Right! By now you should have a bowl of icky, sticky, rum and orange juice soaked fruit. The first thing you’ll want to do at this point is give it a good sniff. Go on, I’ll wait …
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… smells goooood doesn’t it!
Before we start properly, do me a favour and don’t do what I did, check you’ve got everything you need before you start … check for example you haven’t used all the butter for your toast, or the toast of your kids for that matter! Here’s a fresh run down of what you’re going to need for this part:
1 bowl of highly alcoholic fruit prepared previously (see parts 1 & 2)
250g brown sugar/molasses sugar
250g butter
4 eggs, beaten
250g plain flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
60g ground hazelnuts
30g chopped hazelnuts22cm round spring-form cake tin (I forgot to mention spring-form before, it’s the type the bottom falls out of, make sure you use on of these!)
Line your 22cm SPRING-FORM cake tin with grease proof paper.
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Cream the sugar and the butter together in a large bowl … for the uninitiated this means squishing it together with the back of a wooden spoon, it helps if your butter is soft, but then that’s why we have microwaves! Just try not to melt it, like I did! Anyway, keep creaming ’til it’s ‘fluffy’.
creaming the butter and sugar -
Now beat in your eggs gradually. The lad did this for me while I cracked the eggs in remembering to toss the shells into the compost bin … as opposed to the bowl.
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You’ll now need to sieve the flour, salt, and spices into the mixture. Gently fold these in. Again, for the uninitiated, this is going to mean using your wooden spoon to draw the mixture through from one side before lifting some out and ‘folding’ it over on itself.
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Add the chopped and ground nuts … I can never find ground hazelnuts so I tend to grind my own in the pestle and mortar, although a hammer and a good tough polly bag would achieve the same! I also like hazelnuts and am inclined to throw in a little extra according to my mood. Now stir it all together.
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Add your fruit mix and carefully stir it through so that you have a mixture partially reminiscent of … something unpleasant. You need to be careful because, if you’re anything like me, your largest bowl won’t be quite large enough and over vigorous mixing will just make a mess! As demonstrated by the lad …
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Empty the lot into your lined spring-form tin.
Mmmm, cake mix in a tin … the more astute observer may notice a lack of greaseproof paper, there is some on the base but otherwise it’s a non-stick tin … the even more astute observer may notice my bowl in the back ground awaiting being ‘cleaned out’ … -
About 15 - 20 minutes ago you should have put your oven on to preheat at about 150C or 425F or Gas Mark 7. Once the oven has heated up pap it in the oven for about 2 hours or until a knife (a skewers better) can be stuck in and come out clean-ish. After about an hour and a half cover the cake with a piece of greaseproof paper weighed down with, er, something not too heavy or liable to melting or burning!
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Once it’s ready leave it to cool completely in the tin.
Chillin’ in the tin! -
Now you can either transfer it to a flat plate or a cake base and pop it in a big enough tin. If you don’t have a big tin then you might like to consider buying one, alternatively you can buy a huge tin of sweeties, scoff the lot and put the cake on the lid with the base over the top …
We’re not finished with this cake (or the rum) yet, so put it aside and come back in a couple of days for some more instruction.
related links:
the world’s best christmas cake! - part 1
the world’s best christmas cake! - part 2
the world’s best christmas cake! - part 4
the world’s best christmas cake! - part 5
