This traditional Irish Fruit Cake recipe is the best one to make Mini Christmas Cakes. These Mini Irish Christmas Cakes are easy to make and have it all – whiskey, fruit, marzipan and fondant. It is a bespoke Christmas Cake as I have added only the ingredients I like and want to include. Refer to the Flexibility of Ingredients below to learn how to tailor make your own Irish Fruit Cake:
These decorated Mini Christmas Cakes are hard to resist and just the right portion size. You’ll love not having to cut into a large Christmas Cake and wrecking the decoration with every slice that’s cut.
You’ll need small round baking tins. I found the cans that tomato paste is sold in, to be ideal. These weigh 6oz / 170g in the States. They measure 1.97 inches / 5 cms. In Ireland and the UK, the mini cans of baked beans (200g) will work too. Any smaller can is good, but be sure not to use a can with a pull top. A pull top can makes filling the cans more challenging.
This recipe takes time and is spread out over several days or weeks. The cake is baked first, this takes about 20 minutes of preparation and 1 hour of baking in the oven. Next, comes the feeding of the cakes. Cakes are ‘fed’ whiskey every week until they are ready for decoration. Some people make their cakes in September and feed their cakes every week religiously! I usually make them a few weeks before I need them, so that they have 2-3 feedings before they are decorated. Once decorated with a layer of marzipan and fondant, the feeding stops. At that point, they can be eaten at any time.
Remember, not everything made in life is quick, usually the best things take time!
Below is the recipe and ingredients needed for Irish Christmas Cake:
Ingredients for Xmas Cake
- Dried fruit combination: I used raisins and currants.
- Flour: all purpose (plain) flour.
- Butter.
- Sugar: dark brown.
- Eggs: size medium, room temperature.
- Warm spices: I used cinnamon, clove and nutmeg.
- Whiskey: Irish (of course.)
- Orange: preferably organic for the zest.
Instructions – How to make Irish Christmas Fruit Cake
The day before you intend baking your cakes, combine the dried fruits and pour the whiskey over them.
Cover the whiskey soaked fruit and store overnight until use.
Prepare the cans by removing the contents, and paper label. Wash and dry the cans. Freeze the tomato puree and use for future recipes like Braised Pot Roast.
Cut a piece of wax or parchment paper, long enough to wrap around the inside of the can a couple of times, and tall enough to extend at least an inch above the top of the can.
Grease the bottom of the can with a little oil or butter. Insert the paper inside the can.
Preheat the oven to 280 degrees F / 135 degrees C. Cream together the brown sugar and room temperature butter using a stand mixer, hand mixer, whisk, or wooden spoon.
Add one egg, mix it in well to the mixture, then add the other one and mix well.
Grate the orange zest into the mixture and stir.
Add in the mixed spices.
Finally add the soaked dried fruit. Be sure to include any whiskey that did not soak into the fruit.
Mix well. Stir from east to west and make a wish (scroll below to the FAQ for explanation!)
Spoon the cake mixture into the prepared cake tins as evenly as possible. I weighed each tin and took a little from some to add to others. The average weight of each tin containing cake mixture was 151g.
Place the cake tins in the oven for about 1 hour or until a wooden skewer or cake tester stick comes out dry.
Remove the cake tins from the oven and allow to completely cool. Then remove both ends of the cans using a can opener.
Push out the cakes from the can, remove the paper and cut evenly into two.
Place the cakes into a lidded metal container lined with wax or parchment paper.
Feeding the Irish Whiskey Christmas Cake
What does ‘feeding’ mean in this context? Quite simply, this means the weekly addition of Irish whiskey to the baked Mini Christmas Cakes.
Feeding fruit cake is possible without using alcohol. Use non carbonated apple cider or prune juice as a substitute.
Using a thin wooden skewer or metal cake tester like I did, poke several holes into each cake.
With a plastic pipette or a very small spoon, distribute 1 tbsp of Irish whiskey between the 12 Mini Christmas Cakes.
Ingredients for Homemade Marzipan
As you can see, this marzipan recipe is egg free. Only two ingredients needed in addition to water:
- Ground almonds: super fine grind.
- Powdered sugar (icing sugar.)
Add the ground almonds into a food processor bowl.
Followed by the powdered sugar.
Put the lid on and add cold water drop by drop through the feed tube of the processor.
When it comes together, stop. This will take approximately 20 ml water.
Sprinkle some powdered sugar on your hands before gathering up the marzipan. Form into a ball and place onto a piece of plastic wrap.
Form a roll with the marzipan using the plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Decorating the Irish Christmas Fruit Cakes
Spread a thin layer of clear (ish)or light colored jam or preserve over the surface of the cakes. This jam will act as glue, helping the marzipan to stick to the cakes. I used quince jam, but apple jelly or orange marmalade will work well.
When the marzipan has chilled, roll it out on a surface dusted lightly with powdered sugar. Use a 5 cm / 2 inch fluted cutter to cut 12 discs of marzipan. Place them on each cake. Press gently to help them stick to the cakes.
Using the same jam / preserve, spread a thin layer, this time over the marzipan to help the fondant adhere.
Roll out the fondant on a board lightly dusted with powdered sugar. Using a 4 cm / 1¾ inch fluted cutter, cut out 12 discs of fondant. I used store bought fondant.
Place these discs onto the marzipan and press gently to help them stick.
With the leftover marzipan, color ⅓ of it red using a couple of drops of red food coloring and the remaining ⅔ green using a couple of drops of green food coloring. Cut holly leaves from the green dough and roll little balls from the red dough to form berries. Use the same jam to stick the decorations onto the fondant.
Flexibility with the Ingredients
Make Traditional Irish Christmas Cake according to the ingredients you would like to include. Here is the general equation to keep in mind when making this Cake:
Dried fruits + fat + spices + eggs + flour + whiskey + add ins (optional)
Dried fruits: choices include raisins, sultanas, and currants. You’ll need 240g and you can mix and match.
Fat: Butter is always the best, preferably Irish, salted grass fed. You can use margarine or baking shortening.
Spices: warm spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are ideal. Also allspice and mixed spice. Mix and match for a total of 1 heaped teaspoon.
Eggs: medium size at room temperature.
Flour: all purpose / plain flour. At a pinch use self raising.
Whiskey: has to be Irish (enough said!). The whiskey in the fruit will bake off making the cakes non alcoholic. The whiskey enhances the fruity, spicy flavors of the cake. If preferred use non carbonated apple cider instead, or prune juice.
Add ins: such as dates, dried apricots, dried figs, glacé cherries, mixed peel in the fruit department and almonds, hazelnuts, and macadamia nuts in the nut department. Do not use more than a total of 60g of any of these added ingredients.
Flexibility with the Instructions
Instead of making this cake in the traditional way with creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs, then flour and spices, an alternate way to make this Cake is by boiling the ingredients. Yes, I said boiling and no it is not a preferred method of cooking in Ireland!
Irish boiled fruit cake involves boiling the fruit (as opposed to pre soaking the fruit in whiskey) prior to baking the cake. Follow the recipe for Mini Christmas Cakes and make the following adjustments:
- Increase the flour content to 125g.
- Add 235g of water and 1 tsp baking soda to the recipe.
- Boil the fruit, sugar, butter and water in a pot for 10 minutes.
- Sift flour, spices, and baking soda into a large bowl.
- Add the boiled fruit mixture to the bowl containing the flour and stir.
- Add beaten eggs and stir.
- Divide the mixture between 7 cans instead of 6.
- Bake for the same time, at the same temperature as the Mini Christmas Cakes.
- Makes 14 Mini Christmas Cakes.
Another note of flexibility with this recipe is to make Mini Christmas bundt cakes. Mini bundt cake tins come in slightly different sizes, so it is hard for me to scale this recipe accordingly. The average volume of bundt cake molds is 55 cms cubed. Compared that with 20 cms cubed (for the entire can) or 10 cms cubed per mini cake when using the tomato paste cans as a cake tin.
I recommend decorating Mini Christmas bundt cakes with a slight dusting of powdered sugar.
Christmas tree mini cakes can also be made using this basic recipe for Mini Christmas Cakes. Different diameters of cake tins or molds can be used to provide discs of fruit cake that can be stacked vertically from the widest diameter going up to the least diameter, to form a 3 dimensional tiered cake. This cake can be decorated with frosting rather than marzipan and fondant.
Storage of Traditional Irish Christmas Cake
These Mini Christmas Cakes can be made well in advance (up to 3 months prior to consumption) as long as they are stored in an airtight metal container. The presence of the alcohol in the whiskey helps preserve the cakes.
You can freeze these Cakes for up to 6 months. I recommend freezing the cakes, marzipan discs, fondant discs and marzipan decor pieces separately if possible. Defrost overnight in the refrigerator and assembly the marzipan and fondant, then add the finishing decor touches.
A Tip From Me
Fondant is fairly easy to make and it is even easier to buy! Either way, there’s a couple of rules how to successfully handle it. Here they are:
- Everything sticks to fondant, so make sure the surface you are using is immaculate along with your hands and anything else that will touch the fondant. Wear food safe gloves, or grease your hands with coconut oil.
- When rolling it out, just like pastry, dust some powdered sugar, or cornstarch (cornflour) over the surface you are using, for a dry method of rolling.
- If your fondant appears on the dry side and looks as though it will crack when rolling, ditch the dry method of rolling and cover your hands and surface in coconut oil. Knead it a little to make it more pliable.
- Keep moving the fondant around, as you roll. Turn it a quarter turn but do not flip it. Do not walk away from it, even if it is just for a few minutes, it dries quickly.
- If your fondant does become hard, add a couple of drops of hot water to soften. Keep adding hot water until the fondant is pliable and easier to work with.
- For colored fondant, add food coloring. Add the minimum number of drops and work them into the fondant. You can always add more until you reach the color you desire.
An alternative to buying or making your own fondant is to make Marshmallow Fondant as made by Savor the Best.
Got Questions?
I’ve got answers – hopefully!
Irish Christmas Cake contains dried fruit soaked overnight in Irish whiskey. This helps hydrate and ‘open up’ the fruit. Christmas Cake can be made months in advance only because it is being ‘fed’ whiskey ( or other distilled beverage). This helps preserve it. This alcohol is not burned off. A thin sliver of Christmas Cake is enough, due to the density of the fruit and alcohol content.
Irish Christmas Cake has more fruit in it and less cake batter than Irish boiled cake.
Irish boiled fruit cake relies on boiling the fruit in water for hydration, before it is added to the cake batter. This fruit cake relies on less dried fruit and has no alcohol. A thicker slice can be afforded, it is oftentimes slathered with Irish butter and it is never decorated with marzipan or fondant.
Dried fruit based Christmas Cake is said to have originated in England. The Irish probably got the recipe and added Irish whiskey to it as a preservative and added flavoring. Traditionally, in both countries, one or two coins (usually sixpence) were wrapped in greaseproof paper and baked into the Cake. (That’s another reason why the Cake was so popular).
Irish Christmas Cake and Christmas pudding (another dried fruit creation), traditionally requires every member of the family to take a turn stirring the raw cake batter, and making a wish for the following year when doing so. Stir raw batter from east to west in recognition of the Magi or wise men who came from the east to visit the baby Jesus.
Additional Swoon Worthy Christmas Sweet Treats
Eggnog Cranberry Cheesecake is easy, no bake and a huge crowd pleaser!
Rote Grütze is a German style ‘fruits of the forest’ dessert packed with cherries and red berries, topped with German Vanilla Sauce and finished with a generous blob of vanilla ice cream.
Mini Christmas Cakes -Traditional Irish Fruit Cake
Ingredients
- 240 g dried fruit mix and match between raisins, sultannas and currants.
- 100 g brown sugar
- 85 g all purpose flour plain flour
- 180 ml Irish whiskey Use 150 ml to soak the dried fruit and a tablespoon of whiskey for every weekly 'feeding'. I did 3 weeks of feeding.
- 1 tsp mixed spice mix and match between cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mixed spice and all spice.
- 100 g salted butter
- 2 eggs medium at room temperature.
- 1 orange preferably organic – only needed for its zest.
- 90 g finely ground almonds
- 70 g powdered sugar icing sugar
- 100 g fondant ready made
Instructions
Presoak the Dried Fruit
- The day before you intend baking your cakes, combine the dried fruits and pour the whiskey over them. Cover the whiskey soaked fruit and store overnight until use.
Prepare the Baking Tins
- Cut a piece of wax or parchment paper, long enough to wrap around the inside of the can a couple of times and tall enough to extend at least an inch above the top of the can.
- Grease the bottom of the can with a little oil or butter. Insert the paper inside the can.
Make the Christmas Cakes
- Preheat the oven to 280 degrees F / 135 degrees C. Cream together the brown sugar and room temperature butter using a stand mixer, hand mixer, whisk, or wooden spoon.
- Add one egg, mix it in well to the mixture, then add the other one an mix well.
- Grate the orange zest into the mixture and stir and the mixed spices.
- Finally add the soaked dried fruit. Be sure to include any whiskey that did not soak into the fruit.
- Mix well. Stir from east to west and make a wish (refer to the FAQ for explanation!)
- Spoon the cake mixture into the prepared cake tins as evenly as possible. I weighed each tin and took a little from some to add to others. The average weight of each tin containing cake mixture was 151g.
- Place the cake tins in the oven for about 1 hour or until a wooden skewer or cake tester stick comes out dry.
- Remove the cake tins from the oven and allow to completely cool. Then remove both ends of the cans using a can opener.
- Push out the cakes from the can, remove the paper and cut evenly into two.
- Place the cakes into a lidded metal container lined with wax or parchment paper.
Feed the Christmas Cakes
- Using a thin wooden skewer or metal cake tester like I did, poke several holes into each cake.
- With a plastic pipette or a very small spoon, distribute 1 tbsp of Irish whiskey between the 12 Mini Christmas Cakes.
Make the Marzipan
- Add the ground almonds and powdered sugar into a food processor bowl.
- Put the lid on and add cold water drop by drop through the feed tube of the processor. When it comes together, stop. This will take approximately 20 ml water.
- Sprinkle some powdered sugar on your hands before gathering up the marzipan. Form into a ball and place onto a piece of plastic wrap.
- Form a roll with the marzipan using the plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Decorate Irish Christmas Cakes
- Spread a thin layer of clear (ish)or light colored jam or preserve over the surface of the cakes. This jam will act as glue, helping the marzipan to stick to the cakes. I used quince jam, but apple jelly or orange marmalade will work well.
- When the marzipan has chilled, roll it out on a surface dusted lightly with powdered sugar. Use a 5 cm / 2 inch fluted cutter to cut 12 discs of marzipan. Place them on each cake. Press gently to help them stick to the cakes.
- Using the same jam / preserve, spread a thin layer, this time over the marzipan to help the fondant adhere.
- Roll out the fondant on a board lightly dusted with powdered sugar. Using a 4 cm / 1¾ inch fluted cutter, cut out 12 discs of fondant. I used store bought fondant.
- Place these discs onto the marzipan and press gently to help them stick.
- With the leftover marzipan, color ⅓ of it red using a couple of drops of red food coloring and the remaining ⅔ green using a couple of drops of green food coloring. Cut holly leaves from the green dough and roll little balls from the red dough to form berries. Use the same jam to stick the decorations onto the fondant.
- Once complete, store in a metal container with a tight fitting lid.
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