• 1 jar of mincemeat ( ideally homemade or if buying a luxury type) - approx 400g
• 150g butter - softened
• 150g light muscovado sugar
• 2 eggs - free range
• 225g self raising flour
• 50g glace cherries (rinsed, dried and chopped)
• 100g currants or raisins

You will need an approx 8" round deep cake tin, ideally loose bottomed or springform, butter and line with double thickness greaseproof paper.

Preheat the oven to 160c

Method

• Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl or your food mixer
• Now add all other ingredients
• Mix throughly
• Turn into your prepared tin, level the top
• Bake for approx 1 1/2 hours , until tested cooked with a skewer, watch the top if browning too quickly cover with foil
• Allow to cool slightly in tin before removing to wire rack
• Once cool wrap with greaseproof and store in a cool dry place, until ready to decorate

Quick decoration with marzipan, regal ice and silver balls and star cutters of various sizes, I found some silver ribbon and wrapped it in some cellophane. Very festive if I do say so myself.