Dundee Cake

I’ve been trying to get into a Christmas mood. Helpfully, the good folks at my day job have been heaping the goody table with all manner of Bad4U food. This is absolutely part of the whole holiday tradition, and I salute their determined efforts to send us all into a sugar coma guaranteed to last until at least March.

It reminds me how much food is part of the festivities. Christmas as a kid used to start in mid-November, when my mom began marinating ingredients in a bath of rum for days and days before baking and wrapping fruitcake. It “aged” in the refrigerator until Twelfth Night, when it would come out of its tin foil coat to fill the room with a sweet, alcoholic scent. Since that was my Dad’s birthday, it doubled as his birthday dessert. I have indelible memories of snow and candied fruit, wrapping paper and pipe tobacco. I also recall if one of those cakes fell on your foot, it could break bones.

Cream 6 ounces of butter (about ¾ cup) of butter with an equal amount of brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in 4 eggs one at a time, then fold in 8 ounces (about a cup) of flour, ¼ cup of ground almonds and a pinch of salt and mix well. Stir in ¾ cup sultana raisins, ½ cup currants, ¼ cup chopped peel, ¼ cup glace cherries (chopped) and the juice and grated rind of an orange and a lemon.

Grease an 8 inch cake tin and line it with baking paper, then spoon in the mixture. Smooth the top and hollow it very slightly, then decorate with whole blanched almonds. Bake for two hours at 300 F and don’t open the oven for the first 30 minutes. Watch toward the end to make sure it isn’t browning too much and cover with foil if necessary. Once completely cool, the cake can be wrapped and stored in an airtight tin for weeks.

Variations of this recipe date back to eighteenth century Scotland.