Fruit cake recipe-Christmas cake with festive decorations

Christmas fruit cake with moon and star festive decorations.
Try out this delicious Christmas cake with fruits-almonds-vanilla-chocolate and interesting spices!

This Festive Christmas Cake, decorated with the moon and star, can serve as a centerpiece of your holiday dinner, on Christmas or new year table.

Ingredients:

• For the cake:
• 125g dark chocolate or bittersweet chocolate
• 125g skinned almonds
• 50g dried orange
• grated lemon peel from 1 lemon
• grated orange peel from 1 orange
• 5 table spoon Maraschino (cherry) liqueur or rose water
• vanilla beans or Vanilla sugar
• 100g powdered sugar, (confectioner's sugar or icing sugar)
• 6 eggs
• 200g marzipan

• 2 tbs cardamom
• juice of 1/4 lemon
• 50g sugar
• 125g flour

• For icing and decoration:
• 200g bittersweet chocolate
• 1 tbs powder sugar
• 100g yellow marzipan
• edible gold pearl

Preparation method

Step 1.
Ground roughly the chocolate, the almonds and the dried oranges.
Cut the orange and lemon peel in narrow band.
Put all these in a bowl , poor the liqueur or rose water on it, mix and let it mature for an hour.

Step 2.
Split the vanilla pods in two and take out the seeds (the inner part). We will use just this softer part of the pods. Mix it with the powdered sugar in a food mixer. When using vanilla sugar, just mix this manually with the confectioner's sugar.

Step 3.
Mash in small pieces the marzipan, add the egg yolks to it and mix to obtain a smooth cream. When ready, add to this the chocolate-almond-orange mixture and the cardamom.

Step 4.
Beat the egg whites and, while doing this, add the lemon juice and the (50g) sugar, bit by bit. When ready, add it to the mixture from the previous step. Also add the flour and stir it gently. Work out the dough and place it in a round cake pan, of about 26cm diameter. Previously, grease lightly and coat the base and sides of the pan with baking paper. Bake at 175 °C (gas 2) in a preheated oven, for about 45 minutes.

Icing - decorating

Step 5.
In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and pour it over the cooled cake. Let it dry. In the meantime, cut out the forms from step 7.

First, place the moon on the top of the cake and sprinkle powdered sugar at the uncovered surfaces. You can use either part of the moon drawing; make the moon white and leave the rest with chocolate or vice versa. Compare image 5 with the main picture at the top of this page, to see the difference.

Step 6.
Place the yellow marzipan on a sheet of baking paper, place another sheet over it and roll out the marzipan. Put the star shape drawing atop of it and cut out the form. Place the marzipan star at the top of the cake. For a more festive look, add a few edible gold pearl dragees at the edges of the star.

Step 7 & 8.
Click at the drawings to enlarge, save, print and cut out these last two drawings (7 & 8) to decorate the cake. You may have to modify their dimensions to suit your own cake's size.

Note:
- The cake has to rest in a cool room, for 2-3 days before serving. Thus the spicy aromas becomes more prominent. Pack it in aluminum sheet or wax paper.
- Cardamom powder is used as a spice for sweet dishes and has a strong, unique taste, with an intensely aromatic, resinous fragrance, with a coolness some consider similar to mint. If you don't have it or don't like it, just leave it out.
- for other mass and weight units, please use this online converter.
Check out these colorful marzipan fruits too.

Enjoy the Holidays!