12/11/2024
With Christmas on the horizon, here's a recipe to try… It’s wonderful. With nuts, spices, dried fruit and citrus it shouts ‘Christmas!’ and should definitely be on your ‘seasonal to-do list’… (it’s fantastic with an espresso).
100g mixed dried vine fruits
75ml Marsala, sweet or dry
75g unsalted butter
175g golden caster sugar
325g good-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
75g walnut halves
75g blanched hazelnuts
50g blanched almonds
5 large eggs, separated
finely grated zest of 1 large orange
½ tsp ground cinnamon
generous grating of nutmeg
small pinch of ground cloves
25g chopped candied peel
50g ground almonds
icing sugar or cocoa powder for dusting
Put the dried fruit into a small saucepan with the Marsala. Bring to the boil and then immediately remove from the heat. Leave the fruit to plump up for at least 30 minutes, by which time almost all of the liquid will have been absorbed.
Melt the butter and sugar in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water (the bowl should not touch the water). Add the chocolate, stirring to help it melt. Remove the bowl and allow it to cool a little.
Toast the nuts in a dry pan over a medium heat, then chop very roughly (you want some good big bits in the cake).
Add the egg yolks to the chocolate along with the orange zest, spices, candied peel, dried fruit (and any soaking liquid) and chopped nuts,
Whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Add a big tablespoon to the chocolate mixture to loosen it, then fold in the rest along with the ground almonds. Mix lightly so that you don’t knock all the air out of the egg whites.
Pour into a buttered and base-lined 23cm springform cake tin and bake in a preheated oven, 160’c fan, for 45 minutes. The cake will feel set in the middle but the skewer test doesn’t really work because it stays very moist in the centre until it has cooled.