Wedding or Celebration Cake

My friends are getting married next week.
It will be a small private wedding in the Dales.
They have been together for a long time and rather than give them a present I offered to make a cake.
A Polish wedding cake could be a tort – a layered cake.
But as this needed to be made ahead and last awhile –
I offered to make my Mama’s never too late Christmas Cake.
This is more a Polish take on an English style cake.
I know they both like fruit cake.
Because it is so moist it will only keep for about 2 months.
I just covered it with a top layer of marzipan and bought a wooden
Mr & Mrs Sign – see photo below.
Ingredients
900g mixture of currants, raisins & sultanas
175g chopped mixed peel (if you have a 200g tub just use it all)
175g glacé cherries cut in half (if you have a 200g tub just use it all)
Grated rind of 1 lemon & 1 orange
1 large cooking apple, peeled and coarse grated
225g fine grated carrots
2 teaspoons rum
110 ml strong cold tea (I used a scented one like Earl Grey)

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Put all the fruit, rinds, carrots, rum & tea into large bowl, mix and leave for 15 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 2 – 150^oC.
This amount made a 25cm square cake.
Grease and line the cake tin.
In another large bowl, cream the butter and sugar, beat in the treacle and eggs.
Mix all the dry ingredients together & fold them in using a large metal spoon.
Fold in the fruit mix using a large metal spoon.
Put all the cake mixture into the tin to fill the shape and smooth the top.
Bake for around – 2 hours.
The above is just a guide as it does depend on your oven – you need to check earlier.
Leave to cool completely in the tin.
Wrap in several layers of foil to store if not decorating it straight away.

Marzipan

Marzipan is a paste made from ground almonds, honey or sugar & egg white.
It is thought that it originated in China and then came to the Middle East and from there it came to some parts of Western Europe through Spain & Portugal and to Eastern Europe from Turkey.
The old name in English is marchpane and the Polish is marcypan.
The name appears to come from Italy where it was known as panis martius or marzapane which means March Bread – but why March Bread – I am not sure!
It was certainly being used in the 15th century in Europe.

Brush the surface of the cake with warmed apricot jam.
I usually make my own marzipan but of course you can buy ready made marzipan.
If you are going to ice the cake as well then allow 1 week for the marzipan to harden so the nut oils do not discolour the icing (If you know it will be eaten quickly this is not really a problem).

In a bowl mix the ground almond, icing sugar and caster sugar.
Lightly beat the egg whites & add the almond essence.
Add the egg white mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon until you get a unified mass of marzipan.
You want a mixture that you can roll out – you may have to add more icing sugar to achieve this.
You need to dust a board with icing sugar to roll out the marzipan easily.
Try and get a piece that will cover the top.
Though I found it easier to piece it together.
Dust the top well with icing sugar.
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Use a cake frill to cover the outer edges of the cake – optional

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