Preheat the oven to 140°C/gas mark 2. Grease and line a 20cm round tin.
Pour the Mellow Yellow oil, milk and sugar into a bowl. Beat in the eggs and add the amaretto or brandy and stir in thoroughly. Sieve in the flour, spices and the ground almonds. mix thoroughly to form a batter, add the dried fruit and give a final stir to mix evenly.
Pour the mixture into the tin. Bake for between 3 and 3½ hours in the pre-heated oven, or until cooked through (it will be firm to press or a place a skewer in the centre and if it’s clean when pulled out the cake is cooked). After an hour of baking, sit some greaseproof paper on top of the cake to protect it from over browning.
Cool completely in the tin on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container until you are ready to decorate the cake (at this stage you can pour on a little additional brandy or amaretto over a few days if you like an extra boozy cake!). To ice the cake, apply the marzipan layer firstly, warm some apricot jam and brush it over the cake. Roll out the marzipan to the required size and the thin jam coating should help the marzipan to stick. moisten the marzipan layer with a little water and then ready to roll icing can be applied directly on top of the marzipan layer. For a simple decoration idea form a band around the cake by cutting a strip of wrapping paper to size and cutting narrow slits along the top edge. Secure with tape and then a ribbon and top the cake with mixed nuts, cranberries, dried fruit and marzipan stars.