Mary Berry and me

Well, not really Mary Berry and me but more Mary's cake and me. Her Christmas cake to be precise.

I don't usually make Christmas cake as Douglas is the only one who eats it and by the time he gets to the end of it, he's heartily sick of Christmas cake. But this year I decided that I would make one and put a piece in each of the hampers we make for the Grannies and Douglas could have some as well.

I saw the Mary Berry Christmas cake mix in the supermarket a few weeks ago and thought I'd just use that. I bought it yesterday (it had been reduced to half price - score!!) and I made it today. Here's what was in the bag:

All I had to add was 4 eggs and this: (I actually needed just less than one block of butter not 2 as shown here.)

A lot of mixing later - I got Douglas to help stir it as it was quite heavy going with all that fruit in there - and this is how it looked as he dolloped it into the baking tin:

All flattened out and ready to bake:

4½ hours later:

After it had cooled down:

And wrapped up waiting to get decorated.

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I'll definitely be making Christmas cakes with Mary's help again. It saved so much faffing about! Let's just hope it tastes good.