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When should I start making my Xmas cake??

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Watched Delia last Christmas making her Christmas (booze) cake. Thought at the time I'd make one this year, was just looking on the bbcfood website and got the recipe http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/creolechristmascake_92907.

 

Just wondered when people start with making their cakes like above, she mentions as month before but I'm sure when watching her on TV she said she started it in October??

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Personally I would start now. Right now, not tomorrow. There is less than 6 months to go.

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Much too late now. You should have started in May.

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Watched Delia last Christmas making her Christmas (booze) cake. Thought at the time I'd make one this year, was just looking on the bbcfood website and got the recipe http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/creolechristmascake_92907.

 

Just wondered when people start with making their cakes like above, she mentions as month before but I'm sure when watching her on TV she said she started it in October??

 

http://www.priorygroup.com/Locations/London/The-Priory-Hospital-North-London.aspx

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Sounds like a God awfull recipe :gag:

 

It sounds like the one my Mum used to make actually, just a bit more extreme. She used to make hers around September or October.

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I usually have a weekend set aside in September or October when I make all my Christmas cakes and puddings for the year. Much of the Saturday is set aside for weighing, measuring and putting things in to soak in whatever they're soaking in (and making a dozen or so cake tin linings from baking parchment) and then the Sunday starts with turning the oven on and getting all the steamers on the go for doing all the puddings, which take 8 hours to cook.

 

Last year was quite a light year with only 7 cakes and 16 puddings, ranging from single portion puddings to 2lb puds to get into various bowls, basins and cake tins.

 

When the cakes are all cooked they go onto wire racks to cool and then they get injected with an assortment of alcoholic preservatives (I stop injecting them when it starts oozing out of the bottom of the cake ;) ) and then they get rewrapped in fresh greaseproof paper and foil until they're ready for icing or having fruit and nut toppings a couple of weeks before Christmas.

 

Although I like the sort of boozy cake that you're thinking of making, and I have made this recipe at least 10 times, I found a lot of people who simply didn't like the texture of almost all fruit glued together with a bit of cake mixture so I stopped cooking it apart from as a present for the relatives that I know do like it. This is the one 'fruit cake' that I've made which doesn't need any sort of injecting because there's so little cake mixture with the fruit that there's little to absorb the alcohol.

 

Once you've bought all the booze this works out a seriously expensive cake BTW- although you have loads left over to drink or use in other things, the outlay to buy everything is really quite painful at the checkout.

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I used the Delia receipe last year it was beautiful i made in oct and kept adding a bit of booze every week and kept it wrapped everyone said it was delicious so will deff use that again.I buy my fruit when its on offer like at Holland n Barrett its often 3 for 2 so it dosent cost all at once.

I have also been asked to make for others and they will pay me for them but to be honest i wouldnt have a clue what to charge but cant really afford to do them for nothing,any ideas anyone,i did toy with the idea for people to provide the stuff and just make a nominal charge for gas ect.

Edited by spiritangel1
adding

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Always make my Christmas cake and Christmas Pud on the nearest Sunday to Bonfire night. In our house we call it Stir up Sunday and we all have a go at stirring the mixtures and making a wish.

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Must be me then, I can't stand the smell of any booze in a dessert. :gag:

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Much too late now. You should have started in May.

 

I agree. Far too late now I've decided, so I'm going to buy a massive chocolate log instead. This has the other benefit of being nice to eat :)

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Good old Delia, I'll never forget her being nist as a pewt in the Norwich centre circle, shouting at the fans, she'd probably been on the cake, bless her. :hihi:

Edited by crookesey

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