Directions

• Pre-Soak
  27-42 hours before you are planning to bake the cake, weigh the currants, sultanas, raisins, mixed peel and rinse in warm water, drain with a large sieve. Rinse the cherries and cut in half. Add all the rinsed fruit to a large bowl and add the ground cinnamon, ground ginger, mixed spice and ground nutmeg to the fruit. Mix with the alcohol and zests of lemon and orange (including juice). Stir well and make sure everything is incorporated. Cover tightly and leave to absorb the alcohol, stirring from time to time.
• Baking Day
  Preheat the oven to 170°C
  Prepare your tin:
  Grease your tin with butter and line with baking paper, making sure to go up the sides of the tin. Make a cardboard sleeve to go around the outside of the tin from a piece of thin corrugated cardboard cut to size so that it sits above the tin by 3cm, wrap this around the tin and tie with string. Make a round ‘hat’ for the tin from cardboard using the base of the tin as a guide and cut the cardboard 4cm (approx) away from this line (this will stop the cake from burning on top), add a small hole to the middle of the cardboard to allow steam to escape. You can also use a cake tin wrap if you prefer.
• Weigh the sugar and butter. Cream together either using a spoon / spatula or the paddle attachment on your mixer until it becomes pale yellow in colour (about two minutes or longer if mixing by hand).
• Weigh the eggs and beat gently with a fork to combine the yolk and white together. Add a little at a time to the creamed sugar and butter (around 5 additions), allowing the mixture to form a batter, scraping down the bowl after each addition of egg. If the batter starts to curdle, place the mixing bowl over some hot water in a separate bowl and mix until the batter comes together again. Remove the paddle attachment from the mixer.
• Weigh the flour and ground almonds together and mix to incorporate, sieve into the mixture in small amounts and slowly fold the flour into the batter in stages making a figure 8 shape after each addition until all the dry ingredients are combined. Make sure to reach down into the bottom of the bowl.
• Add the soaked fruit mixture in stages using a slotted spoon by hand (not using a mixer) and save the remaining alcholic mixture for after the cake has cooked. Make sure all the fruit is evenly distributed. Take time to pass the bowl around to your family members to make your Christmas wishes!
• Pour the mixture into the tin and spread evenly, if you have unfruited batter left at the bottom of the bowl don’t add this to the tin to make sure all the cake has fruit in it. 
  If you are adding the whole almonds, place them carefully in a decorative way to the top of the cake (if you are decorating with marzipan and icing – you can skip this step).
• Place the prepared tin on a baking tray and add the cardboard top. Reduce the heat of the oven to 150°C and place the baking tray with the tin in the centre of the oven. 
  Bake for 2 hours, then remove the cardboard top for the last 45 minutes. Test to see if the cake is cooked by sticking a thin skewer into the cake to see if it comes out cleanly.
• Once the cake is cooked, take out of the oven and leave in the tin, pour or spray over the cake the remaining alcohol mixture (if you didn’t have very much add a little extra). Cover with a thick tea towel leave for at least three hours (or overnight) to allow the extra alcohol to infuse.
• Carefully remove the tin and wrap tightly in baking paper and either store in a tin or cling wrap, every week ‘feed’ the cake with a generous drizzle of your chosen alcohol up until you are planning to either eat or decorate as you wish. I hope this recipe brings you as much joy as it does for our family. Enjoy!