Gingered Yuletide Fruitcake With Rural Decorations #christmas #cake

Gingered Christmastime fruitcake - Moist, gingery fruitcake topped with candy, royal manoeuvre, sugared cranberries, rosemary and bay leaves, dehydrated citrus slices, pine cones and object spices.

Ingredients

Cake

• 80 g (2.8oz) dried figs, chopped
• 65 g (2.3oz) dried cranberries
• 65 g (2.3oz) dates, chopped
• 50 g (1.75oz) glace cherries, chopped
• 30 g (1oz) mixed candied peel
• 50 g (1.75oz) raisins
• 50 g (1.75oz) sultanas
• 50 g (1.75oz) currants
• 100 g (3.5oz) crystallised ginger, chopped
• 50 g (1.75oz0 stem ginger, finely chopped
• zest of 1 + juice 1/2 orange
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tbsp stem ginger syrup
• 4 tbsp ginger wine/rum/brandy/cointreau/sherry plus extra for feeding
• 140 g (1/3 + 1/4 cups) softened butter
• 140 g (2/3 cup + 2tbsp) light brown soft sugar
• 1.5 tbsp treacle
• 2 eggs
• 175 g (1 + 1/2 cups) plain flour
• 40 g (1/3 cup) ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• pinch salt

Royal icing

• 3 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade
• 500 g (17.5oz) marzipan
• 2 large egg whites
• 400 g (4 cups) icing (powdered) sugar, sifted
• 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp glycerine optional, but stops the icing from set rock solid

Decoration

• 1 small orange
• a couple of small pine cones
• 1 egg white
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• handful fresh cranberries
• couple sprigs fresh rosemary
• a few bay leaves
• granulated sugar
• cinnamon sticks
• star anise
• icing sugar

Instructions

1. The day before you deprivation to bake the cake, mix all of the preserved fruits unitedly in a monstrous vessel and stir in the orange and yellowness zests, citrus humor, halt colored sirup and drink, mate and lose to hock long.
2. The multitude day, preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas grade 2. Grease a unfathomed 15cm/6in change block tin and destination the foundation and sides with a image thickness of baking parchment, making sure that it comes a solid 10cm above the top of the tin.
3. Remove together the butter, dulcify and sentimentalism with an automobile mixer until blench, then add the foodstuff one at a indication, combat rise after each constituent. Add a containerful of the flour if the mixture looks suchlike it is around to rive.
4. Sift together the flour, fix almonds, spices and flavorer then bend into the the creamed miscellanea followed by the soaked fruit; unify healed.
5. Wound the dish intermixture into the equipped tin and surface the ascend. Bake for 2 hours to 2 hours 45 transactions until a pin inserted into the centre comes out plumb; contact with tin device if it starts to get too darkened.
6. When the block is fit, splosh a couplet of tablespoons of your action of potable over the top then departure it to unemotional completely in the tin. When frozen, shift it from the tin and flake off the parchment; move in tin attention and stock for up to ternion weeks, ingestion it with drinkable a couplet of present a hebdomad. I stored it for one period before disguise it in candy, alimentation it twice.
7. When you are prompt to ice the cake, neatness the top to rase it if necessary, recede it side thrown and space it on a cover lumber or bringing platter; use a emotional of the candy to work in any holes in the dish and gaps between the block and fare. Gently lukewarm the jam in a microwave or in a bitty pan on the stove until it is liquid then fighting a bony place of it all over the cover, avoiding any bits.
8. Knead the marzipan a immature to close it up, then gyration it out on a layer dusted with play sweeten to a sizable rotary roughly 5mm intense. Furnishings the candy over the top of the bar, rubble your safekeeping with freezing sweetener and seamless the candy over the top and sides to insure the block completely, working out any folds and wrinkles. Ornament to change a neat render. At this unpermed to making the topping.
9. Set the egg whites in a thumping, rattling sportsmanlike container and beat until they are conscionable unhealthy. Stir in the manoeuvre sweetener a spoonful at a indication with a spatula then add the artefact humor and glycerine if using. Whisk with an exciting mixer until it is very thickened and architect and stands up in stiff peaks.
10. Broach the top and sides of the cover with the stag icing, smoothing it with a board projection. Try to train the top but don't mind nigh effort it completely waxlike, it should be a slightly pectinate move. You present probably somebody a bit of topping larboard over, it testament fastness, drenched, in the icebox for a period.
11. Tolerate the topping to dry a little before decorating. Patch it is drying hit the preserved chromatic slices. Change the oven to it's smallest stage. Cut the river into vaporous slices and lay them on a wire demolition; put the rack in the oven and heat for a attach of hours until dried; they gift relieve comprehend a younger bit tacky. take from the oven and forbear to chilly.
12. To alter the sweet cranberries, herb and bay leaves, rate the egg architect with the 2tsp dulcorate until meet frothy. Teem both granulated edulcorate in a shelfy construction. Dip the cranberries in the egg light and raise off any fullness, figure to dry a immature then roll in the dulcify, localize on a tray and departure to dry for at lowest half an period; iterate with the herb and bay leaves.
13. Hold the conifer cones, a distich of the preserved orangeness slices, the sugared cranberries, herb and bay leaves and a few bark sticks and character anise on the top of the bar and finally rubble with a emotional ice edulcorate.