45 current cake recipes

Old-fashioned Pennsylvania nut cookies with walnuts, raisins, and currants in a buttery cinnamon drop cookie dough. A heritage recipe with warm spice and chewy dried fruit in every bite.

Traditional wedding fruitcake with candied cherries, pineapple, dates, raisins, currants, citron, and nuts in a spiced batter. Slow-baked at low heat for a dense, rich loaf.

Rich boiled fruit cake with currants, raisins, and sultanas simmered in sugar water with mixed spice and ginger before baking. A dense, moist British classic.

Thin, crispy oatmeal lace cookies with brown sugar, heavy cream, melted butter, and brandy-soaked currants. Delicate, caramelized wafers that shatter with each bite.

Big-batch Christmas hermit cookies loaded with raisins, currants, chopped nuts, and orange zest, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. A chewy, old-fashioned holiday drop cookie that makes 10 dozen.

Nana Moon's traditional Christmas pudding: brandy-soaked dried fruit, suet and breadcrumbs steamed for hours into a dark, rich pudding, flamed with brandy and served with brandy butter.

Traditional English plum pudding, a steamed Christmas classic packed with raisins, currants, apples, walnuts, and beef suet. Spiced, dense, and deeply boozy-optional.

Made with sour milk and molasses, this moist, delicious bread just might make you become lucky!

Don't let the name fool you, because these tasty snacks are made with oats, walnuts and sweetened coconut.

Old-fashioned Pennsylvania steamed pudding with mashed carrots, suet, molasses, raisins, currants, and warm spices. Three hours of steaming yields a dense, spiced holiday treat.

Old-school dark fruitcake soaked overnight in brandy and orange liqueur with figs, apricots, currants, walnuts, and pecans. Makes four loaves; ages beautifully.

Maple-apple oatmeal cookies with real maple syrup, fresh apples, applesauce, currants, and a crunchy oat-brown sugar topping. Soft, cakey fall cookies baked low and slow.

Barbadians make Black Cake for weddings, birthdays and at Christimas time. Indeed, no Christmas holiday is felt to be complete without black Cake. People from many of the islands make a similar cake. This Black Cake derived from the British Plum Pudding which is a must on their Christmas menu.

Plum cake is the grand Victorian celebration fruitcake: pounds of raisins, currants, dates, citron, and almonds bound by spiced butter cake batter. Christmas, weddings, and christenings on a serious scale.

Easier to work with. The original recipe called for brandy or grape juice, but I found that if you substitute the orange juice concentrate, it has a nicer flavour.

Traditional fruitcake studded with dates, figs, candied citron, pecans, and brandy-soaked fruits becomes a family heirloom recipe worth making.