Recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Due to the huge gap between recipes thanks to the difficulty in procuring a marrowbone for the last recipe, the Meal Wheel landed on this on the very festive date of January 2nd, right as everyone is starting to de-Christmasify their houses and their lives. Not me though, I’m all for keeping the joy and sparkle of Christmas going for as long as possible, the rooms just seem so dull and dark once you remove the fairy lights and decorations. Making this cake was a way to keep the Christmas spirit present for another month!

Now, I’ve never enjoyed fruit cake. Not because it’s fruit, and I’m notoriously bad when it comes to eating healthy, but because the taste has never worked for my taste buds, and I think a Christmas cake is the fruitiest of fruit cakes. When I was younger I usually just nibbled off the icing before giving the cake part to a parent to finish.

It’s been a while since I have had fruit cake so thought, as with previous recipes, I would have warmed to this over time. If not, I knew that my parents were visiting at the end of the month and would enjoy it thoroughly and greedily.

Not much excitement came with making the cake, pretty standard procedure only with a load of fruits added. The cake tin was doubled lined with grease proof as I didn’t have any brown paper left as Nigella recommends but that didn’t seem to cause issue with the final product. While I might not like the taste of fruit cake, I adore the scent of baking filling the kitchen and the flat and it did smell fabulous cooking at that low heat.

Once cooked, and stored for four weeks, then came the chance to be creative… icing and decorating. Well I rolled out the marzipan and brilliantly, if I do say myself, draped this on the apricot jam glazed roof of the cake, then set out rolling and draping the snowy white icing. There are so many ways you can decorate a Christmas cake, plain white, added piping, miniature Christmas figures. In the end I went with what I would call stylish, yet simple, and what others would call basic and lazy.

Inspired by the Christmas classic tune Silver Bells, I added some Silver Balls and cut out some Christmas Trees from the remaining icing. It was surprising really there was any leftover icing after the majority had covered the cake or been eaten by yours truly.

I was proud of the creation and according to the family and friends who ate it, it tasted excellent, a cake to be proud to present. I tried a thin sliver and this did confirm that my tastes in Christmas Cakes hadn’t changed over the years, nor however, had my taste for ready to roll icing!