Chocolate Fruit Cake Without Alcohol and Smaller

Asked by shirleyab. Answered on 5th December 2014

Full question

Can you suggest a non-alcoholic alternative to Tia Maria in the Chocolate Fruit Cake please?

Hi, I was thinking of making 2 smaller cakes this year rather than one large Chocolate Fruit Cake - one for work and one for home. Could you advise what size tin would be appropriate and the approximate cooking time? P.S I love this cake! Many thanks, Christie.

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Fruit Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) is a type of fruit cake known as a "boiled fruit cake" as the fruits, butter, sugar and liquid are boiled together briefly before the other ingredients are added. The advantage of this cake is that you don't need to soak the fruits beforehand and the baked cake is very moist and so doesn't necessarily need to be fed and matured. It is ideal as a last minute Christmas cake.

Nigella uses Tia Maria but you could use another coffee-flavoured liqueur or a brandy. For a non-alcoholic alternative then you could use freshly brewed coffee (regular strength). Orange juice would also work well though may impart more of an orange flavour to the cake.

Nigella's recipe makes a 20cm/8-inch cake. Scaling cakes is slightly tricky and we haven't tried a smaller version ourselves so can't guarantee the results but as a rough guideline this recipe should make two smaller 15cm/6-inch cakes. We would suggest baking the cakes for 1 hour and then check the cakes (a cake tester should come out slightly gooey). If the cake still seems to have uncooked batter then bake for a further 10 minutes and check again.