How to Make A Christmas Cake - The Victorian Way

Come on Mary-Anne, when you've finished those you've got all these to do as well. Good morning, today we're making Lord and Lady Braybrooke's Christmas cake. I'm using one of my favourite plum cake recipes, it's got a lot of dried cherries in it. For this recipe you will need flour, butter, fine sugar, dried cherries chopped, currants, candied peel, ground almonds, zest of oranges, eggs, spices and brandy. Now that I've softened the butter, I'm going to add the flour, the sugar and the eggs gradually. Sugar please. Flour, thank you. Now that's really well blended together, it's time to add the dried fruit. Candied peel, the currants, and now my favourite bit, the dried cherries. It's time for the brandy, and the spice, and the zest of oranges. And the last thing to go in are the ground almonds. Now that the mix is done, it's time to prepare the tin. I've already lined the tin with butter, and now I'm going to line it with brown paper. For the edges, I'm using double thickness of paper. I've cut tabs at the bottom to make it sit in the tin more evenly. Not forgetting the lining of the bottom, I'm going to add bands around the outside. Now it's ready for the mix. And there, now it's ready for the oven. A low oven for about roughly six hours. Now that the cake is out of the oven and thoroughly cool, I've made a band of marzipan, put it around the top of the cake and turned it upside down. This gives a nice flat surface to start your decoration. I've made my marzipan with twice the amount of icing sugar as ground almonds, and then added egg whites until the mixture is a dough-like texture. I've rolled it out fairly thin, and I'm actually going to put the marzipan on in two stages. This one is for the top, which I will cut off to give a sharp edge, and then have some more around the outside. I added a band of marzipan around the outside, let it dry, and then added a layer of royal icing. One layer for the top, letting it dry, and then one for the outside. My royal icing was made out of icing sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice. I'm not too worried about the air bubbles on the top. After all, for Lord and Lady Braybrooke, I am a cook, not a confectioner. And anyway, I can disguise it with some of my decoration. There. To add a bit of festive colour, I've added a piece of red ribbon. The fashion for a Christmas cake is to have a lovely Christmas message written on the top. May Christmas joys fill your heart today. But there. Merry Christmas.