Vegan Christmas Cake

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• Its become a bit of a tradition for us to make the christmas cake and take it to what ever family christmas event we happen to be attending, it's great cause it means it can be eaten by everyone and also we've gotten pretty damn good at it, if you don't tell people it's vegan no one will know the difference.
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What you'll need;

We made a LOT of fruit as we're using it for 2 cakes and fruit mince tarts but for one cake you'll need approximately 1.5 kg of mixed fruit I used sultanas, dates, glace cherries, apricots, mixed peel and candied ginger, just use whatever you like. We soaked ours in 3/4 of a bottle of rum for a week but if you don't have time do it for as long as you can.

• 1.5 cups plain flour
• 0.5 cup self-raising flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons mixed spice
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 250g butter, softened
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 4 eggs worth of no egg replacer
• 2 tablespoons orange marmalade

Preheat your oven to 150°C and grease and line your cake tin.

Place sifted flour and spices in a bowl.

In a separate bowl cream your sugar and softened butter until pale, prepare your egg replacer and beat it into the creamed butter and sugar. Add the marmalade and 1 tablespoon flour mixture and beat until well combined.

Add your two mixtures together and beat until well combined.

Add fruit and mix well.

Pour into your cake tin and press flat (should be thick).

Cover your cake in foil/kitchen paper and cook for 2 - 3 hours depending on your oven, remove the foil for the last 30 minutes.  I made two and the larger one took 3 hours. After the first 1.5 hours check the cake every 30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

I then poured another 1/8 cup of rum over the hot cake and allowed to cool.

Now the fun part, these cakes look just fine sprinkled with icing sugar but i wanted them to look a bit special.

I just used some nuts, orange slices and left over cherries, you place them on the cake. take a jar of apricot jam, place it in a bowl and melt it in the microwave then glaze the top and you'll end up with something like this.

Merry Christmas Xx