This is the most fabulous Italian spicy fruit cake, decorated glossily with candied fruits
and nuts, and best eaten in the tiniest slices with a glass of vin santo or, crossing
continents for a moment, Australian black or orange muscat. I’m afraid I’ve taken
terrible liberties with the recipe given to me by Anna del Conte; this is an anglicized
version insofar as I’ve greatly augmented the apples to give a much wetter cake. I do
think Italians appreciate a dry cake in the way that we don’t. I’ve also, for purely
personal reasons, got rid of the candied peel. As for the decorative topping: I’ve been
vague about quantities because it depends completely on what you want to use and how.

75g seedless raisins
30ml Marsala
350g plain flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
150g clear honey
150g caster sugar
40g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon anise or fennel seeds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
375g Coxes apples (2 medium), roughly grated
200g blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
50g pine nuts
75g bitter chocolate, chopped
75g walnuts, chopped

25cm Springform cake tin, buttered and lined

suggestions for decorating:
4 tablespoons apricot jam to glaze
pecan halves
natural-coloured glacé cherries
blanched whole almonds
marrons glacés
glacé fruits

Soak the raisins in the Marsala for 20 minutes, and while they’re steeping, preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4. Measure the flour and bicarb out into a large bowl. Heat the honey, sugar, butter and water in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Add the anise or fennel seeds and cinnamon, pour this mixture over the bowl of flour and bicarb, and stir to combine.

Mix in all the other ingredients, not forgetting the soaked raisins and their liquid, then spoon into the tin and cook for 3/4 –1 hour; and should you find the cake needs that final 15 minutes, you may need to cover it with foil to stop it catching. When the cake has cooled, heat the apricot jam in a small pan and, using a pastry brush, paint most but not all of it over the top of the cake to glaze and give a sticky surface to which the fruits and so forth will adhere. Decorate with glacé fruits and nuts of your choice, leaving no gaps of cake visible on top. Brush with scant remaining glaze so all looks burnished and shiny.