Review: Odlums Christmas Cake Kit on Like Mam Used to Bake

As I was flicking through a magazine recently I spotted an Odlums Christmas Cake Kit and wondered if it would produce a good quality homemade cake.  As I didn’t see it in my local supermarket I forgot all about until the door bell rang last week and the post man handed me one to try out.  The kit contains all of the dry ingredients (flour & spices, sugar, dried fruit, candied peel & glacé cherries, ground almonds, chopped almonds) that you will need to make an 8″ cake.  Also included is a free recipe book with a selection of home baking recipes from Catherine Leyden, the Odlums home baking expert.  Simply add butter, lemon and orange zest, and some brandy or whiskey and et voila, you will have one home-baked Christmas cake.

I’m a bit of a die-hard when it comes to Christmas cakes and puddings and believe that to be good they have to be homemade, so I was sceptical to say the least.  The kit claims that it can be made in 10 minutes so I timed myself.  Including lining the tin with parchment the cake took me between 15 and 20 minutes to mix and put in the oven.  Not bad going in my opinion.  The most time-consuming part of baking a Christmas cake is weighing out all of the ingredients, Odlums have done all of this hard work for you with the kit so it really is just a case of mixing everything together.  In my oven the cake was baked to perfection in exactly 2 and a half hours.  I was patient and left it to cool overnight in the tin before turning out to taste.

I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised.  I imagined it would be slightly dry, especially as the dried fruit was not left to soak overnight but it wasn’t at all.  The cake was moist and the fruit plump and juicy.  As this is a light Christmas cake the colour was quite pale in comparison to the recipe that I use myself, more like a German Pound cake.  The cake was slightly sweet for my tastes and so a small slice was more than enough.  If you have never made a Christmas cake before but would like to give it a try, or if you are very tight for time over the festive season I would definitely recommend the Odlums Christmas Cake Kit.  It is fast and convenient and the end result is a perfectly baked homemade cake full of Christmas flavour.  The Odlums Christmas Cake Kit is limited edition,  the RRP is €11.99 and it is available from Dunnes, Tesco, Superquinn and Supervalu.