Can you smell the brandy?

Because I was terribly bored at home, and with the newly tightened braces really getting on my nerves, I decided to bake. A lot of people find me weird because seriously, who needs a precision, full on concentration hobby when you're simply just frustrated with your teeth (and yourself for wanting to have nice teeth. The price of vanity.) But yes, I bake to distract myself from pain and it has served me well.

Yea, my fruit cake doesn't have quite the dark glamour of the traditional ones, but I never really like cakes that colour. Christmas on our little island is far from the gloomy, cold, miserable dark at fourp.m. christmas-es experienced on the other side of the globe- so why bake the traditional heavy dense cakes that are usually doused so heavily with alcohol, you can't taste nothing.

Thank goodness we learnt how to bake the light fruitcake at school :). Although Chef C went a little crazy in administering Rum to the finish product, I kept my dousing well under control. And instead of Rum, I used Brandy instead- simply because Brandy has such a christmassy smell, non?

Still, you'd be surprise at how the brandy permeates the entire cake when it has been given its 48 hours of rest. Add a splosh of brandied butter and you've got yourself Christmas on a plate!