Cooking christmas cakes!?
When is the best time to cook a christmas cake, i’ve heard it’s best to make them months in advance but how many months!?
Plus if i’m wanting to decorate it with marzipan and icing, when is it best to do this, when first baked before storing or when ready to eat around christmas time!
Thank you!
xoxo
Yeah fruit cakes!
December 13th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Are you talking about fruit cake a good fruit cake starts after Halloween. It is preserved with all the alcohol that you soak it with repeatedly till Christmas. The marzipan and icing shouldn’t be done till the day before or day your ready to serve because those things can spoil.
December 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Ew, seriously? No wonder those things are so awful. You should make a cake that tastes good instead.
December 13th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
the fruit cakes are best if you cook them about 2 months in advance. It gives the alcohol a good long time to flavor them. BUT the fruits for them usually aren’t available until around Thanksgiving so you will be making them at least a month in advance.
This is the problem w/ the commercially available cakes, they don’t put alcohol in them and they don’t age them. they really need to be aged otherwise they are just dry.
Because my family makes their own fruit cakes, I never understood why people didn’t like fruit cakes and made fun of them. Then I had a fruit cake made by someone other than my grandmother and I understood.
seriously, if you aren’t going to make the fruit cake right, then don’t bother.
Ideally you want to make the fruit cake 2 months in advance but no less than 3 weeks before Christmas. When I can, I make mine the week of Halloween. (the family likes to sample them at Thanksgiving). The latest I’ve made them was the week after Thanksgiving.
and no, I don’t give them away as gifts. they are made from a family recipe that’s been handed down in it’s present form for the last 120 years and they are a treat reserved only for those who truly appreciate it.
I don’t care for marzipan myself but any icing or decoration to the cake isn’t done until you’re ready to serve it.