Smaller Christmas Cakes

Asked by Angela Fisher. Answered on 13th November 2014

Full question

Hi. My sister in law bought me a 5-inch loose bottom cake tin and I was looking for Christmas cake recipes to fit the tin. The smallest I can find is 6-inch round or 5-inch square. Please can you help? Many thanks Ange F

Our answer

Scaling cakes is always a little tricky but with rich fruit cakes, such as Christmas cakes, the recipes are a little more forgiving. Nigella gives a table of quantities for her Traditional Christmas Cake (in Christmas, p172) for 18cm (7-inch), 23cm (9-inch) and 25.5cm (10-inch) round tins. As 12.5cm (5-inch) tins are a slightly unusual size it can be difficult to find an exact recipe.

Theoretically a 12.5cm round tin should have 40% of the recipe quantities of a 23cm round cake tin. So if you were adapting from Nigella's Traditional Cake recipe (23cm version) you would need 280g raisins, 120g currants, etc. Eggs are the most difficult and we suggest you round up to 2 whole eggs. The baking times can vary but it should be roughly 2 hours at 150c/300F. However we suggest that you start checking the cake at 1 hour and 45 minutes and cook until a cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake. We would also like to emphasise that these are general guidelines only. We have not tested the recipe for this size of cake and so cannot guarantee the results.