Tentura christmas cake

While in Greece I was served up some Tentura after a meal. It is a liquer and the main ingredients are cinnamon and cloves. You drink it down in a small shot glass and I suppose it is an ancient version of Salmiaki Kossu. So it was Maija's idea to make a cake with Tentura as a spice.



Now Christmas cakes have a great tradition in the UK and America. These christmas fruitcakes weigh a tonne and apparently if you don't eat them they last for ever. A bit like the English wedding cakes covered in icing and marzipan that can be saved so that the first born can sample their mother and fathers wedding cake.

Fruit cakes given as presents at christmas can be left uneaten, and if you don't like them they can be passed on to someone else. who will undoubtedly pass it on to somebody else the following christmas. They are so rich they will last forever it left untouched. I bet you the Pharaoh had perfectly good cake in his burial chamber.




Eggs, sugar, flour, butter, all go into the basic dough and you add it the fruits like raisens, sultanas, appricots, cherries and of course a generous helping of Tentura.




Now you don't want the cake to turn out like a coal-dust brickette so to prevent the cake from burning and sticking to the container, the inside is lined with brown baking paper and the outside is covered in newspaper.

Now I hear you question as to what type of newspaper to use. Well personally we got good results with Helsinki Sanomat, though I dare say The Times would have done equally well.

At all cost avoid The Sun, or The National Inquirer. For some reason cakes wraped in these newspapers always come out badly.




Finally when the cake is ready it has to be spiked with more Tentura, for after all eating cake is only a discrete way of consuming alcohol. Prick the cake with a toothpick and pour in as much Tentura was you want.

You will observe that after people have eaten a few slices they will remark how wonderfully moist the cake is, and will be asking for another slice.