Fruited Chocolate Christmas Cake

This is a real fruit cake but it is also a real chocolate cake. It is densely packed with dried pineapple, prunes, peel, raisins, crystallized ginger and walnuts: a mixture which combines irresistibly with the rich chocolate flavour. I make the cake two or three weeks before Christmas and then glaze if with apricot jam and ice it with lemony royal icing only two or three days before eating it, so that the icing is still slightly soft.