My Mother’s salt-baked Christmas cake
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Ingredients
220g mixed peel
280g golden raisins
270g golden sultanas
350g currants
250mls dark rum
220g muscovado sugar
220g soft butter
5 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp mixed cake spice
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
275g plain flour, sieved
180g Amarena cherries washed, strained from the syrup and chopped
Zest 3 oranges
120g mixed pecan nuts, finely chopped
2 medium-sized cooking apples, cored, peeled and grated
½ glass of sherry
Method
Put all fruit except cherries and grated apple into a bowl, add the rum, and leave to soak overnight.
Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gently beat in the eggs. Add a little of the flour if the mixture begins to curdle.
Mix the flour with spices and stir this into the mixture.
Fold in the soaked fruit, cherries, zest, nuts and grated apple. Stir in the sherry.
Line an 8-inch square tin with parchment. Cut a strip of brown (rather than printed) carboard that will fit around the four sides of the tin. Tie the rectangle of cardboard securely around the box with a piece of twine. Sit it on a tray of table salt and bake for 3 hours at 100 degrees and then for a further 1 hour at 140 degrees.
Allow it to cool in the tin. Once it is cool wrap the cake first in parchment then in tinfoil and store in a cool dark place until you want to ice it. I usually sprinkle it with alcohol every ten days or so until icing day.
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