Christmas Cake

The first time I made a Christmas cake I made Alison Holst's Pineapple Christmas cake, that was 2006. I wrote the the Archivists mum asking for recipes and she sent me scans of three recipes from her collection. It turned out great and lasted beautifully until well after New Year, so I made it again in 2007 and somehow botched the timing and it was raw in the middle. I tried a different cake from Martha Stewart in 2008 and I would recommend the recipe, but I want a cake to call my own.

This year I cobbled together a recipe based on Alison's. I used a fruit mix similar to the Bourke Street Bakery's* Christmas cake recipe (raisins, dates and figs) and plan to feed the cake with dark rum just like the 2008 Martha Stewart cake, since I don't really like brandy and I have most of a bottle of rum.

I washed 500 grams of raisins, 400g quartered figs, 200g  chopped dates and 200g of sultanas, drained them, splashed them with rum and left them in the fridge to macerate for a week. Where the Hoslt recipe lists optional extras I tossed in 200g of glacé ginger. A 440 gram tin of Golden Circle crush pineapple is sufficient for the cake, squeeze out most of the juice. Blanched almonds on top, fed rum weekly, it should delicious in eight weeks time.

*The Bourke Street Bakery cookbook is lovely to look at, the recipes have very clear and precise instructions and the photos are great. Unless you're cooking for a crowd it may not be very practical as most of the recipes make large quantities (three loaves for breads, at least 12 serves for most sweet pastries). I am plotting an event so I can make some tarts to test it out properly.