Walnuts In Christmas Cake

Our answer

Nigella has two rich fruit Christmas cake recipes. The Time-Honoured Christmas Cake appears in FEAST and a recipe for Traditional Christmas Cake is in NIGELLA CHRISTMAS, which actually contains chopped pecans or walnuts. For the Time-Honoured Christmas Cake it is possible to add some chopped walnuts, as chopped nuts do not affect the ratios of other ingredients in the cake batter. For the 23cm round cake we would suggest adding 100g of chopped walnuts.

For the other Christmas cake recipes, such as the Easy-Action Christmas Cake it is possible to add some chopped walnuts and for a 20-23cm cake we would suggest adding 70-100g nuts to the batter. The Gorgeously Golden Fruit Cake is a moist, gluten free fruit cake. You could add some chopped nuts to this cake but bear in mind that the cake can break into chunks if you try to cut it into thin slices and the nuts will make it a little more crumbly. Chopped nuts do not need to be soaked or boiled with the dried fruits and should be added when the cake batter is mixed.