Easy Christmas Cake Traybake

5 from 2 votes

A classic Christmas cake… in traybake form! This Easy Christmas Cake Traybake is easy to make, easy to decorate and easy to cut – perfect for Christmas entertaining and practically foolproof.

Course Christmas Baking, Dessert, Pudding, Snack

Cuisine British

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 45 minutes

Servings slices

Calories 500kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Equipment

A large saucepan
Baking paper
A large mixing bowl
2 wooden spoons
A traybake pan measuring approximately 33 by 23cm (13 by 9ins)
A wire cooling rack (You can improvise with a grill rack or oven shelf if you don’t have one)
A rolling pin
A sharp knife
Star shaped cutters of various sizes

Ingredients

For the cake…

1 kg mixed dried fruit (ideally including mixed peel – see note)
Juice of 3 oranges
100 ml sherry (or brandy / whisky / gin / rum - or use apple juice if you want this to be alcohol free)
250 ml boiling water
300 g butter softened (plus extra for greasing)
300 g soft dark brown sugar (or muscovado sugar)
4 large eggs
300 g self-raising flour (US - self-rising flour)
4 teaspoons mixed spice (or pumpkin spice)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
400 g glacé cherries halved

To decorate…

500 g marzipan
1 kg white fondant icing
Icing sugar (US - confectioner's sugar) (for rolling out the marzipan and fondant icing)
Apricot jam (or shred-less marmalade) (for sticking the marzipan to the cake)
Edible gold spray paint or edible glitter spray (optional)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

For the cake…

Place the dried fruit in a large saucepan. Squeeze over the juice of the 3 oranges and pour over the sherry and boiling water. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. Leave to stand until needed.
Preheat your oven to 160C / 140C fan / gas mark 3 / 325F. Grease and line your traybake pan with baking paper (see above).
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar thoroughly.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating the mixture until smooth after each one.
Gently fold in the flour, mixed spice and cinnamon until fully incorporated.
Add the glacé cherries and the dried fruit, plus any remaining liquid from the saucepan. (There should be very little liquid left, as most of it will have soaked into the fruit or evaporated.) Stir gently until the fruit is evenly distributed.
Tip the cake mixture into your prepared traybake pan and get it straight into the oven. Bake for 1h15 minutes or until a skewer, inserted into the middle of the cake, comes out clean.
Leave to cool for 1 hour in the tin, then remove and allow to fully cool on a wire cooling rack.

To decorate…

Dust your worksurface with a icing sugar. Roll out the marzipan to roughly the shape of the top of the cake.
Brush the cake with a thin layer of slightly warmed apricot jam (shred-less marmalade will also work.)
Place the marzipan on top of the cake and trim any overhanging edges with a sharp knife.
Roll out half the white fondant icing to roughly the shape of the top of the cake.
Brush the marzipan layer with a very small amount of cold water.
Place the fondant on top of the cake and trim any overhanging edges with a sharp knife.
Roll out the remaining fondant icing and cut out a variety of different sized stars.
Place these stars at random on top of the cake, using a little cold water on the back of each star to stick them down.
As an optional extra, you can use gold edible spray or edible glitter spray to colour the stars before placing them on the cake.

Video

Notes

Ideally you want the dried mixed fruit to be a mix of sultanas, raisins, currants and candied mixed peel. You can usually find this ready mixed in supermarkets. I have used both this one and this one in the past. If you can't find it ready mixed, buy the ingredients individually and go for these proportions: 40% sultanas / 30% raisins / 20% currants / 10% candied mixed peel.
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition