Woodfired Christmas Cake
Woodfired Christmas Cake may sound tricky to do in the woodfired oven but if you’ve got falling heat and good insulation, you’ll end up with the best Christmas cake ever. Here’s what we did in this week’s Woodfired Weekly.
Woodfired Christmas Cake – Ingredients
Currants – 250g
Sultanas – 250g
Dried figs, snipped – 100g
Glacé cherries, rinsed and cut in half – 100g
Mixed peel – 100g
125ml whisky plus extra for feeding
Butter, softened – 125g
Dark muscavado sugar – 125g
4 eggs, beaten
Plain flour – 130g
1/2 tsp baking powder
1tsp mixed spice
Ground almonds – 50g
Finely grated zest 1 lemon
Whole almonds, roughly chopped – 50g
Crystallised ginger -25g
Woodfired Christmas Cake – Equipment, heat etc
24cm cake tin lined with baking parchment on the inside and a double layer of brown paper on the outside coming 5cm above the rim of the tin for protection from the heat
Woodfired Christmas Cake – Method
- Put the dried fruit and peel in a large bowl with the whisky. Cover the bowl and leave the fruit to soak in the whisky overnight.
- Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy – use an electric mixer! Gradually incorporate the beaten egg bit by bit so it doesn’t curdle. Fold in the flour, the baking powder, the ground almonds and the mixed spice.
- Add the soaked fruit and whisky, the lemon zest, the chopped almonds and the crystallised ginger and mix together.
- Turn the cake mix into the tin, flatten the top and put it in the oven. Shut the door and leave for 2 and a half hours, covering after an hour if it is browning too quickly. The cake is done when an inserted skewer comes out clean.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin and when it’s cook take it out of the tin. Prod the top of the cake with the skewer all over so you can add some more whisky to feed the cake and the whisky will soak right in – about another 100ml.
- Wrap the cake up in baking parchment and foil and leave until Christmas, feeding again now and then.
- If you want to decorate the cake then do that about a week before Christmas – we leave ours plain as we don’t like the icing and usually run out of time!
The finished result; happy Christmas!
Woodfired Christmas Cake – Alternatives
- Try rum or brandy instead of whisky or orange juice if you don’t want to use alcohol.
- Use dried pineapple, mango, papaya etc especially if you are using run to soak the fruit.
- Why not give a light muscavado sugar or a caster sugar a go for a lighter cake?