Ingredients:
500g mixed dried fruit
100g Glace Cherries
175g butter
175g caster sugar
225g cake flour or plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon powder
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
4 eggs
¼ cup milk
1kg marzipan
Zest of one lemon
Icing sugar for rolling
1 tablespoon apricot jam
1 egg white
Directions:
-
Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
-
Cream the butter and sugar, until soft and light. Then add the lemon zest.
-
Place the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and ginger in a bowl; stir to combine.
-
Add one egg to the creamed butter and sugar with two tablespoons of the dry ingredients, then beat in the remaining eggs. Add the rest of the dry ingredients gradually, then milk. Then stir in the fruit.
-
Dust the surface with a little icing sugar and roll out about 400g of the marzipan. Cut it into a six-inch circle.
-
Evenly spoon half of the fruitcake mixture into a six-inch spring-form tin; then lay in the marzipan circle on top, followed by the rest of the mixture.
-
Bake for about an hour and leave in tin to cool.
-
Unspring the cooled fruitcake. Roll out another 400g circle of the marzipan, paint the top of the cake with the apricot jam, then place the marzipan on top.
-
Make 11 one-inch (or approximate) apostle balls out of the remaining marzipan. Secure the apostles around the edge of the cake with lightly beaten egg white.
-
Paint the whole of the cake with egg white, then blow-torch the marzipan until it’s slightly scorched.