Christmas Cake (or mincemeat) (or steamed christmas pudding) no icky icing

(Delia Smith Creole Christmas Cake with glazed nuts by Liz and additional comments by Ben)

Ingredients

For the pre-soaking (or to make mincemeat):
3 tablespoons rum (try a spiced rum like Kraken or Morgan's Spiced)
3 tablespoons brandy
3 tablespoons cherry brandy(decent stuff - sour french cherry not cocktail mix glace cherry flavour not Allens)
3 tablespoons port
3 tablespoons water
1½ teaspoons Angostura bitters
1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 level teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
½ level teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 level tablespoon molasses sugar
450g raisins
225g currants
110g no-soak prunes, chopped
50g glacé cherries, chopped
110g whole candied peel, really finely chopped (feel free not to include this offence against all that is good in the world)
50g mixed chopped nuts


For each day of soaking add:
more rum or brandy or cherry brandy or port
as you prefer or have - vary each day to get an aroma/ flavour you like
(we added at least 2½ cups /  250ml of alcohol in total, so roughly a double measure added per day (err on the generous side)


For the cake:
250g self-raising flour
250g demerara sugar
250g spreadable butter
5 large eggs (can leave out and replace with apple juice and a bit more flour, or apple sauce, will be a more dense and less rich)

Decoration:
Whole nuts and fruits of choice
demerara sugar
nice flavoured spirits (the stuff you used for soaking is ideal)
water

and/or:
marzipan with at least 75% almonds (grind almonds, icing sugar, sprinkle of water if needed or better still decent sour cherry brandy, glycerin or egg white if you're worried about it drying out)

and if you really must:
icky royal icing


Method:
 About 7 days before you want to make the cake, measure out all the pre-soaking ingredients into a large saucepan, ticking them off as you add them as it’s so easy to leave something out!

Now place the mixture over a medium heat and bring it up to simmering point, giving everything a good stir.

Then turn the heat down to very low and let everything simmer without covering for about 15 minutes.

After that remove the pan from the heat and let everything get completely cold. Then keep in a lidded stainless steel pan or transfer the mixture to an airtight plastic or glass container and leave it in the fridge for a week.

Each day, stir the mixture and add a generous splash of alcohol (a double measure or so) - enough to lubricate the whole fruit mix, and stir again. The dried fruits will swell and take in the liquid over time, so the mix should be stirrable and sticky, rather than having liquid sloshing around.

After a week, you can use this mixture as mincemeat for mince pies etc


Making a cake:
When you want to bake the cake, pre-heat the oven to 285°F 140°C, gas mark 1.

Then sift the flour into a large bowl, add the sugar, butter and eggs and, using an electric hand whisk (or a wooden spoon), beat until everything is thoroughly blended. After that gradually fold in the soaked mixture until it’s all evenly distributed.

Now transfer the mixture to the prepared tin, and level with a back of a spoon.

Place the cake near the centre of the oven and bake it for 3 hours, then cover with a double thickness of baking parchment, resting it on top of the liner, and bake it for another hour, until the centre feels springy.

**You may wish to try putting a loaf pan with water in it on a lower shelf  to keep the oven (and the cake) a little moister during baking - this is untried advice **

Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 45 minutes, (or it WILL fall apart)

then transfer it to a wire cooling tray to cool.

To decorate, boil your whole fruits, nuts and sugar with spirits and water, simmering down to a syrup, layer on (caution, hot!) top of the cake.

When it’s absolutely cold, wrap it in parchment-lined foil, and store in an airtight tin or polythene box.


Making a steamed pudding:
Divide the cake batter between lined/ greased pudding basins (fill half full) and steam for 3-4 hours.
Serve with cream, and a white sauce made of cornflour, sugar, butter, milk and brandy/rum (pour white sauce over top of pudding prior to serving).