Christmas & New Year are getting closer and here at Thunders Bakery looking forward to making every moment festive and joyful for our valued customers. Our traditional Irish family bakery making quality goods over 50 years, using recipes handed down through generations.  As one of Dublin leading bakery, we only using top quality ingredients and our unique baking methods. Browse our full range of Christmas traditional collection at Thunderbakery.ie, with tempting options for every taste and budget. Of course, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without a traditional, classic, Christmas Pudding on the table. Here at Thunders Bakery, our irresistible traditional pudding is made well advance using the finest ingredients so you can enjoy the perfect combination of Christmas flavours.

Christmas Pudding

Thunders Christmas Pudding is our traditional recipe once again this year. We are using our very own method with dried fruit, nuts and luxurious winter spices, enriched with the best Irish whiskey & Guinness and matured to develop a rich flavour. This “Irish delight” is available in two sizes, the smaller size is 2 lb for €16.80 and the bigger size, 3 lb for €21. The Christmas puddings are gift wrapped and available NOW in stores and online.

How to serve?

It’s perfect served hot and cold. To heat, we recommend to steam your pudding in its bowl and serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Cut as many slices you need, cover in foil. Heat in the oven on a gentle heat. Cut and plate individual slices in the microwave. Be careful of this method as the sugar in the fruit heat to a high temperature and may burn your mouth.

Christmas Log & Mince Pies

Our Christmas rich fruit log is a great gift for the traditional Christmas cake lovers in your life.

Great for slicing too, Thunders home bakery log is 1.5 kg, serves 10 generous slices and starts at €30. This delicious log will delight your family this Christmas, go on, give it a go!

Mince Pies

Mince pies this Christmas 2019 come in shortcrust or puff pastry. Our unique blend of mincemeat is matured for 12 months and used in both types of mince pie. Our shortcrust mince pie shell is hand pressed and hand made short crust pastry filled with our mincemeat and then topped with more of our short crust pastry. We bake to a golden brown for a perfect crusty shell complimented by our moist mincemeat inside for the perfect warming homemade feeling. Keep the traditions alive with Thunders classic mince pies. Available from November 22^nd we’ll have plenty of stock until the new year. You can stock up ahead of time as Mince pies are perfect for freezing for up to 3 months. If unexpected guests arrive not to worry just take them out of the freezer, pop them into the microwave or oven and they’ll be ready in no time!

Christmas Cake

Thunders home bakery is here to help you celebrate this festive season with a selection of Rich fruit Christmas cakes using our traditional recipe and finished in different shapes and sizes. Our 6” round classic Guinness and whiskey-soaked Christmas fruit cake is perfect for celebrating this festive season.  This little drop of heaven exquisitely hand iced with royal icing and finished in a rustic Christmas design is topped with melt in your mouth Christmas ginger cookies.  This cake is 3 kg and should serve 30-40 people and will last about 3 months if you store it in an air-tight container.  We recommend using a sharp non serrated knife for cutting.

The centerpiece of your celebration will arrive in store in December with prices starting at €35. While most of us prefer a smaller cake Thunders home bakery has a slightly bigger 8” square as always.  The same traditional rich fruit cake inside but this one is finished with white cova paste and available in a Christmas forest and reindeer sky design.  This cake is 5 kg and should serve 50 portions and will also last about 3 months if you store it in an airtight container. This cake will be available to pre-order only from December 1^st with prices starting at €60.

How to serve?

If you were gifted with a few fruitcakes this holiday season, don’t automatically hide it to the back of the shelf. Here are some suggestions for how you might eat and enjoy your fruitcake. Our traditional fruitcake is usually served cold with a cup of tea and you just have to take a moment here and embrace all the flavours in each bite – the dried fruit, the soft nuts combination with some quality booze. Sound good, isn’t it?

The fruitcake is equally delicious warm and if the fruitcake well made, you can cut a thin slice and try to toast it until the edges are crispy and the fruit gets caramelized. Use a bit of butter on top or matched with some crumbly cheese, like Cheshire, Lancashire or blue cheese.  The cheese balances the rich dense flavour of fruitcake and makes it an excellent treat with a cuppa tea at the afternoon.

You can chill the fruitcake and cut into about one-inch cubes with a sharp knife and serve it on a platter with some sharp cheddar cheese or Brie or Camembert. Have a glass of red wine or champagne with it!

Fruitcake also gets served with ice cream. We truly enjoy how the chewy bites paired with the melting ice cream. The ice cream also helps smooth the intense flavour of the fruitcake. Highly recommended to try out-Yum!

Fruitcake is typically thought of as the perfect dessert to complete a festive holiday meal. But what about fruitcake for breakfast?  Dip a slice of fruitcake in eggnog and leave on a hot griddle. Allow to brown and turn over and cook the opposite side until it’s nice and gold. Serve immediately with some freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee or tea.

How we make our traditional Rich Fruit cake?

Every year Thunders home bakery starts to make our traditional Christmas cakes a few weeks before Christmas to help the flavours mature. We believe a great fruit cake involves plenty of alcohol for lots of boozy goodness and it helps the cake last longer. To ensure a deliciously moist cake we start with the fruit which soaked in alcohol for a long time. There is always a debate as to how long you should soak your fruit!!! Honestly, we think the longer the better to help develop a smooth full flavour to make our cakes irresistible. If you wanted a recommend time, we say a minimum of 12-24 hours. Once baked we feed our cakes a little more whiskey before we decorate for extra moistness. We won’t judge your alcohol preference but brandy and rum are a perfect fit for Christmas baking too.

Ideally you want to give the cake at least 3-4 weeks altogether but if you’re very organised than you can make this cake months in advance, then it will taste even more moist and delicious plus giving your home a fantastic festive scent. We would say November could be a good time to start to making your Christmas Cake when we’re just starting to feel a little Christmassy. But don’t worry about storing your cake you can keep them in closed container in a cool, dry place it will keep for several months or even longer! How longer?

How long it last?

What if I say in  2017 a 100 years old fruitcake was discovered in Antarctica, the cake left by explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910 expedition and remains “almost edible,” according to the researchers who found it.

As you can see, fruit cake it’s not just a simple cake with some fruit inside. Way more complex than that. At our bakery the fruit and nuts have been dried or soaked in sugar and because of the great amount of sugar, our fruitcake will stay fresh for a long time, that means it will last for Christmas season and probably you can go with it into 2020. Unlike any other food, it’s full of already-preserved ingredients, but kind of a natural way like candied nuts, dry fruit and alcohol which comes handy if you think of the time when there were no refrigerators.

Notice Period

It is advisable to place your order as soon as you know the date you require, especially during holiday season. However, the traditional 6’ Rich Fruit Christmas Cake can be available in store until stock last. Meanwhile the 8’ square Christmas cakes pre-order only! We recommend to our customers collecting or delivering their cake a day before Christmas Eve, on the 23^rd of December.