Hi and a magnificent yes I'm feeling magnificent today welcome to Steve's
kitchen today we're making that Christmas cake the one that I spoke to
you about earlier and gave you the ingredients for those of you that have
just joined me all the ingredients are written down below and also on Steve's
kitchen on the website which I'll leave the link below and as I said to you this
is a sort of live session today and to prove that well if one of you asked me
to put my right hand up there you go point proven let's get on and make this
fantastic Christmas cake we start by showing you some of the basics
now I've got an 8 inch or 20 centimeter cake tin here if you're using a
different size we'll need to make some different calculations for the mixture
I'll leave that on my website so I've got some greaseproof baking paper which
I folded over into double and just along the bottom edge where I fold it here I'm
just cutting some little lines around about an inch up the paper and then when
you pop it in the cake tin you'll have a little ledge for the bottom to sit in to
get a nice seal now I've lined the tin with butter so it helps the paper stick
and I've cut a circle we'll just pop that in the bottom and the reason we've
let the baking paper come up so high is to protect the cake while it's baking so
it doesn't burn the top let's take our mixing bowl now and get them make our
Christmas cake okay we've got our 200 grams of butter which is nice and soft
by the way room temperature so we pop that in there now I'm going to add my
200 grams of soft brown dark brown sugar and you don't need a machine for any of
this we're just going to cream this together with a wooden spoon or spatula
and there's our sugar and our butter all creamed together into that mixture we're
going to put 4 room-temperature eggs just break them straight into the
mixture so my eggs are in there now and I'm just
going to mix those in with my butter and my sugar now also into this mixture at
the moment we take in the zest from our lemon and our orange and that's going to
add a lovely tangy flavour I'm going to add a tablespoon of dark black treacle
and I'm going to add my 50 grams of almond meal in there as well and they
just continue to mix the batter up now don't worry at this moment if it
looks a bit curdled and a bit mess it's not a problem for this batter the flour
will start to bind it all together now we're going to take that 200 grams of
all-purpose flour that's 7 ounces just pop that into a sieve and on top of that
I'm going to book my spices I've got my teaspoon and a half of mixed spice I've
got my half a teaspoon of cinnamon my nutmeg half a teaspoon and my salt and
then we're just going to sieve that over the top of the mixture
and then we're just going to mix that in and get ourselves a nice creamy batter
now that's only taken a minute or so to mix together like that we can start to
add our fruit so ingo the 200 grams of raisins 200 grams of salt ana's 200
grams of beautiful black currants 150 grams of cranberries our glass a
cherries and our mix peel and lastly our 50 grams of slivered almonds and now we
want to mix all that fruit in with our batter and get a really rich cake mix
now you'll see as you mix that through just how rich this batter is how heavy
and delicious this cake is going to taste so we've got that lovely rich
fruit cake batter in there now and we've got to get it into our tin now rather
than lift and pour this in I think it's easier to get a big spoon and just scoop
this into our cake tin and as you go you can just sort of push it down and then
just using your spoon just level down the surface of the cake it doesn't have
to be perfect now also what I tend to do with these fruitcakes is I make her a
bit of an indentation they don't rise very much as a cake but it will help it
from having too much of a dome on the top which we don't want now you will
have licked your fingers and your hands and guys if you're making this now taste
that it's delicious
mmm what a piece of heaven now I've preheated my oven to 150
degrees Celsius that's 300 to grease Fahrenheit and we're gonna cook this
cake nice and slowly over two and a half hours now after about two hours you can
start to look at the cake and then we're going to stick a skewer into it I'll
show you that a little bit later on just to check whether it's cooked now I just
want to show you my cakes been in the oven for about 2 hours and 15 minutes
and the way I test it in the oven take a wooden skewer like this you can use a
metal one and just push it into the cake and it should pull out like that
perfectly clean I don't know if you can see that there that means the cake
cooked all the way through now we leave the cake
the tin until it's virtually cooled down before we try taking it out welcome back
if you're watching and making at the same time you will have paused the video
and your home like mine will smell our delicious I mean it's like Santa's
grotto any smells wonderful the cake has cooled down now and we're ready to take
it out of the tin and take the paper off so let's just release the springform
pull that off of there and then I'm just going to pop my hand in there turn the
cake over and we should be able to fairly easily remove the the tin or the
base from the tin and now we can just peel this paper off from around the tin
and it comes off really very simply and also we'll just take the bottom off of
there now look at that beautiful cake you're seeing it as I'm seeing it here
the smell off there is delicious I'm just gonna turn that back over lay it
down on my counter so what are we going to do with this cake now well the reason
we've made it up before Christmas is because between now and Christmas we're
going to make some holes with a chopstick or or some implement in the
top here and we're gonna pour a liquid of our choice just a little bit into the
cake so the fruit plumps up I'm gonna be feeding my cake with a nice brandy you
could use a sherry if you want alcohol free as I say you could even use a
cranberry juice or an orange juice now we're not going to feed it today I'm
gonna store this away in an airtight container you could actually wrap it
round again with the wax paper and then put some some aluminium foil over the
top of it to seal the cake in and we're going to feed it three to four times
between now and Christmas and then you'll be able to serve this up at
Christmas time it'll be beautiful moist all the fruit ibly plump it'll be
delicious also a little bit before Christmas we will decorate the cake
we're going to be using that marzipan and we're going to make a royal icing
and make this thing look an absolute treat so please join me then now I've
moved my cake onto some parchment paper because I'm going to be wrapping the
cake up after I fed it to keep all that moisture in and trap it in there now you
could use a skewer or I'm going to be using a chopstick here and we want to
make holes in the top of the cake no deeper than halfway though so if you use
the side of the cake as a measurement and you can make a dozen or so holes
just sort push the chopstick in at different
angles around the cake and then as I say I'm going to be using brandy but
whatever liquid you decide to choose just take a tablespoon of the liquid and
we just start to pour it near to the hole just a little at a time let that
soak in so it might take one or two maybe even three tablespoons and that is
quite enough don't overdo it remember we're going to be feeding this two or
three more times between now and Christmas they should be fed every week
or so so now we're just going to wrap the cake up nice and tight and I've
added some silver foil around the top of that just to hold the parchment together
now make a note on your calendars or Diaries that in a week from now we're
going to unwrap this and we're gonna feed it again and then a fortnight from
now the same thing again all the way up to Christmas now I'm not going to be
doing another video for that but I will be doing a video near to Christmas where
we're going to be decorating this getting it ready for the festive season
it's gonna look beautiful we'll be using that homemade marzipan as well today we
are decorating our Christmas cake is still wrapped up in here if you made
this cake with me and you've been feeding it over the last few weeks it
should smell absolutely delicious it's now ready to decorate we're going to
need royal icing and marzipan now I've got videos on my channel for both of
those I've also got some decorations here I'll just show you them some I've
made them with a modeling chocolate bit of fun to top the cake off so that's all
you're gonna need to decorate the Christmas cake so let's get on and make
this thing look festive so here's my Christmas cake unwrapped it smells
delicious you can tell just by touching it this beautiful moist I've got a plate
here that I'm gonna be putting the cake onto when I decorate it but first of all
we have to level the top this cake is a little bit uneven so I'm going to be
using some marzipan and a little bit of jam or marmalade just to bind the
marzipan to the cake I've got about a pound of marzipan here that's about 500
grams and I just want to put up a device thing sugar down on the work surface and
then I just want to roll this marzipan out into a circle now I've rolled that
out to about half an inch thick and it's still able to move on the
counter like that when you put your cake on there you want to have at least half
an inch maybe 3/4 of an inch around the outside with marzipan now
before we cover this cake with the marzipan I'm going to put some jam on
here or marmalade I like to use marmalade a lot of people use apricot
jam but I really like the flavor of the marmalade so just take a couple of
tablespoons of marmalade and spread it evenly over the top of your cake so now
I've got a lovely sticky layer of marmalade on the top of my cake and here
is my trick here's the way I'm going to get that top nice and flat I'm gonna
take my cake now and turn it upside down and lay it in the center of the marzipan
we're then gonna take a knife and trim but we're going to leave about a
centimetre 1/2 an inch of Margie pan around the outside and then remove the
excess marzipan and then using a palette knife we're going to push the marzipan
up against the side of the cake and what this will do is it will start
to fill the gap where the cake rounds meets the marzipan and then if
everything is gone according to plan we should be able to gently lift this cake
up now and there we have a perfectly flat marzipan top I can pop that down
onto my Christmas cake stand and now we can get on and decorate this so now I'm
going to take my royal icing and again I've got a little under a pound of royal
icing here and I'm just going to start to spread it on top of my marzipan and
we're not looking to try and get a smooth flat surface with this so you
don't have to worry too much about how you put it on because we're getting a
sort of snow finish so now I'm just going to take my chocolate fondant
Christmas tree I'm gonna pop it on top of my cake and its settle in there I've
got my little snowmen on there as well and I never like to do a Christmas cake
without robin redbreast and just pop him pretty much randomly on the top of the
cake and now we're just got to choose a nice piece of ribbon to go around the
outside of this cake and there it is there is my Christmas cake I put a
ribbon around there now I'm just going to take a little bit of icing sugar
and sprinkle it over the top of my tree and the Robin just a little bit of extra
snow and there you have it I've had a heap of fun making the Christmas cake
this year I hope you've had chance to join in and have some fun please share
the love give this the thumbs up I will see you shortly
be good and as always I'm going to leave some links here to some other Christmas
videos I've had a heap of fun with this one I hope you have to be good I'll see
you shortly