Daz in the Kitchen: Christmas cake with walnuts and brandy ... in the Thermomix

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Christmas cake with walnuts and brandy ... in the Thermomix

Well, I've been experimenting with Christmas cake recipe and I made this a little while ago and had very good results with them. However, my mother asked for Christmas cake with brandy instead of sherry and also with nuts in them, so I experimented a little more and came up with this recipe.

Ingredients:

1kg mixed dried fruit

500ml of milk (any sort)

400ml of brandy

375g of crushed walnuts

300g self raising flour

Instructions:

Soak fruit in milk and brandy for at least 4 - 6 hours or overnight

Preheat oven to 150°C

Line a 25cm cake tin with baking paper and set aside

Place fruit mixture, nuts and flour into mixing bowl and mix for 90 sec / Reverse / Speed 3 (for more even distribution of flour, put flour in the middle between layers of fruit and nuts

When mixing is done, pour out into a large bowl and hand mix a little to make sure the flour is evenly distributed right through the mixture

Pour into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean

This turned out very, very well. It was super easy to make and not really all that different from the first recipe. There's a little bit more flour in it and also the walnuts.

The walnuts gave this Christmas cake a very lovely texture.

This is makes up quite a large batch of batter and I was baking them in a muffin tin for single serve Christmas cakes that we could serve on Christmas Day lunch.

For single serve Christmas cakes, they only need to be in the oven for 40 minutes and they are done.

This recipe makes about 14 single serve Christmas cakes.

When you first bite into these, you get a lovely whiff of the brandy escaping from the cake and getting a lovely nose full of the brandy fumes. The cake itself is slightly drunken but not overly so.

If you want to continue to get the cakes even more drunken, you put the cakes in an air tight container, poke a few holes into them and pour more brandy, sherry, rum or any alcoholic beverage of your choice into it, over a few days, weeks or month. This will sufficiently preserve the cake and marinate it at the same time. With copious quantities of the special juice :-) the Christmas cakes will last a long time, even if you don't keep them in the fridge.