My cake, Granny's recipe

Stir up Sunday, which this week fell on November 20th, a date in the Christian calendar known as the Sunday last before advent, is traditionally the day on which Christmas Puddings are stirred up and Christmas cakes are baked.

It’s not too late to start now and still have a great cake for Christmas.

If you want to read my story about Stir up Sunday, you’ll find it in the latest edition of Crush – click here.

This cake is based on a recipe my grandmother used for the entirety of my childhood.  The brandy was very important as the cake was fed on it in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

I made this cake on my cooking slot on the Expresso TV Breakfast Show on December 1st.  Each week I am going to feed it with brandy and it will be given away to a viewer just before Christmas.  watch me on Tuesdays and Thursdays on SATV 3 just about 07h15.

For this cake you’ll need:

100g Orange River currants

150g Orange River raisins

250g Orange River sultanas

100g glacé pineapple or melon, roughly chopped

100g glacé cherries, rinsed of syrup and cut in half

100g candied mixed peel

125ml KWV Brandy, plus more for the weekly soak

130g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp each ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, sea salt and black pepper

50g ground almonds

125g butter, softened

125g soft brown sugar, or muscovado sugar

4 eggs, whisked

Grated rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange

100g whole almonds

3 Tbs preserved ginger, rinsed of syrup and finely chopped

Method:

One of the things my grandmother believed in was soaking the fruit in the brandy at least overnight.  So place the currants, raisins, sultanas, pineapple, cherries and peel in a bowl and pour over the brandy. Cover with clingwrap and leave overnight – she used a saucer!  Place the butter and the sugar on a shelf in the kitchen so that they are at room temperature in the morning.  The cake tin – a 20cm springform – was lined with a double layer of greaseproof paper, well brushed with butter and sprinkled with flour, [we use silicone paper now!] was also prepared the night before.

In the morning, preheat the oven to 140C.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, the salt and spices and the ground almonds.

In an electric beater, cream together the butter and sugar at slow speed and then beat until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, about one at a time adding a little of the flour mixture each time to prevent curdling.  Fold the flour into the butter cream and add the fruits, any remaining brandy, the lemon and orange rinds, half the whole almonds and the preserved ginger.

Spoon the mixture carefully into the prepared cake tin, smoothing over the surface, and creating a slight hollow in the middle to prevent a hump in the middle.  Make a pattern on the top of the cake with the remaining whole almonds, much like I have done in the picture.

Place the cake into the preset oven and bake for 60 minutes.  Cover with a sheet of aluminium foil and bake for a further 30 minutes.  Check with a skewer in the middle of the cake.  If it comes out clean, the cake is cooked.  If not, test every 10 minutes until the cake is cooked.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.  Poke some holes in the cake with a skewer, pour over a little brandy, cover in muslin, wrap in foil or clingwrap and store in a cake tin.  Once a week take the cake out and pour a little brandy over it.

Ice the cake the day before Christmas.  The almond pattern is so pretty, you can leave it without icing, perhaps just brush some warm apricot jam over the top.