Mini Christmas Cakes
Ingredients:
For the cakes:
- 265g plain flour
- 1 tsp ground mixed spice
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 225g butter or dairy free spread
- 225g soft brown sugar
- grated rind of 1 lemon
- 1.5 Tbsp black treacle
- 4 large eggs
- 60g ground almonds
- 750g dried mixed fruit
- 75g glace cherries
- 75g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
To decorate:
- 2 Tbsp apricot jam
- 200g marzipan
- 200g white fondant icing
- yellow gel food colouring
- edible gold lustre spray
- Hey Duggee plastic figurines (optional)
Note: Make sure you have a grown up with you to help with baking!
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
- Grease and double line a 12 hole mini sandwich tin or large muffin tin with greaseproof paper.
- Sift the flour and spices into a bowl and stir to combine.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, whisk the butter, sugar and lemon rind together until light and fluffy. Add the treacle and whisk again until combined.
- Whisk in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with each one and whisking before adding the next.
- Fold in the remaining flour, ground almonds, dried fruit, glace cherries and almonds and stir to completely combine.
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin.
- Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn the temperature down to 140°C/275°F/Gas Mark 1 and bake for another hour.
- Check with a skewer to see if the cakes are ready – the skewer should come out clean when pushed into the centre of one of the cakes.
- Remove cakes from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for about half an hour. Once cool enough to handle, transfer the cakes a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once cool, remove the greaseproof paper.
- When ready to decorate, use a sharp knife to slice the tops off the cakes to level them.
- Roll out the marzipan to about the thickness of a one pound coin and cut out 12 disks using the frilled side of a round cookie cutter, the same size as the top of each cake.
- Brush the top of each cake with a thin layer of apricot jam and carefully place the marzipan disks on top, ready to be decorated with icing.
- Roll out the white fondant and cut out 12 circles, using a round cutter one size smaller than the cutter you used for the marzipan.
- Carefully transfer the icing disk to the top of the cake, attaching it to the marzipan with a little brush of water.
- Gather together the remaining fondant and split into two pieces. Colour one of the pieces yellow.
- Roll the remaining white fondant out and cut snowflake shapes from it, then cut star shapes from the yellow icing.
- Pop the snowflakes and stars on a piece of baking paper, then spray with the gold lustre spray. Leave until dry enough to handle.
- Use the fondant stars and snowflakes to decorate the tops of some of the cakes.
- Decorate the tops of the remaining cakes with Hey Duggee figurines (be sure to wash them well in warm soapy water before using!)
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