Rooibos Christmas Cake

Light Christmas cake with apricots, pineapple, cranberries and Rooibos Kerst.

Queen

Ever since the beginning of Bake Off, I’ve been a fan of Mary Berry. This English cooking and baking queen makes the most delicious recipes, and they’re often easy to make.

When I first made Mary Berry’s Victorian Christmas cake, I absolutely loved it. A substantial, generously filled cake that you could easily cut into 30 slices. A small piece is plenty.

In later editions of Mary Berry’s recipe, she called this mighty showstopper “American Light Christmas Cake”. I thought that was a little too optimistic: light. (It does say something about that traditional Christmas pudding with alcohol. That one is even heavier.)

With that in mind, I came up with this recipe myself. Less fruit and with Rooibos Kerst. That makes this cake a little lighter than the Baking Queen’s, and the spiced rooibos gives it an exciting twist.

If you find icing too sweet, or you don’t like glacé cherries—which I can absolutely understand—just leave off the decoration. A bare ring cake is beautiful to look at, too.

Ingredients

For a small ring cake

The cake

250 + 50 grams unsalted butter
30 grams No.151 Rooibos Kerst
225 grams granulated sugar
4 eggs
225 grams self-raising flour
100 grams dried apricots, finely chopped
100 grams raisins, rinsed and patted dry
100 grams sweetened dried cranberries
1 small tin of pineapple (drained, coarsely chopped and patted dry)
75 grams blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
Zest of 1 lemon

To finish

1 tub of red, green and yellow glacé cherries, rinsed and halved
1–2 tablespoons lemon juice
150 grams icing sugar

Preparation

Melt 250 grams of butter in a small saucepan and add the rooibos. Leave to infuse over a very low heat for 10 minutes, then leave to cool for 10 minutes. You can use a thermometer to check that the butter doesn’t get hotter than around 100 degrees.
Sieve the butter into a mixing bowl set on a scale and press as much butter as possible out of the tea. Add a little more butter until you have 225 grams. Leave to cool further.

Preheat the oven to 160. Grease a ring cake tin and dust the inside with flour or a little self-raising flour.

Prepare the fruit (weigh, chop, cut, etc.) and mix it with the lemon zest and almonds.

Making the batter

In a stand mixer, beat the butter with the sugar and 4 eggs until smooth. Add the flour and mix briefly until fully incorporated. Then stir in the mixed fruit with a wooden spoon and carefully pour the batter into the tin.

Bake the cake in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes, until done. Towards the end of the baking time, insert a skewer into the centre of the cake. If it comes out dry, your cake is done.