Chocolate and port fruitcake

That's right, it's the richest, smokiest, darkest and fattest fruitcake ever to emerge, gently steaming, lushly decorated and beaming with pride, from your oven. "Look at me", it says. "Ain't I swell?"

I have made this cake the last three Christmases. It's so giant that one cake feeds two families and all of their assorted visitors, guests and sundry cake-eaters. This year, I will make it again. The cycle continues.
Last year, it was the very first thing that we cooked in our terrible terrible oven. Because it's relatively difficult to muck up a fruitcake (most of them are idiotproof), the cake came out looking el fabuloso and I was lulled into a state of quiet oven-related satisfaction. Unbeknowst to me, the terrible terrible oven was merely BIDING ITS TIME. Waiting until I tried to roast a chicken, or bake a cookie. Then it would UNLEASH ITS MIGHTY POWERS OF DESTRUCTION. However, the cake was a great way to christen the oven, and our new house. As it bakes, it will fill the entire house with a sweet, deep and spicy aroma, and you'll have a strange desire to mull some wine and shove cloves into an orange and wrap up a few gifts while munching on a candy cane, spraying fake snow on the windows and singing along to A Richard Clayderman Christmas.

By the way, the spice measurements are correct. I told you it was a special cake.

Chocolate and Port Fruitcake

• 375g currants


• 375g raisins
  
• 350g pitted prunes, cut up with scissors


• 250g mixed peel
  
• 200g nuts (I suggest walnut)


• 1 cup port, (adding a splash of Frangelico, Madeira or Cointreau is optional)


• 250g dark chocolate (You can use cooking chocolate but I use Club or Old Gold)


• 250g unsalted butter, cut into cubes


• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence


• 1 tablespoon mixed spice
  
• 1 tablespoon nutmeg


• 1 tablespoon cinnamon


• 1 cup dark brown sugar


• 4 eggs


• Grated rind and juice of an orange


• 1/3 cup treacle or golden syrup
  
• 1 and 1/2 cups plain flour


• 1/2 a cup self-raising flour


• 100g approx blanched whole almonds (optional)


• Extra 1/4 cup of port to pour over the monster
  

1 Pour port over the currants, raisins, peel and prunes in a large bowl. Leave it to macerate for a few hours, or overnight is even better. Mix occasionally.

2 Preheat your oven to slow, about 160 degrees celsius. Line the base and sides of a deep 23cm round tin with two layers of baking paper, bringing it a good 5cm above the rim of the tin. Take the time to do this right because your paper will protect the monster during its prolonged stay in oven rehab.

3 Put butter in electric mixer and beat until pale yellow. Add vanilla and beat again, then add sugar and beat until light and creamy. Add the eggs one by one (into the rotating beater of death, eggs! Meet your destiny!) and beat well after each one.

4 Add the creamed butter mixture to the fruit. Add the rind, juice and treacle and stir. Sift the dry ingredients and add to bowl, along with chopped up chocolate and nuts. Get a strong wooden spoon (you'll need it) and stir with all your might until the cake mixture is just combined. It's good luck at this point to heft the bowl into your arms and lug it around the house, bleating at house occupants to have a good-luck stir before it goes into the oven. Last year I mis-timed myself and arrived at the couch just as the Paris Open was starting. Peter's eyes never left the screen for a second, but he did manage to get all fingers wrapped around the spoon and to move it about 2mm, wedged as it was in the wet-concrete mass of cake mix. I considered that an achievement and was satisfied.

5 Spoon the mixture evenly into the tin. Tap the tin on the bench to settle it. Wet your hand under the tap and smooth out the surface of the cake. At this point I like to decorate the top with the blanched almonds in a star or lace pattern.

6 Wrap the tin in a double thickness of brown paper, right around the outside, and secure it with string or a paperclip. Bake it for 3 to 3 and 1/2 hours- until a skewer comes out clean. Remove cake, pour over the extra port, and wrap it in a thick clean towel. Don't unwrap it until the cake is completely cold- about 24 hours.
I remember needing two of us to hoist the red-hot baked monster from the terrible terrible oven. I also remember, for some reason, choosing to cakeify on a hot sticky day. By the hour of cake removal, I was down to working in a sarong and bra, pausing every so oft to down a few cups of cold water and splash my pinned-up hair. But...of course, it was worth it!