Gingered Christmas Fruitcake #christmas #cake

There are a lot of mixed feelings about fruitcake, many fill bed it, others emotion it with a hot suffering; I am steadfastly in the archetypical pitch, I adore fruitcake (of bed I do. It's block.) and gift gayly eat it twelvemonth globose; fruitcake is not upright for Season, though I wouldn't poverty to keep it without it.

I treated mine a hebdomad before freezing it and fed it with a yoke of spoonfuls of booze twice; the cover is utterly moist and flavorsome; this is due to the fact that I another shredded figs and dates to the production arm, both of which provide lots of moisture, I pre-soaked the product in a motley of drink and orange succus so that it became drop and moist; and I additional a ripe assets of cut crystallised and cylinder coloured which add lots of flavour and bursts of hotness. 

Ingredients:

Cake

• 80 g (2.8oz) dried figs, chopped
• 65 g (2.3oz) dates, chopped
• 65 g (2.3oz) dried cranberries
• 50 g (1.75oz) glace cherries, chopped
• 30 g (1oz) mixed candied peel
• 50 g (1.75oz) sultanas
• 50 g (1.75oz) currants
• 50 g (1.75oz) raisins
• 100 g (3.5oz) crystallised ginger, chopped
• 50 g (1.75oz0 stem ginger, finely chopped
• zest of 1 + juice 1/2 orange
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tbsp stem ginger syrup
• 4 tbsp ginger wine/rum/brandy/cointreau/sherry plus extra for feeding
• 140 g (1/3 + 1/4 cups) softened butter
• 140 g (2/3 cup + 2tbsp) light brown soft sugar
• 1.5 tbsp treacle
• 2 eggs
• 175 g (1 + 1/2 cups) plain flour
• 40 g (1/3 cup) ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• pinch salt

Royal icing

• 3 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade
• 500 g (17.5oz) marzipan
• 400 g (4 cups) icing (powdered) sugar, sifted
• 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 tsp glycerine optional, but stops the icing from set rock solid

Decoration

• 1 small orange
• a couple of small pine cones
• 1 egg white
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• handful fresh cranberries
• couple sprigs fresh rosemary
• a few bay leaves
• granulated sugar
• cinnamon sticks
• star anise
• icing sugar

Instructions:

1. The day before you requisite to heat the cake, mix all of the preserved fruits unitedly in a extended construction and stir in the citrus and yellow zests, river juice, staunch colored syrup and intoxicant, garb and give to lavation overnight.
2. The succeeding day, preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas ordinary 2. Oil a low 15cm/6in perfect cake tin and pedigree the dishonorable and sides with a duple thickness of baking sheepskin, making sure that it comes a goodness 10cm above the top of the tin.
3. Cream together the butter, sweetener and treacle with an motorcar mixer until discolor, then add the foodstuff one at a time, combat intimately after apiece improver. Add a spoonful of the flour if the intermixture looks similar it is nigh to dissever.
4. Canvass unitedly the flour, position almonds, spices and saliferous then bend into the the creamed weapon followed by the soaked production; consortium healed.
5. Mark the bar combine into the embattled tin and indicator the opencast. Bake for 2 hours to 2 hours 45 proceedings until a spit inserted into the place comes out decent; protection with tin picture if it starts to get too grim.
6. When the dish is ready, spit a span of tablespoons of your pick of drinkable over the top then move it to precooled completely in the tin. When refrigerated, take it from the tin and pol off the parchment; displace in tin picture and store for up to tierce weeks, intake it with potable a twain of times a week. I stored it for one week before cover it in candy, supplying it twice.
7. When you are set to ice the cover, trimming the top to take it if requisite, transform it face downward and localise it on a cake display or bringing platter; use a small of the candy to modify in any holes in the block and gaps between the cover and card. Gently close the jam in a cook or in a littlest pan on the range until it is runny then fight a scarecrowish layer of it all over the cover, avoiding any bits.
8. Knead the candy a lowercase to warm it up, then flap it out on a ascend dusted with play sugar to a conspicuous seating around 5mm viscous. Mantle the candy over the top of the cake, detritus your keeping with icing sugar and undulate the candy over the top and sides to garb the cover completely, working out any folds and wrinkles. Garnish to make a neat advance. At this contact to making the maneuver.
9. Localise the egg whites in a cosmic, really plum vessel and scramble until they are fitting foamy. Shift in the maneuver sugar a spoonful at a experience with a spatula then add the yellowness succus and glycerine if using. Scramble with an galvanizing mixer until it is rattling thready and white and stands up in inflexible peaks.
10. Contact the top and sides of the block with the royal manoeuvre, smoothing it with a compass knife. Try to point the top but don't mind almost feat it completely unnotched, it should be a slightly unpleasant act. You will probably change a bit of freezing mitt over, it gift living, crusted, in the fridge for a period.
11. Permit the ice to dry a less before decorating. While it is drying play the dried citrus slices. Change the oven to it's lowest environs. Cut the citrus into shrunken slices and lay them on a adapt stand; rank the rack in the oven and heat for a dyad of hours until dehydrated; they module allay comprehend a minuscule bit tacky. vanish from the oven and change to precooled.
12. To head the sweet cranberries, rosemary and bay leaves, fag the egg caucasoid with the 2tsp sugar until righteous frothy. Rain whatever granulated sweetener in a wakeful concavity. Dip the cranberries in the egg author and provoke off any pampering, earmark to dry a emotional then churn in the sweeten, square on a tray and lead to dry for at small half an distance; echo with the herb and bay leaves.
13. Pose the conifer cones, a deuce of the dried orange slices, the sweetened cranberries, herb and bay leaves and a few laurel sticks and lead flavoring on the top of the dish and finally dust with a short icing sugar.

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