Small Round Christmas Cake (6 Inch Tin)

Small Round Christmas Cake (6 Inch Tin)

Need a smaller Christmas cake this Christmas? Or perhaps you want to make Christmas cakes as gifts? Either way this Small Round Christmas Cake recipe is your answer! Better still it’s ready in 1 hour 15 minutes, it requires just a handful of simple ingredients, and can be decorated and served on the same day you make it! (Makes 6-8 slices, depending on your preferred slice size.)

Course Cake, Christmas, Christmas Baking

Cuisine British

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 45

Total Time 1 15

Servings slices

Calories 485kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

For the cake…

250 g mixed dried fruit (ideally including mixed peel – see Note 1)
Juice of 1 orange
50 ml sherry (or brandy / whisky / gin / rum - or use apple juice if you want this to be alcohol free)
75 g butter (plus extra for greasing)
75 g soft dark brown sugar (or muscovado sugar)
1 large egg
75 g self-raising flour (US - self-rising flour)
1 teaspoon mixed spice (or pumpkin spice)
½ teaspoons cinnamon
100 g glacé cherries halved

To decorate…

350 g marzipan I prefer the paler ‘natural’ colour… but the bright yellow stuff works too!
175 g white fondant icing
Icing sugar US - confectioner's sugar (for rolling out the marzipan and fondant icing)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

For the cake…

Place the dried fruit in a large saucepan. Squeeze over the juice of the orange and pour over the sherry. 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 cake pan with baking paper (see above).
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar thoroughly.
Add the egg, and beat the mixture until smooth.
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 cake tin and get it straight into the oven. Bake for 35 minutes to 45 minutes or until a skewer, inserted into the middle of the cake, comes out clean.
Leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin (or until cool enough to handle without burning your hands!), then remove the cake from the tin and allow to fully cool on a wire cooling rack… The cake should take approximately 2 hours from the time it comes out of the oven to cool fully. Do not decorate until completely cool!

To decorate…

Dust your worksurface with icing sugar. Take half the marzipan and roll it out to just a fraction larger than the cake. Cut out a circle the same size as the top of the cake, using a knife – use the cake tin as a guide to help you get the circle just the right size!
Brush the cake with a very small amount of cold water. (This is to help the marzipan stick to the cake – be very sparing, you don’t want to make the cake wet!)
Place the marzipan circle on top of the cake and trim any overhanging edges with a sharp knife.
Roll out the white fondant icing to just a fraction larger than the cake. Cut a circle the same size as the top of the cake, using a knife – again, use the cake tin to help you get the circle just the right size!
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 marzipan and cut out a variety of different sized stars. (Or whatever Christmas shapes you like!)
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.
Your cake is now ready to eat!

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. 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 (if un-decorated).
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.
The un-decorated cake is approximately 275 kcal per slice.

Nutrition