Is it even Christmas if your kitchen doesn’t smell like butter, sugar, and questionable amounts of brandy?
For me, Christmas isn’t Christmas until there’s a cake on the counter and I’m fighting my family off with a wooden spoon yelling “IT NEEDS TO REST UNTIL CHRISTMAS EVE!”
I’ve baked my way through a LOT of Christmas cakes over the years. The dry ones. The ones that could double as a doorstop. The “oops I set the rum on fire” ones. And then… the perfect ones. The ones people actually beg you to make again in July.
So I finally narrowed it down. After years of taste-testing, tweaking, and bribing my neighbors to be honest taste-testers, these are my 5 all-time favorites. No bricks, no boring fruitcakes that everyone pretends to like – just tried-and-true, crowd-pleasing, make-your-house-smell-like-a-holiday-movie Christmas cakes.
Whether you’re team super-boozy, team chocolate-obsessed, or team “I’ll just have whatever has the most frosting,” I’ve got you covered.
Ready to preheat the oven and get a little flour on your ugly sweater? Let’s dive in!
Christmas Cake Recipes I Keep Making Ever Year
Not all of my Christmas cakes are fruit cakes, and that is the point. Some need weeks to age and some are best the next day. Each cake comes with the full ingredient list and the video to bake from.
Easy Christmas Fruit Cake
My easy Christmas fruit cake is a dark, rich fruit cake full of mixed dried fruit, glacé cherries and cranberries, with cherry brandy, orange and warm spice. What sold me is that it needs no creaming, no beating and no soaking of the fruit. The butter, sugar, fruit and brandy all go into one pan on the stove, and once the mix cools you stir in the rest. The cake bakes low and slow in one 8-inch round pan for about two hours and makes one cake.
You make this fruit cake in November and feed it until Christmas. Feeding means brushing a tablespoon or two of cherry brandy over it each week, and that is what keeps it moist and rich. In the comments under the video on YouTube, people who had never baked a cake said they got it right the first time, helped by the recipe giving cups and grams side by side. One cook who ran late baked it, fed it and froze it for a day, and said the thaw helps it age. For a clean, even top, lay a ring of baking paper with a hole in the middle over the cake before it goes in the oven.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (175g) unsalted butter, chopped
- 1 packed cup (210g) light brown muscovado sugar
- 2 + 2/3 cups (400g) mixed dried fruit
- 1 cup (200g) glacé cherries, roughly chopped
- 1 cup (100g) dried cranberries
- Zest and juice of 1 orange
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup (120ml) cherry brandy
- 1/2 cup (85g) ground almonds (coarsely ground)
- 3 large eggs, lightly whisked
- 1 + 2/3 cups (200g) plain/all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground mixed spice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground allspice
- To feed the cake: cherry brandy, 1-2 tbsp per week
SaveVictorian Christmas Plum Cake
A Victorian Christmas plum cake is a huge, old-style fruit cake full of cherries, currants and candied peel, with half a pint of brandy in the batter. History is why I made it: this is the plum cake from a recipe by Queen Victoria’s chief cook. The batter is the classic kind, soft butter worked with sugar, flour and eggs, with the fruit, peel, almonds, spice and brandy folded in. The cake bakes in one large lined pan for about six hours, so plan the whole day around it.
Once baked, the cake gets a coat of almond paste and hard white icing. Almond paste is a thick, sweet paste of ground almonds and sugar that gives you a smooth layer under the icing. Check your pan before you start, because the amounts are huge: 680g each of flour, butter, currants and peel. I turn the cake upside down for a flat top before the paste goes on. Small air bubbles in the icing do not matter, because piped trim and a ribbon cover them.
Ingredients
- 680g plain flour
- 680g butter
- 450g caster sugar
- 450g dried chopped cherries
- 680g currants
- 680g candied peel
- 225g ground almonds
- 8 eggs
- Zest of four oranges
- 15g ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg)
- 1/2 pint brandy
- For the almond paste: 225g ground almonds
- 450g caster sugar
- A little orange water
- 3-4 egg whites
- For the icing: 6 egg whites
- 680g icing sugar
- Lemon juice
SaveJapanese Strawberry Christmas Cake
Japanese strawberry Christmas cake is a light, snow-white sponge layered with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. In Japan this is the cake sold as Christmas cake, and I bake it for a Christmas when nobody wants a dense fruit cake. The sponge rises on eggs whisked with sugar and bakes in one 7-inch round pan. Then the sponge is cut in two, brushed with a simple sugar syrup, and filled and topped with cream and berries. Plan on about an hour of work plus cooling, for one cake.
Use a kitchen scale for this cake. I weigh everything, and cooks who made it bigger or smaller did it by weight too. With no cake flour, take 2 tablespoons out of each cup of all-purpose flour, put cornstarch in its place and sift it a few times. Fold the butter and milk in at the very end. One cook added them while the eggs were still being beaten, and the batter went flat.
Ingredients
- 150g eggs (5.3 oz)
- 100g granulated sugar (3.5 oz)
- 90g cake flour or pastry flour (3.2 oz)
- 15g unsalted butter (0.53 oz)
- 1 tbsp milk
- For the soaking syrup: 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 3 tbsp hot water
- 1 tbsp kirsch (optional)
- For the toppings: 400ml whipping cream, 35% fat (1.7 cups)
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
- 450g strawberries
- Powdered sugar
SaveChocolate Peppermint Christmas Cake
My chocolate peppermint Christmas cake is a three-layer chocolate cake filled with peppermint buttercream and crushed candy cane. Chocolate ganache goes over the top, and ganache is just chocolate melted into warm cream. Pieces of homemade peppermint bark stand up in it. This cake is my pick for anyone at the table who wants no fruit in their Christmas cake. The batter is a stir-together kind made with oil. It bakes in three 8-inch round pans, and the layers get stacked once cool. You can make the bark a day ahead, which spreads out the work.
Cooks who took this cake to Christmas dinners and parties said it was a hit, even the ones who usually find chocolate cake a letdown. No coffee? Hot water works, and the cake comes out a little less chocolatey. Go slow with the ganache. Let it sit for a bit, then nudge it to the edge gently, because it can run over the side fast. A few pieces of bark hide any drips.
Ingredients
- For the cake: 1 cup hot coffee (or hot water)
- 3/4 cup (60g) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- 2 1/2 cups (300g) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups (300g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 cup (110g) sour cream
- 1/2 cup (120ml) whole milk
- 1/2 cup (110g) brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (180ml) vegetable oil
- 4 eggs
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- For the peppermint bark: 4 bars dark chocolate (3 used in the video)
- 4 bars white chocolate (3 used in the video)
- Candy canes, crushed
- For the peppermint buttercream: 3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 tsp salt (1/4 tsp if the butter is salted)
- 3 tsp vanilla
- just under 8 cups (2 1/4 lb, about 1 kg) powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup plus 2 tbsp heavy cream
- 1 1/4 tsp peppermint extract
- Crushed candy cane, for between the layers and the lower third of the cake
- For the ganache: chocolate, chopped
- Cream, warmed
SaveCaribbean Black Cake
Caribbean black cake is a dark, dense Christmas cake made with prunes, raisins, currants and cherries soaked in rum and cherry brandy or wine, then blended into a thick paste. I make it for the rum-soaked blended fruit. The fruit has to soak ahead of time, so this cake starts well before baking day. Browning, a dark syrup, gives the cake its near-black color, and a little more makes it blacker.
The batter is creamed butter and sugar with eggs and lime peel, and the blended fruit, flour and spice get mixed in. The batter fills three pans, and the cakes bake with a pan of water in the oven for about an hour and a half. The hot cakes then get soaked with more rum and brandy. Black cake is forgiving, too: one baker added extra fruit and it still came out well. Many cooks now make it every year and say it replaced the black cake they used to buy.
Ingredients
- For the blended fruits: 1 lb prunes, seeded and chopped
- 1 lb raisins
- 1 lb currants
- 1/2 lb cherries, chopped
- Any other fruits of your choice
- 1 bottle of rum
- 1 bottle of cherry brandy or wine
- Spices
- For the cake: 2 cups or 1 lb butter
- 2 cups or 1 lb sugar
- 9 large eggs
- 2 tsp grated lime or lemon peel
- 2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tbsp vanilla essence
- 1 lb or 4 cups flour (baking or all-purpose), sifted
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1-2 tsp mixed spice
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 cup browning, or more for a darker colour
- 4-5 cups soaked blended fruits
- Rum and cherry brandy, to soak the hot cakes
SaveChristmas Cake FAQ
Here are the questions that come up most about Christmas cake recipes, with my short answers.
How Far Ahead Should I Make a Christmas Cake?
Fruit cakes like the easy fruit cake, the Victorian plum and the black cake can be made weeks ahead. I start about two months out, feed mine a tablespoon or two of brandy every week or two, and stop about a week before the almond paste goes on so the top can dry. The strawberry cream sponge is different: bake the sponge the day before, wrap and chill it, then fill it close to serving.
Can I Make Christmas Cake Without Alcohol?
Yes. For the easy fruit cake you can swap the cherry brandy for cold tea or orange or apple juice. For black cake, cooks have used orange juice or cake wine in place of rum. The kirsch in the strawberry cake syrup is optional, and the chocolate peppermint cake has no alcohol at all. I do not count on an alcohol-free fruit cake keeping the same way as a fed one.
How Do I Store or Freeze a Christmas Cake?
For fruit cake, wrap leftovers tightly and freeze them. If the cake is iced, cover the cut sides with baking paper and let the icing air-dry after thawing, because the icing can turn sticky. For the strawberry cream cake, keep it covered in the fridge and eat within two days. The chocolate cake is made with oil, so it stays soft straight from the fridge and keeps fine there.
Is Christmas Cake the Same as Fruitcake?
In the British and Caribbean tradition, yes. There, Christmas cake is a rich cake heavy with dried fruit and often brandy or rum, like most of the cakes on my list. In Japan the Christmas cake is a strawberry and cream sponge, which is the light cake here. I kept both kinds on my list, so you can choose the kind that fits your table.
What Do You Put on Top of a Christmas Cake?
The classic is almond paste then white icing, and a thicker layer of almond paste helps level an uneven top. For a simpler finish, dust with powdered sugar or pile on cherries. For the chocolate cake, ganache and bark are the topping, no icing needed.
If you have weeks, start a fruit cake or black cake now and feed it. If you are baking the day before, make the strawberry cream sponge or the chocolate peppermint layer cake. Either way, pick the cake that matches your time and your crowd, and open its video to bake along.
