My Dad was from Derbyshire and liked white Cheshire cheese with Christmas cake.

Bramleys will keep, and become milder and sweet enough to eat 'raw' if kept long enough, and carefully enough. Here on the South coast of England they do not keep well as it is too warm, so I make my cake as soon as I see them in the shops.

I put Bramley apple puree into my Christmas cakes. I use an old recipe and it needs to be kept for a couple of months to mature - moistening the mixture with milk is not a good idea but the juices from the apple make a good job of it. There is the rum poured on after cooking, and the preparation of the fruit involves vermouth - it used to be sherry but I don't have the stuff in the house. It usually takes three days to make, from the weighing of the dried fruit to taking it out of the oven, and then another day for it to cool, be stripped of the greaseproof paper and then re wrapped and put into a tin until needed. It is not iced but decorated with whole almonds and glace cherries.

The original recipe was huge - but it used to be made as the Christmas cake in a round tin and another cake baked in a loaf tin which was opened up at the beginning of December as a taster.

It is the best 'dark' cake I have ever tasted.

Anne