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. 

Boil and Bake Christmas Cake

Last weekend I made mincemeat for the store cupboard for Christmas, this week I am baking a Christmas cake. Over the last few years I have made a variety of different cake recipes , traditional fruit , chocolate fruit, so this year I have gone for a boil and bake fruit cake, sort of a combination of the two. This recipe is based on one I came across in Good Housekeeping magazine and is very easy, the result appears to be quite impressive but only time will tell.

Ingredients

• 175g butter
• 500g mixed luxury dried fruit
• 100g ready to eat prunes - chopped
• 100g glace cherries - roughly chopped
• 100g Cranberries / Stem ginger (your choice)
• Finely grated zest of a lemon ( unwaxed)
• 150ml amaretto
• 175g dark brown muscovado sugar
• 200g self raising flour
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 3 eggs beaten

8inch cake tin, loose bottomed - greased and lined on base and sides

Method

Preheat your oven to 140C. Place all you dried fruit in a large pan with the lemon zest and amaretto, bring to the boil and allow to simmer for approx 5 minutes. Then add the butter and sugar and allow to melt and stir to ensure well incorporated and the sugar has melted.

Take the pan off the heat and allow to cool  slightly before adding the other ingredients and spices, stir to mix well and pour into the prepared cake tin. Bake for approx 1-45 to 2 hours, until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Once baked leave to cool in the tin, once completely cool, wrap and store in an airtight in, feeding at weekly / fortnightly intervals until Christmas.