Dreamtime Christmas Cake Recipe

Time 1 hour 45 minutes

Difficulty Easy

Makes 4 Mini cakes

Fruity, festive, and full of flavour. Our individual Christmas cake recipe features our Dreamtime Instant Tea, which is full of smooth notes of apricot and honey.

INGREDIENTS

• For the cake:
• • 250g self-raising flour
• • 250g unsalted butter, softened
• • 250g caster sugar
• • 75g ground almonds
• • 4 tbsp Whittard Dream Time Instant Tea
• • 4 large eggs
• • 200g ready-to-eat-dried apricots
• • 200g glace cherries
• 
  For the decoration:
• • 2 tbsp honey
• • 500g golden marzipan
• • 700g white fondant icing
• 
  You will need:
• • 20cm square baking tin
• • 3-inch circle pastry cutter
• • 2cm star cutter
• • Pastry brush
• • Rolling pin

METHOD

1. To assemble: Lightly dust your work surface with icing sugar then roll out the golden marzipan to a 1cm thickness. Using the same 3-inch pastry cutter, stamp out 4 circle discs.
2. Cut the apricots into quarters and cherries in half and set aside
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth then add eggs, flour, ground almonds and Whittard Dream Time Instant Tea and fold the mixture together until well combined.
4. Lightly fold in the dried apricots and cherries then add the mixture to the prepared baking tin and level the surface evenly.
5. Bake for about 1 hour 30 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean. You may need to cover the top of the cake with tin foil towards the end to avoid the top of the cake getting too brown.
6. Leave the cake to cool then turn out onto a surface and cut out 4 circles using the 3-inch circle pastry cutter - leave the scraps aside to enjoy later.
7. For the cake: Preheat your oven to 160C fan / gas 4 and grease and line a 20cm deep square baking tin.
8. Repeat with the whtie fondant icing then reroll the icing and stamp small stars using the 2cm star cutter
9. Brush the tops of each cake with some honey using the pastry brush then top each with the marzipan disc. Brush the marzipan with a little more honey and then top that with fondant icing disc.
10. Decorate with the fondant stars to finish.
11. These cakes can be made ahead and frozen before decoration. Simply wrap well in cling film and then store in a freezer safe container for up to 1 month. To defrost, remove from the freezer and allow to come to room temperature before decorating. Alternatively, these will keep well for a week if stored in an airtight container.