Christmas Cake

My previous rant about Christmas starting too early in the shops meant that I completely forgot that there are certain traditional Christmas preparations in our family that SHOULD start early, namely baking the Christmas Cake. Typically this is baked a couple of months before Christmas to allow it to 'mature' (actually the process is more like pickling as it involves injecting the cake with Brandy over the course of several months).

This year I'm off to a late start, so this evening I started out on a long task normally reserved for non-work days, baking the cake.

I won't go through the whole preparation method suffice to say that in the bowl you see here are:

Glace Cherries
Candied Peel
Sultanas
Currants
Raisins
Plain flour
Salt
Ground cinnamon
Grated Nutmeg
Ground Cloves (wonderful smell!!)
Mixed spice
Butter (lots)
Dark brown sugar
Lemon Rind (freshly grated)
Orange Rind (freshly grated)
Eggs (eight!)
Vanilla essence
Black treacle (tricky stuff to get out of the tin!)
Ground Almonds
Chopped Almonds (to give some crunchy bite to the cake)
Brandy

Oh, and I forgot to add copious amounts of Apricot Brandy, supplemented with some cold Green tea, used to soak the fruit for a day or so before to plump up the fruit.

After about 90 minutes (and a disproportionate amount of washing up) these have all been combined into the mix and go into the oven (in tins of course). And then comes the LONGGGGGG wait. The recipe says bake for four hours which by my calculations is until about 1:15 am tomorrow morning! From past experience I reckon it will be finished a bit before that?not too long after midnight!

All that is left to do then is cool, wrap in greaseproof paper and leave for a month or so (with bi-weekly injections of Brandy (purely as a preservative of course!!). Then we are on he home stretch, all it needs is Marzipan added and Royal icing, left for another week or so for the icing to harden before we can finally EAT it!

Every time I do this I'm left with this horrible feeling I've left something out........