Classic Holiday and Christmas Cakes
Christmas cakes have been an English tradition for over a hundred years. They originated from Christmas pudding, and are made in many different textures, flavors, and styles. No matter which type of cake you prefer, there is a Christmas cake for you. Search our assortment of traditional British Christmas cakes. They make great gifts for far-away friends and relatives. Bring a little tradition into your house with a delicious cake the whole family will love.
Christmas Cake Recipe Idea
While all cakes are made with the sweet love intended for the family, the Christmas cake goes even beyond that. Serving this seasonal cake is not only to celebrate the closeness among the family members but also to commemorate an important aspect of religion or to practice a tradition that had been rejoiced for centuries. Christmas cakes are best to make at the start of autumn or two to three months before Christmas, giving them time to mature and give out the most craved flavors from the much-awaited dessert of the Holiday season.
It takes two to four hours to make a luscious Christmas cake, and this quick and easy recipe helps you to create the merriest dessert cake that you can enjoy with your loved ones on Christmas Eve. Be sure to prepare all the necessary ingredients.
First, heat a fan oven to 150°C or 130°C if you are using a Gas 3 oven. Cover a 20cm loose-bottomed round cake tin with baking parchment paper. Whip the 200g softened butter and 200g dark brown sugar until you achieve a puffed-up consistency, then put two tablespoons out of the 225 grams of flour and four medium eggs into the mixture. Beat them well. Separate the solid parts of the remaining flour with a sieve as you add in it the mixture placed in the cake tin. Mix one kilogram of dried fruit and transfer it into the tin.
Enclose the top of the cake tin using lightly oiled baking parchment and bake for two hours and 30 minutes. Once the time has elapsed, remove the top parchment and bake for another 30 minutes. To check if it is cooked, insert a metal skewer into the center of the cake. Your cake is baked if you pull out a clean metal rod, and if does not, place the cake back in the oven for another 10 more minutes then recheck.
After baking, let the cake tin cool down for about 20 minutes. Remove the cake from the container and let it rest on a wire rack until it is cold. Decorate your Christmas cake with icing, marzipan, or powdered sugar.
It is as simple as ABC! Bake more of these delectable treats to spread love and joy on Christmas Day! Not a fan of baking? Our Holiday cake products are to your rescue! English Tea Store's Christmas products will surely help you with your Yuletide gift item needs.
Types of Christmas Cakes
Joyful occasions, like Christmas, are always filled with brightly colored decorations, and having a vibrant table setup is not excluded. Families acknowledge celebration with the sweet bonding of members over a delicious meal and mouthwatering desserts. Of course, the Christmas tradition is never the same without the Christmas cake at the banquet. This heavenly confection has different variations that may be baked with or without an alcoholic blend. There are three types of Christmas Cakes: Shortened and unshortened or chiffon.
Shortened Christmas Cakes
Shortened cakes, or the traditional creamed cakes, are most commonly served on momentous occasions such as birthdays, weddings, and the Christmas season. These cakes have soft and smooth crumbs with a moist texture and are baked with butter, margarine, and shortening. The fruit cake, Scottish Whisky Dundee, and traditional English Christmas cake are examples of this type.
Unshortened Christmas Cakes
Unshortened cakes, also known as foam cakes, are large in volume and have a spongy interior. It bears no fats as it does not contain raising agents to achieve its fluffy texture. These cakes are raised using leavening by air or by whisking the egg whites to produce enough air to make foam. The Yule Log cake is a perfect representation of an unshortened Christmas cake.
What is the traditional cake eaten at Christmas?
Fruitcakes are one of the highlights of the merry season but the Christmas cakes are the real stand out on every Christmas table. For Americans, the fruit Cake is commonly served as a Christmas Cake. As the Christmas cake tradition is passed on since the 16th century and has been accepted in almost every corner of the globe, these merry cakes adopted different variations depending on the country where the Christmas season is celebrated.
The most favored among all the Christmas cakes are the Scottish Whisky Dundee. This delectable confection has light delicateness that crumbles tastefully with currants, raisins, and cherries, blended with a medley of Scotch whisky. This divine indulgence offers a unique citrusy orange taste compared to the usual fruit cake. Originating from Dundee City in Scotland, the Whiskey Dundee puts forward an iconic zesty flavor that comes from the sweet-bitter blend of Seville oranges, sultanas, and raisins. This cake has a trademark round shape and is always topped with beautifully arranged almonds. Other families love to enjoy Christmas pudding, or cream or mincemeat cakes. Some English colonies like to have their Christmas cakes with rum. India has the Allahabadi cake while Jamaica adores the Rum cake during Christmas time.
Some accentuate their Christmas Eve dinner table with the Yule Log cake. The Yule Log cake or Bûche de Noël carries a historic cultural background and is first devoured in France in the 19th century. It puts forward a replica of a mini Yule log made of rolled sponge cake base and covered with chocolate buttercream and icing or powdered sugar for a lovely Christmas-inspired finish. Yule Log Cakes are charmingly decorated today with Christmas icons such as pine trees, berries, mushrooms, snowmen, and the like are made from meringue or marzipan. This mouthwatering treat is usually enjoyed on Christmas Eve onto the Feast of the Three Kings. The Yuletide gatherings during the twelve nights of Christmas are not the same without the Yule Log cake.
In other parts of Europe, they serve their rendition of Christmas cakes on Christmas Day going forward to the Feast of the Three Kings. France has the Galette de Rois, Portugal serves Bolo Rei, Spain got Roscon, The Netherlands has Kerstkrans, Germany with the Stollen, and Italy makes the Panettone. Asian countries like Japan offer Christmas cakes in a filled sponge base with cream and strawberry toppings known as the Mochi, while the Philippines has rice cakes called Bibingka and Puto Bumbong.
Regardless of what country you come from or your Christmas customs, these cakes are a must-have food to recognize the Christians' main star of the season, Jesus Christ, and cultural festivities during this season. Because, what's a celebration without a cake?
Is there a difference between Christmas cake and fruit cake?
The Christmas and fruit cakes are almost similar in the sense that both are composed of dried fruits and go with various ingredients having different textures and complementary tastes. But technically, the Christmas cake is a type of fruit cake. The difference between the two is how they are made. The Christmas cake recipe normally generally uses pudding as butter is the key to making the fruit cake. Christmas cakes are also glazed with marzipan and icing and are decorated with the season's iconic symbols. The fruit cake, on one hand, is served simply yet exploding with flavors.
What is Christmas cake in England?
Dating back to the Victorian age, the Christmas cake in England had become the favorite dessert to celebrate the Yuletide season in the most festive serving. This confection shone like a star at every Christmas table and dethroned the Twelfth-night cake as the most popular dessert during the olden times. The Christmas cake continues to amplify the joys of this colorful and bright season up to the modern generation.
The customary English Christmas cake started as a plum porridge, serving it as a part of the English tradition ever since the reign of Queen Victoria. This simple season's helping has evolved over the centuries and is now made with raisins of small seedless grapes that are commonly known as currants, golden sultana raisins, and raisins soaked in brandy, whisky, rum, or sherry liquor. The Christmas cake nowadays had been very creative, smothered in tiers of marzipan and icing with edible Christmas decorations to make the cake look more spectacular and in-season. An English tradition recognized and enjoyed worldwide, the Christmas cake has seen all kinds of family gatherings around the Christmas table and has been a part of countless parties and gift-giving in feasting the Yuletide occasion.
How to store your Christmas cake?
Enjoy the Holiday season a little more time at the Christmas dinner table while it lasts. Properly keep these gorgeous cakes for the next day's Christmas get-together with family and friends. But to continuously savor this Christmas dessert's long-lasting tasteful treat, this goodie needs to be well kept in a cool environment to limit the growth of bacteria inside your Yuletide fruit cake.
Putting your Christmas cakes inside the refrigerator or freezer helps extend their shelf life. Set the temperature at 35 to 40-degree Fahrenheit or 2 to 4 degrees Celsius and have your cakes still good to consume for 7 to 10 days. The chilly environment you put these cakes in induces the yeast to go dormant, stopping the growth of molds and reducing bacteria activity in the confection.
Keep your Christmas cake fresh and here's how. First, you need to cover the base of the cake tin with a cling film to prevent the cake from sticking and drying out. Then, wrap the entire confection well to keep it damp while inside the refrigerator. Place the well-contained cake inside the fridge for up to two weeks, but make sure you check on it every few days. You still have to look out for molds! if you see them starting to form, take the cake immediately out of the fridge and consume it right away.
Want to experience the Christmas vibe in March? Your freezer helps you keep your Christmas cake for up to three months to a year! Simply wrap the cake with a clingfilm and put it inside a freezer bag.
When the time comes you want to dig into this scrumptious dessert, put the cake in a roomy, airtight container at room temperature. Wait until it is mature and ready for consumption.
Want to learn more? Check out our article, History of Christmas Cakes