This morning, as other family members hunkered over their Weetabix, I turned a large bowl of brandy soaked fruit into a Christmas cake and put it warily into the oven. The only other time I have tried this recipe, as dictated by the diva of domesticity herself, I found myself stuffing the sprawled contents of a supposedly cooked and cooled cake back into the tin and introducing the concept of a twice baked fruit-cake to the family. That year it resembled a ready-made alpine scene and Father Christmas slid rather gracefully into a ravine that no amount of icing would fill!