You can leave out the stout or swap for any festive booze, such as sherry, whisky or rum – but remember: the higher the quality the better the result, so treat your cake to the best you can afford!
Jamie Oliver's Christmas Cookbook
By Jamie Oliver
3 hrs 30 mins plus cooling & decorating
Not Too Tricky
serves 16
About the recipe
If I’m completely honest, I’ve never been a massive Christmas cake fan, but my mum insisted I put one in the book, so I spent months developing this, which I do like! It’s lighter than most – have fun decorating it, like I did with Buddy.
Recipe From
Ingredients
200g unsalted butter (at room temperature), plus extra for greasing
150g mixed Medjool dates and prunes
500g mixed dried apricots, cranberries, peel, currants
1 apple
1 clementine
100ml stout
200g soft light brown sugar
4 large free-range eggs
200ml whole milk
300g plain flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons quality cocoa powder
1 teaspoon each ground ginger, mixed spice, ground cinnamon
Top Tip
You can make this advance and feed it up to four times with a thimble of good quality festive booze. Just be sure you wrap it really well in baking paper between each feed.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 150º/300ºF/gas 2. Grease a 20cm square cake tin with butter and line the base and sides with greaseproof paper, lining the sides high.
- Tear the stones out of the dates and prunes, then place all the dried fruit in a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped. Decant the mixture into a large bowl, coarsely grate in the apple, finely grate in the clementine zest and squeeze in the juice. Pour in the stout, mix well and leave aside to soak for a few minutes.
- Meanwhile, blitz the butter and sugar together in the processor until pale, smooth and fluffy. With the processor still running, one-by-one crack in the eggs, then pour in the milk in a steady stream, blitzing until smooth. Scrape this mixture into the bowl of fruit and fold together with a spatula. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cocoa and spices, then fold together again. Transfer to your prepared tin and bake for around 2 hours, or until cooked through and an inserted skewer comes out clean – if it needs a little longer, simply cover the top with greaseproof paper to prevent it from catching. Leave to cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Now the fun bit, the decoration. To make royal icing, whisk 3 large free-range egg whites in a large bowl until fluffy. Sieve 700g of icing sugar separately, then, a spoonful at a time, fold it into the egg whites. Once combined, stir in the juice of ½ a lemon and ½ a teaspoon of glycerine. Beat until it forms stiff peaks, then use it to decorate the cake.
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