Mary Berry's Christmas Cake (20cm)

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Christmas in the UK would not be the same without a moisty, fruity and boozy Christmas Cake. Traditionally, the Christmas Cake is a fruit cake made with currants, sultanas, and other dried fruits that have been soaked in alcohol, often brandy, cherry or rum. The cake is then usually baked a few weeks-months ahead of Christmas and “fed” with more alcohol as the weeks go by. Before Christmas, the cake is then often covered in marzipan and either fondant or royal icing.

My recipe is an adaptation of Mary Berry’s Christmas cake made in a 20cm deep round tin. I find this to be an ideal size to serve 8-10 people. The below recipe is my own twist combining multiple different Mary Berry recipes from the BBC food website and also from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible (my favourite baking book!).

When to make your Christmas Cake

This year I was very organised and actually made my Christmas Cake at the end of October! That way it had 2 months to sit in my cupboard and mature, and I was able to feed it with plenty of brandy over the weeks, too!

However, these are busy times and people panic unnecessarily if they think they haven’t made their Christmas cake in time! Don’t worry though, even making the below cake 2-4 weeks before Christmas will be just fine! If you want the cake to be a little more boozy, you could just “feed” it with some alcohol once or twice a week rather than every one to two weeks!

If you really have forgotten to make a Christmas cake, you could also make this Scottish Fruitcake: Dundee Cake! Dundee Cake has a slightly crumblier and lighter texture but has a really nice flavour even if made only a few days beforehand! For a Scottish twist, you could soak the fruit and cake with whiskey instead of brandy!

How to decorate your Christmas Cake

You can decorate your Christmas Cake as simply or elaborately as you like! It can look beautiful even when kept clean and simple, but also looks nice if you go all out with cake toppers and piping! The below is a suggestion of how I decorated my Christmas Cake, so please send me a picture of yours if you go for something different! 😊

I decorated my cake by covering it with a layer of marzipan first, followed by some royal icing. I love marzipan, and think it’s a really nice combination with the fruit. Below, I have tried to explain how to cover the cake with marzipan, but there is also a very good video on the BBC good food website that I recommend you watch for a more visual explanation!

If you do not like marzipan, there are of course alternatives! You could choose to cover your cake with fondant icing instead, or just leave it out completely. I do feel that a casing of marzipan or fondant is useful for getting a smooth side and top which gives the cake a nice finish.

You could leave the cake as with the marzipan or fondant cover as is, or make some royal icing to finish as I did below. This gives the cake a lovely white appearance and you can swirl and peak the icing to make it look like snow! The glycerine in the icing will ensure the royal icing doesn’t set rock-solid and you can still cut the cake well.

For my finishing touches, I coloured some of the leftover marzipan in green and red, and used a holly leaf cutter I bought from Lakeland (not sponsored, see here) to make some holly leaves. If I had had a nice ribbon, I would have tied that around the cake, too.

More Christmas Baking Recipes

I love to bake all year round, but Christmas time is definitely one of my favourite times to bake! Be that some Christmas biscuits, some highly decorated Christmas-themed cakes to wow your friends and family during the lead-up to Christmas, or some delicious desserts to finish off a fantastic Christmas dinner! I have loads of different recipes on my blog, so make sure to try out some of the ones below:

Mary Berry’s Boozy Christmas Cake (20 cm)

Recipe

Ingredients:

FOR THE CAKE

275g red currants
175g sultanas
175g raisins
50g candied peel
100ml brandy (or cherry, rum, or whiskey)
100g glacé cherries, quartered, rinsed, and patted dry
100g dried apricots
225g butter, softened
225g dark brown sugar
4 L eggs
1 tbsp black treacle
225g plain flour
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp mixed spice
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1 orange, zest only
1 lemon, zest only
50g chopped blanched almonds

FOR “FEEDING”

Brandy, to taste (optional)

TO DECORATE

3-4 tbsp apricot jam
500g marzipan
2 L eggs, whites only
2 tsp lemon juice
~ 500-600g icing sugar, plus a little extra for dusting
1 tsp glycerine
Red and green gel food colouring (optional)

YOU WILL ALSO NEED

20cm deep round spring-clip tin (I use this one)
Baking paper
Tin foil
Small saucepan
Sieve
18-20cm cake board
Silicone brush
Rolling pin
small palette knife (I can highly recommend this one)
Holly leaf cutters (optional) (I have these from Lakeland)

Method:

Start by preparing the fruit for soaking. Place the currants, sultanas, raisins and candied peel into a large bowl and cover them with 100ml of brandy. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave the fruit to soak up the alcohol for three days, stirring once daily.
Once you are ready to make the cake, lightly grease and line a 20cm deep round spring-clip baking tin with a double layer of baking paper. You may want to have the baking paper come up a few centimetres above the rim of the tin. This will help package the cake for storage later.
Preheat the oven to 140°C/120°C fan.
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, eggs and treacle until smooth and creamy. Next, add in the flour and spices and briefly mix until just combined.
Next, add the soaked fruit and remaining liquid to the bowl, alongside the chopped apricots, glacé cherries, blanched almonds and the lemon and orange zest. Stir these in using a large metal spoon or spatula until evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
Carefully transfer the cake batter to the prepared tin and level the surface. Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 1 ¾ – 2 hours, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Then carefully remove it from the tin, leaving the baking paper on, and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
Once completely cold, wrap the cake tightly in baking paper. You may want to place an additional circle of baking paper on top of the cake, and then use the overhanging edges from the baking to fold down on top. Then wrap the cake in an additional layer of tinfoil.
Leave the cake in a cool and dry place until you are ready to decorate it. Every one-two weeks (depending on how much time you have until Christmas and how boozy you would like it to be) you can “feed” the cake with more brandy. Carefully unwrap the cake and use a metal skewer (only the first time) to poke a few holes from the top to the bottom of the cake. Then drizzle 2-3 tbsp of brandy over the cake.
Cover the cake again tightly with the baking paper and tinfoil and return to its cool storage space.
Once the cake is ready to decorate, carefully warm the apricot jam in a small saucepan, then strain it through a sieve into a heat-proof bowl to remove any bits. You can check out this video here (BBC good food) for a visual explanation on how to cover a cake in marzipan.
Remove the cake from the tinfoil and baking paper. If the top of the cake is slightly uneven, use a sharp knife to level the top.
Brush a little apricot jam onto the cake board to prevent the cake from slipping, then place the cake bottom side facing up onto the cake board.
Lightly brush the top and sides of the cake with the remaining apricot jam.
Cut a piece of string than is long enough to go up the sides and across the top of the cake to have an estimate of how large a circle of marzipan you will need to roll out. Lightly dust your worksurface and rolling pin with icing sugar, and knead your marzipan for a few minutes until smooth.
Flatten the marzipan into a disk, then roll it out into a large circle that is about 3-5mm thick. Use the piece of string to check if the area will be large enough to cover the whole cake. Dust your rolling pin with more icing sugar and carefully wrap the marzipan disk around the rolling pin.
Drape the marzipan over the cake making sure it covers all the sides. Carefully smooth the marzipan over the top and sides of the cake, then use a sharp knife to trim the base of the cake. You can save the marzipan trimmings to make some decorations (see below).
To make the royal icing, place the egg whites, glycerine, and lemon juice in a large glass bowl and whisk with a fork until frothy. Start adding the icing sugar, about 100-200g at a time, whisking well between each addition. Continue adding the icing sugar until the icing is really stiff. The amount of icing sugar you need will very much depend on the size of your egg whites, so just continue adding more until the icing reaches the right consistency.
Spoon the royal icing over the top of the cake and use the icing sugar to spread it over the top and sides of the cake. If you like you can use the palette knife to create swirls and peaks in the icing, too. Place the cake in the fridge to allow the icing to set.
To make the marzipan holly leaves, colour a small part of the marzipan with the red gel food colouring and roll pieces of it into small balls. Colour the remaining marzipan with green gel food colouring and use a holly leaf cutter to cut out holly leaves. Brush the centre of the leaves with a little water and stick on three red holly berries in the middle.
Decorate the top of the cake with the holly leaves and serve!