"This is a beautiful Christmas Cherry Cake with cherries and raisins added for those of you who do not want to bother making fruitcakes, it freezes well."

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white sugar 
• 1 cup butter 
• 2 eggs 
• 1/2 cup orange juice 
• 2 cups all-purpose flour 
• 1 teaspoon baking powder 
• 12 ounces golden raisins 
• 8 ounces halved glace cherries

How to Cook:

• Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease and line a loaf pan with 9 x 5 inches of parchment paper.
  
• Beat butter or margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add beaten eggs and orange juice and mix well.
  
• Sift flour and baking powder. Reserve 1/3 cup flour mixture and mix with raisins and cherries (this will prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake). Add the flour mixture to beat and mix. Add the raisins and floured cherries to the dough and mix until combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
  
• Bake at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for 2-1 / 2 hours. Do not serve until several days before. Wrap the cake in plastic wrap or aluminum foil and store in a sealed box.

Recipe by: Carol

Ingredients

• 200g fondant icing sugar
• 6 white marshmallows
• 6 large cookies
• 24 mini chocolate beans
• 6 pretzel sticks
• tube black writing icing

Method

• Put the icing sugar into a bowl and add cold water a teaspoon at a time until the mixture is runny but thick enough to coat a spoon.
• Ask an adult to snip the marshmallows in half using wetted scissors.
• Spoon a little icing onto each cookie and attach half a marshmallow. Using a little icing, stick the other half on top at an angle. Drizzle a little more icing onto the cookie to make melting snow.
• Break the pretzel sticks in half and place on the cookie for arms. Stick orange chocolate beans on for the noses. Stick three chocolate beans on each cookie to represent buttons.
• Using the writing icing, pipe small blobs for the eyes and mouth. Leave to set.

Recipe from bbcgoodfood.com