Gluten Free Christmas Cake

Recipe

This Gluten Free Christmas Cake is my crowd pleasing take on the traditional favourite. Not too rich, fluffy texture and studded with fruit, this is a recipe you'll turn to year after year.

I haven't always loved Christmas cake, and I'll admit that I only started eating it when I was kid because I liked the fondant icing on top. Even still I sometimes find Christmas cakes too rich, and I just feel a bit let down by a cake you can only eat a tiny slice of.

That's why I created this recipe. For me, at least, it's the perfect Christmas cake. It's not too rich, and yet it has plenty of fruit, it has just enough fluffy sponge and better yet, it has very little hands on time. It's pretty much an all-in-one sponge situation, with the addition of a full kilo of fruit mince folded through before baking.

This is a pretty big cake. Because it's not as rich as your average Christmas cake I actually like to cut it into decent-sized 5cm squares, giving you 25 pieces per cake. I'm willing to bet you could bake it in a smaller square or round tin, but bear in mind the bake time will probably differ.

The size and shape of the cake does lend itself well to decorating. In these images I've gone fairly classic, using a star cutter about 4cm across to cut 25 stars. I glued them on with a tiny dab of water, and voila! Every piece of cake gets its own little decoration.

Like all fruit cakes this Christmas cake stores incredibly well. The only thing to be mindful of is that the icing needs a few hours uncovered to dry out a bit (otherwise it will become unappetisingly gooey and slide around during storage. Ask me how I know). Kept in an airtight container at room temperature the cake should keep for a month at least. If you would like to freeze it, wrap the cooled, un-iced cake tightly in a few layers of plastic wrap.