Nothing says Christmas like being a bit of a hypocrite

It's fairly well documented, that I don't really like Christmas.  Pretty much everyone knows this.  When I mentioned to my friend Tom that I was making a Christmas cake, he was genuinely shocked - you hate Christmas, he argued, Aliens have taken over your body haven't they?  I don't hate it, I just find that it goes on WAY too long.  

Christmas things are in the shops at the beginning of August.  If it started at the beginning of December I could probably cope a lot better.

Anyway, this year I am looking forward to Christmas marginally more than usual.  The Very Tolerant Boyfriend and I are spending it together at home with no guests, which helps.  And he loves Christmas and, you know, I want him to be happy.

So I agreed to make a Christmas cake.  I've never done this before.  I've helped my mother as a small child, but in the last decade and a half, I can confidently say that I have not participated in the production of one of these items.  Obviously I had absolutely no idea how to make it and I did have a quick think about outsourcing it to my little sister; but apparently she was all busy getting married or some such nonsense.  So I had a google and came up with this recipe

Ingredients 

  
450 g currants

175 g sultanas
175 g raisins
50 g glace cherries, chopped
50 g candied fruit, chopped
1/2 cup brandy
225 g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (fresh)
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
225 g butter
225 g soft brown sugar, the gooey sort
4 large eggs
50 g chopped almonds
1 tablespoon treaclelemon, rind of
orange, rind of
orange, juice of 


*Soak all the fruit, peel and nuts over night in the brandy and orange juice.  Stir regularly.
*Pre heat the oven to 140C*line an 8 inch tin 
*Sift the flour salt and spices into a large mixing bowl.
*In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture's fluffy.
*Beat the eggs and add them a little at a time.
*Fold in the flour and spices. 
*Stir in the fruit that has been soaking along with any excess liquid.
*Mix in the treacle.
*Spoon into the cake tin and spread out evenly.
*Cover the cake with a double square of greaseproof paper with a small hole in the top. 
*Bake the cake on the lower shelf for 4& 1/4- 3/4 hours

So after you've cooked it for nearly FIVE hours, you want to take a wooden skewer and poke holes in it (once it has cooled).  Then you wrap it in a double layer of baking parchment - I added a layer of tin foil too - and then pop it in a air tight container.

Then you need to feed the cake.  You're meant to drizzle a couple of teaspoons of brandy over the cake once a week for the next month or so.  I might have got a little bit carried away at this point.  I was sloshing on the brandy/rum/whisky every few days.  I am now seriously concerned that someone might have some cake and then try and drive.

But to look on the bright side, I do have an incredibly moist and rich looking fruit cake.  

When it came to icing the Very Tolerant Boyfriend had purchased some cake decorations, but afterwards I found a polar bear cupcake on Pinterest, which I thought I could up-scale to a full sized cake,

And it worked ok, I think.

We used the decorations that had been bought to create a random wintery scene at the front of the cake board.

All in all I am quite pleased with out effort, but I'll let you know how it tastes when I cut it open and feed it to our friends tomorrow night.