Christmas cake

I made a Christmas cake for church a couple of weeks ago and have marzipanned and iced it. I used Delia Smith's rich fruit cake recipe. She gives the quantities for various sizes of cake, both round and square, which is very useful. I put a couple of tablespoons of juice in the bowl with the fruit and left it to soak. for me at home, I would have used alcohol but we have a No Alcohol policy at church. I wanted the fruit to have a little soak but I was obviously too impatient and used the fruit too soon,  because the cake took four hours longer to cook than the recipe said. Four hours! My nice husband had come down to help me wash up and clear up and get some baking in the freezer (not the Christmas cake!) and he was not amused at waiting there for an extra four hours. Nor was I, come to that. In the end, the cake turned out very well and I am very pleased with it. So are the customers because they keep buying slices of it.

And no, I am not making a Christmas cake for us. I do very little, if any, baking for us. For one thing, we eat it if I make it and we both could do with a smaller waistline and secondly, I am all baked out at church : )

Delia's rich fruit cake recipe can be found at:

http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/baking/scaling-up-cake-recipes.html