Gingery Christmas cake

This variation on a much-loved family recipe soaks the dried fruit in ginger wine, and adds chunks of sweet stem ginger through the cake.

Gingery Christmas cake. Credit: Bloomsbury Publishing / Skye McAlpine

• serves

  8-10

• prep

  25 minutes

• cook

  2:05 hours

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

Cake

• 170 g stem ginger in syrup, drained and chopped
• 80 g mixed peel
• 190 g currants
• 190 g raisins
• 190 g sultanas
• 220 ml ginger wine (for a variation using brandy, see Note)
• 200 g salted butter, softened, plus more for the tin
• 200 g dark muscovado sugar
• 1 generous tbsp (22 ml) black treacle
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 200 g self-raising flour
• Large pinch of fine sea salt

Topping

• 130 g stem ginger in syrup, drained and halved
• 50 g blanched hazelnuts
• 50 g blanched almonds
• 90 g Brazil nuts
• 90 g flaked almonds
• 170 g glacé cherries
• 110 g golden syrup

Soaking time: 1-2 days

Instructions

1. For the cake, put the chunks of ginger, peel, currants, raisins and sultanas into a large bowl, pour over the ginger wine, cover and let steep for 24–48 hours. The longer you are able to leave the fruit, the more flavour and moisture it will give the cake.
2. When you’re ready to make your cake, heat the oven to 180˚C (160˚C fan-forced / Gas 4). Butter a 23 cm round cake tin, line it with baking paper, then cut a second circle of baking paper the same diameter as the base of the tin (set this aside to cover the cake while it bakes).
3. Beat together the butter and sugar until they become paler and fluffy, then add the treacle and beat until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking them lightly with a fork before you add them to the cake batter, then beat until well combined. Sift in the spices, flour and salt and mix with a wooden spoon. Lastly, add the ginger wine-soaked fruit, along with any remaining liquid in the bowl.
4. Scoop up 100 g of the cake batter and set to one side. (If you don’t want to follow my Florentine-like topping suggestion, see Note below, then omit this step.) Spoon the remaining batter into the prepared tin and gently even out the top with the back of the spoon, to make a flat surface. Now, make a slight dip in the centre of the cake ‒ you want as flat a surface as possible and this counters the oven spring of the cake ‒ and cover with the reserved baking paper circle. Bake the cake in the oven for 1¼ hours.
5. If you are going to ice and decorate the cake in the traditional way (be it with marzipan and glacé fruits, or marzipan and royal icing – see Note), then leave it in the oven for a further 15–20 minutes, until it feels dry on top and a knife comes out clean when inserted in the middle.
6. If you are going to top the cake with fruit and nuts, then make the topping while it bakes in the oven: combine the ginger, nuts, cherries, golden syrup and reserved cake batter together in a mixing bowl, mixing it into a sticky mess of fruit and nuts. Remove the top layer of baking paper from the part-cooked cake (once it has had its 1¼ hours in the oven) and spoon the fruit and nut mixture over the top of it, distributing it evenly over the surface.
7. Loosely cover the top of the tin with foil and set back in the oven for 40 minutes more. Then remove and discard the foil and bake for a further 10–15 minutes, until the nuts are lightly golden and a knife comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the cake. Let cool completely in its tin, then turn out and wrap with foil: the cake will keep for up to 2 weeks or can be frozen for up to 2 months.

Notes

• I’ve been baking my own Christmas cakes every year to give as gifts to friends and loved ones for pretty much as long as I can remember. The recipe I rely on most often is my mother’s and you can find a much-loved and much-used version of it in A Table for Friends. I’ve loosely adapted it here to incorporate a pop of pepperiness, by soaking the dried fruits in ginger wine instead of brandy, and adding chunks of sweet stem ginger layered throughout the cake. While ginger is perhaps not canonical in fruit cake, it does unequivocally taste like Christmas and I, for one, love this warming, lightly spiced twist on the well-worn classic as much as, if not more than, the original recipe. Nonetheless, if you prefer something more traditional, swap out the ginger wine for brandy and the stem ginger for 100 g glacé cherries and, if you like, toss in 100 g or so of coarsely chopped blanched almonds too, then bake following the same method.
• When it comes to decoration, there are many variations upon a theme to work with. A traditional British Christmas cake, for example, comes enrobed in a thick layer of marzipan and then a second layer of snowy white, glossy royal icing. My go-to is to top each cake with a 1- to 2 cm-thick round of marzipan, then adorn it with whole glacé fruits, which I stick on with a little apricot jam (gently warmed to make a sticky syrup). But not everyone loves marzipan. And with that in mind, you’ll see that the method here, where you bake a sticky mess of glacé cherries, syrupy ginger and mixed nuts into the top of the cake and it comes out in a decorative layer not unlike a Florentine biscuit, offers a light, yet still appropriately luxurious, alternative. Not only does it look effective, but there is the added time-saving bonus that you don’t need to decorate it once it comes out of the oven.

This is an edited extract from The Christmas Companion by Skye McAlpine (Bloomsbury Publishing, $55.00).

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.