A fruit cake may be a classic, used in Christmas cakes and wedding cakes, but they aren’t the easiest to get right – one wrong move and you can have a stodgy dessert, and its altogether too easy to end up with a dry cake.
If you are planning to make your own fruitcake for Christmas or another occasion, there are some tricks you can use to ace the bake. And who better to school us on the perfect fruit cake than royal baker Fiona Cairns, who made the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding fruit cake?
1. Use the best ingredients
When baking a cake filled with fruit and nuts, it’s important to let these ingredients shine. “Always bake using the best and plumpest dried fruits and nuts,” advises Cairns, because you’ll be able to tell if you’ve skimped on your ingredients.
2. Prep the fruit and nuts
Fruitcakes aren’t like a Victoria sponge you can whip up in no time. If you want your bake to be as rich and flavoursome as possible, it’s going to take a bit of planning and preparation. “Soak the fruits and spices together overnight in the alcohol or/and fruit juice,” says Cairns. “We always lightly roast our nuts first, to release the essential oils.”
3. Watch out for your cake in the oven
“Do not over bake, as nothing is worse than a dry fruit cake!” she says.
4. Give it time
Fruit cake is all about deep, complex flavours – whether it’s from the alcohol you’ve added or the multitude of spices. Cairns says: “Try to leave the fruit cake to mature for at least 1-2 weeks for the flavours to mingle and develop.” Exercising patience is difficult when there’s cake involved, but in this case a bit of time will make everything taste so much better.
Looking for a recipe for the perfect fruit cake? Try Fiona Cairns’s fig, port and star anise cake – it will be the star of your Christmas food celebrations.
