Today marks the last ritualistic feeding of the Christmas cake in the Williams household. I made my cake at the end of October and its been sitting in a cupboard, getting more and more aromatic and just plain lovely ever since. (It has now been moved to a very festive-looking tin for safe-keeping after I found myself standing at the cupboard, contemplating cutting a slice early and padding the gap with marzipan. Next year I should make two cakes to ward off this sort of situation.)

Now, as much as I love Christmas cake, Dave isn’t the world’s biggest fan as he finds fruit cake to be a bit on the dry side. “Aha!” said I, “You haven’t tried my Christmas cake. That’s the problem.”

I do love being right, something which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

When I made a Christmas cake as a present for Dave’s brother (and his boyfriend) a couple of years ago, they very kindly sent us home with a slab of it, and Dave had to concede that it was indeed very moist and lovely. And ever since then I’ve wanted to make one for us as a family, but it’s always seemed overly extravagant as there was only the two of us.

Now, of course, we have Lucas–not that he’ll be eating this boozy cake! Fear not, Granny!–and we’re living much closer to all of Dave’s family, so I can easily pawn off excess food and Save Our Waistbands.

I like an easy life, so my fruit cake of choice is a “simmer and stir” or boiled fruit cake. This has a big advantage in that it is all mixed up in a saucepan, so minimal washing up. A more gourmet advantage of this method is that the alcohol, butter and sugar get greedily absorbed by the fruit giving you a real head-start in the moist cake stakes. It’s very much a personal thing, though. My Mum wouldn’t be parted from Delia Smith’s traditional Christmas cake recipe, and I have to admit that her Christmas cake is always very good. All Christmas cakes benefit from regular feeds with brandy or rum, though and you can even do it with shop-bought ones if you’re very short on time….

When feeding your cake, make sure to flip it with each feeding. Ie feed the top one week and the bottom the next. This gives you the best chance of all that lovely booze penetrating to the middle of the cake. Also, prick the cake well with a cocktail stick or thin skewer–please don’t use a knitting needle as some ancient recipes recommend, unless you enjoy spending half an hour plugging holes with marzipan when you’re decorating it–so that the alcohol will soak in and not pool on the surface. You’ll have to prick the cake at each feeding as the fruit close to the surface will have swollen and thus all your little holes will have sealed up. Unless you used a knitting needle, in which case your craters will still be intact.

And what do you feed the cake with? Well, you can pretty much use any fortified wine or spirit that you have lying around. I’ve seen recipes using everything from cooking sherry through to Drambuie and Glayva. I personally favour cheap brandy or rum. If you don’t want to add any further booze, then you can make some spiced apple juice–cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg would be good additions–and feed the cake with this. It won’t be the same, of course, but it’ll still be tasty.

There’s plenty sugar in the cake–both from the fruit and the refined sort–so using a sweet liqueur or sherry is overkill on the sweetness front and frankly there’s no point in pouring an expensive bottle of brandy or cognac over the cake because you won’t taste it in the long run. Yes, you’ll taste brandy but the predominant taste–as it jolly well should be–is the fruit. The moist, plump, tender, boozy fruit.

To me, that’s the whole point of a Christmas Cake. Boozy, tender fruit glued together with a bit of cake mix.

I try to remember to feed the cake every week or so. If I forget, then I’ll feed both sides in one go and break all the rules by saturating the surface, letting brandy run over the sides and leaving it–wrapped back in its parcel of greaseproof paper and foil–sitting in a puddle of brandy. So far no harm has come to the cake, but I wouldn’t advise doing this! (This is a good example of “do as I say, not as I do”.)

You can probably still just about get away with making your Christmas cake if you make it in the next couple of days. I’d add an overnight soak of the fruit (in extra brandy) to the recipe below–via the ever-reliable Mary Cadogan–before boiling up the fruit as per the recipe the next day. This should get your fruit absolutely swollen with alcohol and create a nice moist cake. If you marzipan your cake on the 22nd and ice it on Christmas Eve, then you should be able to squeeze in two good feedings with brandy, which is better than nothing!

Or… you can save the recipe for next year and just nip to Marks and Spencers and buy one.

Mary Cadogan’s Simmer & Stir Cake

175g unsalted butter , chopped
200g dark muscovado sugar
750g luxury mixed dried fruits (one that includes mixed peel and glacé cherries)
finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
100ml/3½ fl oz brandy plus 4tbsp more
3 large eggs , lightly beaten
85g ground almonds
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

20cm (8″) round cake tin–loose-bottomed and deep is ideal.

Put the butter, sugar, fruit, zests, juice and 100ml brandy in a large pan. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring until the butter has melted. Reduce the heat and bubble for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2/ fan 130C and line the cake tin. Stir the eggs and ground almonds into the fruit mixture and mix well. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into the pan. Stir in gently, until there are no traces of flour left.

Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth it down evenly – you will find this is easiest with the back of a metal spoon which has been dipped into boiling water.

Bake for 45 minutes, then turn down the heat to 140C/gas 1/ fan120C and cook for a further 1-1¼ hours (about a further 1¾ hours if you have a gas oven) until the cake is dark golden in appearance and firm to the touch. Cover the top of the cake with foil if it starts to darken too much. To check the cake is done, insert a fine skewer into the centre – if it comes out clean, the cake is cooked.

Make holes all over the warm cake with a fine skewer and spoon the extra 4tbsp brandy over the holes until it has all soaked in. Leave the cake to cool in the tin. When it’s cold, remove it from the tin, peel off the lining paper, then wrap first in baking parchment and then in foil. The cake will keep in a cupboard for up to three months or you can freeze it for six months.

• Glenna @ A Fridge Full of Food