Three is the magic number this Christmas

Have you ever gazed at a display of Christmas cakes and felt just the tiniest twinge of regret that you could only choose one? Then we have something that you’ll love. Our Christmas Cake Selection comprises a trio of festive fruit cakes, each one featuring a traditional design to become a miniature masterpiece of our craft.

If dried fruit could throw parties, our classic Christmas Cake recipe would be the liveliest do in town, with sultanas, currants and raisins, plumped up by an overnight soaking in sherry and joined by lemon and orange peels and whole glacé cherries. Add in an extra helping of sherry after baking, and you have a cake that only becomes more and more delicious over the three months we leave it to mature.

Next, our cake decorating team work their magic, adorning each one with soft icing, delicate royal icing Christmas rose design, hand-painted with extra-lifelike detail.

Readers with long memories may recall how our walnut and ginger cake first appeared in an octagonal tin back in the 1980s under the banner of ‘King’s Cakes’, when King’s Bakery in Ripon became part of the Bettys family.

Packed with walnuts, sherry-soaked sultanas, glacé fruits, crystallised ginger and ground almonds, the recipe has been a firm favourite ever since. Here it’s topped with a scrumptious mixture of nuts and glacé fruits in festive hues.

Don’t tell anyone, but the third cake is based on – shh! – our popular Simnel cake recipe, with rum-soaked sultanas and currants, fruit peels and mixed spices. But we don’t think such deliciousness should be kept only for Easter. Instead of marzipan inside, it has a layer on top, made with extra almonds and toasted to a lovely golden brown – a finish that our bakers have been using since the 1920s.