🥣INGREDIENTS🥄 * 3 cups (15 oz/426 g) raisins * ⅓ cup (2 oz/58 g) candied peel * 1 medium orange, zested * 1 medium lemon, zested * 1 cup (8 fl oz/225 ml) O'Driscoll's Irish Whiskey (or apple juice/orange juice*) * 1 ½ cups (8 oz/225 g) glace cherries * 2 cups (10 oz/282 g) all-purpose flour * 1 teaspoon mixed spice * ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg * 1 ¼ cups (10 oz/300 g) butter, room temperature * 1 ⅔ cups (13 oz/367 g) muscovado sugar (or dark brown sugar) * 5 large eggs, room temperature * ½ cup (2 ½ oz/71 g) chopped or sliced almonds
Aunty Rosaleen’s Traditional Irish Christmas Cake Recipe Chapters 0:00 - Irish baking 101 0:12 Today we are making a Traditional Irish Christmas Cake Recipe 0:19 Soaking the fruit for your Christmas Cake 1:09 Who is Aunty Rosaleen? 1:39 The BEST Irish Whiskey 2:35 How to prepare the cherries for your Christmas Cake 3:11 Dry ingredients 3:53 Creaming together the butter and sugar 4:38 Adding in the eggs 4:46 Adding the dry to the wet 4:57 Finishing the batter 6:00 Adding the batter to the pan 6:16 How to bake your Christmas Cake 6:36 Out of the oven 6:50 How to feed a Christmas Cake 7:20 How to store & feed a Christmas Cake 8:05 Serving up your Christmas Cake
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In our traditional Christmas baking in Ireland, we have a lot of fruit and zest and citrus,
and a lot of booze. Pretty much all our holiday baking is fruit and a lot of alcohol. This week
we are making my Auntie Rosie's Christmas Cake all the way from Ireland. This is a fantastic
traditional recipe for Christmas. So we're going to start out by soaking all of our fruit in a lot
of booze. I have a nice big bowl here and we're going to add in a lot of lovely plump raisins.
Please use good quality fruit when making your Christmas cakes because it makes all
the difference. These are organic and really yummy. Now, here I have some candied peel. This
is a very common ingredient in Ireland and England when you're baking for the holidays,
and I actually have recipes on how you can do candied lemon zest, candied peel,
and candied cherries on my website, so definitely check that out on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
That's everything in there. Now we're going to zest an orange and the zest of a lemon.
In our traditional Christmas baking in Ireland, we have a lot of fruit and zest and citrus,
and a lot of booze. So Auntie Rosie is my mom's sister. She comes from Waterford, Ireland,
and she is a fantastic baker, and many years ago she gave me this recipe for her Christmas cake,
and we had it up on the website, and it's really, really popular, especially with people in America,
and I couldn't understand why, and it was because a lot of people had Irish moms,
Irish grannies, Irish parents who would make these kinds of cakes for them for Christmas,
and they wanted to have the exact same thing to recreate themselves. So they used my recipe,
which I think is pretty cool. Okay, now let's talk whiskey. I am very proud to say that O'Driscoll's
Irish Whiskey is actually my family's business. Founded by my cousin Michael Stafford in my
hometown of Wexford, Ireland. Michael actually carried on the business from our grandfather,
James Stafford, but also our fathers, my father, George, and his father, Michael. So my family
have been in the spirits and alcohol business for a very long time, and I'm very proud to say that
this is a part of the family. So this is an awesome whiskey. So we are going to add this
into our fruit. This whiskey is a blend of golden grains and malted barley, triple distilled and
aged in bourbon casks for a minimum of three years, giving the signature smoothness of Irish
whiskey. The O'Driscoll clan were actually pirates and smugglers who used to patrol the wild Atlantic
coast. For more information about the O'Driscoll's and where you can order this internationally,
go to O'Driscoll'sIrishWhiskey.com. Now let's give this a mix, cover it up, and let it soak.
So let's talk cherries. These are glace cherries, very traditional in a Christmas cake. I have a
The first thing you want to do is just rinse them off in water and get rid of that thick,
sugary syrup off them. Then we're going to quarter them, and then we toss them in a little bit of
flour. Now the reason that we do this, and we do this a lot with fruit cakes, is because tossing
them in flour actually kind of holds them in place in the cake. If the batter is kind of thin,
the fruit tends to sink to the bottom, but if you coat it in flour, they don't sink. It's a super
great baker's trick. Okay, next let's just mix together our dry ingredients. I have all-purpose
flour here, and then here I have a little bit of ground nutmeg and mixed spice. We use this a lot
in baking in Ireland, especially around the holidays. I have a recipe on my website. If you
can't buy this in your country, you can make it with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, coriander, a mix
of spices. You can also, if you want, use pumpkin pie spice. It is very similar, so make your own
or whatever you want to do, and if you can't, just replace it with cinnamon and that's good too.
But all these different spices kind of add a depth of flavor to your cake and then pair it
with the whiskey and the brown sugar and all the yumminess. It's a whole thing. Okay, I brought my
big boy in here for this next part. Here I have some room temperature butter. In you go. With the
whisk attachment, Irish butter, if you can. And then we're going to go in with our brown sugar.
Now this looks a bit different, you can probably tell. This is muscovado sugar. We use this a lot
at home. Muscovado sugar is an unrefined cane sugar that actually has natural molasses in it
and it is fantastic for your holiday baking. It gives you such a lovely caramel kind of a flavor.
If you can't find this in your country, you can order it online or you can use dark brown sugar.
Now just turn on your mixer and cream it together until it's lovely and light and fluffy.
Take a minute or two. Let this go for around six or seven minutes on high speed and it's
looking really fluffy. So this is the perfect time to start to add in our eggs.
Add in one, let it incorporate, then add in the other.
Okay, my eggs are in there on a lower speed. I'm just going to go ahead, add in my dry ingredients
and just mix that up until it just comes together, then turn off the machine.
I like to put this mix into my fruit because all of the booze and the flavor and the citrus and
all the yummy stuff is in the bowl. So I just go back in there. You can see it smells almost
like caramel. It's really lovely. Into this we're going to add in our cherries. So in you go. And
last but not least, some slivered almonds or you can use chopped almonds. That's up to you.
Put those in there. Now this is the special part. We're going to mix it all together.
Now it is not a coincidence that I am using a mason and cash bowl in this video. I do all my
Christmas baking in a mason and cash bowl because that's what my mom did when we were very young.
And some of my fondest memories are standing at the kitchen table in the house that I grew up in
in Wexford, Ireland and mixing the Christmas cake. All the kids at night, my mom would call us into
the kitchen when she was making the Christmas puddings and the cakes and everything. And all
the kids would get to do a stir and make a wish in the mason and cash bowl. Okie dokie, here I have a
nice, big, good quality heavy tin. It's around 10 and a half inches or so. You want a nice big tin.
I'm going to put all my batter in here. This is a big cake and it's a heavy cake. It's going to
bake for a long time. So just make sure your pan is good quality. Okay, lovely. This is ready to go
into the oven. So follow me over here. So bake your cake in a low oven, 280 degrees Fahrenheit,
which is 140 degrees Celsius for one hour. Then turn down your oven to 240 degrees Fahrenheit and
120 degrees Celsius for another two to two and a half hours or so. It does take some time to cook
this cake. Check on it every half hour. Here we have our lovely Christmas cake. Oh my gosh,
the smell reminds me so much of home. So here's what you want to do when it comes out of the oven.
Number one, as you can see, it is nicely baked. It's firm underneath my fingers. This is lovely.
If you feel like it's getting too brown at any stage during the baking, cover it with foil.
Now while it's still hot from the oven, this is really important. We're going to do our first
feed. Now stay with me. I'm going to show you how to do this. Take a skewer,
poke holes in the top of your cake. Then we're going to take our whiskey and drizzle over two
tablespoons over the hot cake. Just drizzle a little bit all over the top. And because the
cake is warm, that's going to soak in so much better. Now I want to do is leave this in the
tin, let it cool down completely. Then we're going to wrap it. Once your cake is completely
cold, wrap it in foil and parchment paper. You want to wrap it up nice and tight. Then we're
going to store it in a cupboard for at least three months. And don't worry, all that alcohol
and sugar in the cake will keep it preserved and only develop better flavor over time.
Okay, let's talk feeding your Christmas cake. It's in the cupboard now. Leave it there for two
weeks. Then take it out, uncover it, and we're going to feed it again with two tablespoons of
more alcohol. You can use brandy, rum, whiskey, whatever you like. Pour it over, wrap it back up,
back into the cupboard again. Two weeks later, repeat the process. Again, two tablespoons of
whiskey, wrap it back up into a cupboard. Two weeks later, again feed it. All in all,
we'll be feeding it four times in total. When the holiday season begins, it's time to bring
out your Christmas cake. Just look at how beautiful this is. Cut yourself some really
lovely thick slices. When you do, you'll just see how rich and moist this cake is.
Lots of people have Christmas cake as is. However, I love to put some butter on top.
It just makes it extra special. This Christmas cake is the only one you're ever going to need,
so make sure you save the recipe. And stick around because I've got lots more fall and
holiday videos for you to check out. I'll see you back here again next week.
