Copied from the book of liqueur recipes I've been preparing (for about a year, takes a while to test all the recipes!). Judging by the spices thus is one I've adapted from a German recipe I found. The dried figs make the cake a bit gritty with their seeds. You might want to leave them out, but they do add a rich flavour. The fruit mix and quantities can be varied to your preference. Vanilla paste can be used in place of the vanilla pod.
Winter/Christmas liqueur
70 cl brandy
20 cl water
1 tablespoon honey
150 g brown sugar
120 g dried figs
120 g dried apricots
120 g dried apple / apple rings
50 g raisins
½ vanilla pod
½ stick of cinnamon
3 cloves
3 red peppercorns
1 cardamom pod
Steep the dried fruit in the brandy in a large glass jar for three days in a warm place. You may substitute other dried fruit to taste as long as the total weight of fruit is approximately the same.
Scrape the vanilla pod and add the seeds with the peppercorns, the other spices and the honey to the brandy and fruit. Dissolve the sugar in the water at a low simmer.
Allow the sugar solution to cool to 50°C and add to the brandy, fruit and spice mixture.
Leave for six weeks in a cool, dark place shaking occasionally.
Filter and bottle.
If you use the fruit intended for your Christmas Cake, this will make the perfect liqueur to accompany a slice it served with cheese. The quantity of dried fruit used for the liqueur is flexible and will accommodate more or less.
Boozy fruit cake
225 g self-raising flour
200 g butter
200 g muscavado sugar
4 eggs
The fruit from the liqueur (remove the spices)
Grease a 20 cm springform cake tin. Preheat oven to 160C/Gas 3.
Roughly chop the fruit.
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a spoon of flour with each.
Fold in the remaining flour, and then fold in the chopped fruit. Keep it light and don't overmix.
Spoon into the cake tin, place into preheated oven and bake for 1.5 hrs or until a knife/skewer comes out clean. You may need to cover the top of the cake part-way through to prevent it burning.
This will recipe produce a medium sized fruit cake, for a Christmas Cake multiply all the ingredients by 1.5 and add an extra 200 g of your choice of dried fruit.
Edit: If deciding to make a Christmas cake, add 200g of sultanas or a mix of sultanas and glace cherry halves to the booze at the start. From memory the cake recipe was based on a HFW recipe. Last year I had to do it all twice.. the test cake didn't make it to December, never mind Christmas Day! A bit of warm apricot jam, marzipan and icing finishes the cake.
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