the best Christmas cake recipe?

[mint]

Yes, I think this is an unseasonal time to be thinking of Christmas cake.  But I do live in rural France so it might take me a while to gather together the dried fruits and other more exotic ingredients like black treacle!

I haven't made a cake for about 2 years, too ill, too idle, too apathetic, but this year, I intend to make a beauty!  I do have a recipe made up of part Delia Smith and part Mary Berry but, if anyone can come up with something they have tried and tested and loved, I'd dearly like to know it.

[Hereford]

I will look out the Cordon Bleu recipe that I have made for getting on 50 years! Wonderful - though it does not have black treacle, only my Christmas puds have that!

The list of ingredients is long so, if I may, I will email you a scan.

The recipe was in the Cordon Bleu "part work" issued from the late sixties. 

Mrs H

[mint]

Wow, thanks, Hereford!  How very generous you are........I look forward to it.

[idun]

My VERY favourite, is from the first Farmhouse Kitchen recipe book. Always delicious, never let me down and I have made lots over the years.

[Hereford]

Hi Mint

Done the scan and tried to email via this site but cannot see how to attach anything to the email! How do I do this please - if anyone knows!

Otherwise I can only suggest I email you and you email me back with a real email address and I will send it direct.

Mrs H

[mint]

Thank you for your efforts, Hereford.  Emails should come through.  I have 2 email addresses but both are Orange, no gmail, no yahoo, etc.

I will PM you with my personal email address and, if that doesn't work, email you using your email from here.  Grrrgghhh...the deficits of the forum!

[pomme]

After using family recipes for many years, the Christmas cake of choice since 2005 has been the Delia Smith Creole Christmas cake (or variants if necessary, depending on ingredient availability). Search for that and you will find recipes online. Fully of alcohol-soaked fruit and spices.

[Hereford]

Hi Mint

email and attachment now sent.

I could email you from the forum but not attach anything!

x Mrs H

[richard51]

But what is the best christmas/wedding/whatever cake?

For christmas, having been stuffed with much too much dinner, I would prefer something light,I think. However stodgy thereafter.

Does it also not depend on the "custard" or whatever that you have with it.

What is the optimum product.?

[Loiseau]

We always broached the cake on Christmas Eve, as the family arrived to spend the hols, and were fully up for a filling treat with their tea after a long journey.

After Christmas, when I used to head to the Vendée to start my major hedge slashing and laying jobs, I would take the remaining half of the cake to add the odd much-needed sugar boost.

Sorry I can't provide a recipe, mint. I used to make the Katie Stewart one from The Times "Cook's Calendar", but I often messed up at the baking stage and made it too dry, so I usually buy one now - unless my daughter proposes to give me one of the delicious ones she makes. ?

[mint]

Hereford, thank you for the recipe.  I love these old recipes, I find that they are never as "extravagant" as recent recipes and ingredients are what I call straightforward-honest-to-goodness ingredients.  Nothing you need to go to the ends of the earth or search on-line for.

I can see that, with the suggestions coming in, I might have to make more than just the one cake!

Richard, who says you have to eat Christmas cake on Christmas Day?  And certainly I wouldn't eat a rich cake after a large meal.  As it happens, once the last of my husband's old aunties (in Wales, you call them aunties whatever your own age) died, I rebelled against getting up at the crack of dawn and spending half the day cooking.  Whatever the weather, we packed cheese sandwiches and yes, a bit of Christmas cake and we took the dog for a long walk.  This year, the first Christmas sans doggy, it's going to be extremely, extremely hard and I don't yet know how we will spend it.  I am dreading how we will feel; there will certainly be tears[:(]

I remember a year, when we had only just adopted the dog, when we were up one of those Welsh hills when the mist came down and the snow came thick and fast.  Everywhere it was too damp to sit down so we had to eat as best we could standing up.  I dropped a big sausage and the dog pounce on it and gobbled it in one gulp, without even chewing it.  Still makes me laugh.  She had come from a family where she was some sort of design accessory and kept slightly underfed at all times to maintain her slim, sleek figure so in the first few weeks with us, she seemed to be perpetually hungry and afraid of missing her meals.  Happy days...............