Christmas Cake: Round 2

My own Christmas cake recipe which I did last year but with some improvements which should make it better than ever.

Ingredients:

500g Raisins
400g Sultanas
125g Cranberries
110g Glace Cherries
120g Mixed Peel
120ml Limencello (you can use sherry/brandy if you prefer)
225g Butter
195g Brown Sugar
Zest of 2 oranges
4 eggs
2 tbsps Orange Marmalade
295g Plain Flour
55g Ground Almonds
1 tsp Almond Essence
1 tsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Mixed Spice
1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Method:
1. Put all your dried fruit into a bowl, pour the limoncello over the top, cover and leave to soak for about an hour.

2. Preheat your oven to 150 degrees / gas mark

3. And line your tin. Now this is more complicated than it sounds... Wrap brown paper around the outside of the tin so it stands above the top of the tin by 10cm, secure with string wrapped around it. Then line the tin as normal with butter and baking paper.

4.Cream the butter and sugar together.

5.Beat in the orange zest

6. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one, and then the marmalade.

7. Mix the dry ingredients together and add to the creamed mixture alternately with the dried fruit until all is combined.

8. Add the almond essence and mix thoroughly.

9. Put the cake mix into the cake tin and bake for about 3/3.5 hours or until a skewer comes out clean. If your oven is quite savage, like mine, I would advise making a hat for your cake out of tin foil to prevent the top from burning.

10. When the cake is finished wrap in foil and put into a tin immediately to cool so that the steam is trapped and keeps the cake moist on the top.

11. Then re-wrap in tinfoil, (don't cover the top this time) and return to the tin.

12. You will need to "feed" your cake with a liqueur of choice regularly in order to preserve the cake and add extra flavor.

And with that, good luck! 

Rocky Road Bites

A simple delicious thing which you can make from pretty much anything in your cupboards.

220g Chocolate: 120g Milk and 100g dark but this can be edited.
75g Marshmallows
75g Chopped Mixed Nuts

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Once completely melted, stir in the other ingredients - they don't have to be the ones I have mentioned. You could use digestives, sultanas, popcorn if you really want etc. They should be covered in chocolate. 

You can pour the mixture in to a greased tray and cut in to squares but I have been inspired by Nigella and I prefer them in small dollops. They are easy bite size chunks without slicing.

Leave to cool, if you put them in a fridge the shine of the chocolate will fade, but obviously it is often the only solution.

Christmas Countdown: Iman's Cake

On Monday it was my friend Iman's birthday, so I made her favorite cake of mine...

LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

Ingredients:
125 g unsalted butter
175 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
175 g self raising flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons milk
For the syrup
juice of 1 ½ lemons
100 g caster sugar

23x13x7cm loaf tin lined (you can get slot in pull out ones)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan/ gas mark 4
2. Cream together the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat the eggs and lemon zest in to the butter and sugar.
4. Slowly fold in the flour and then add the lemon juice and milk. 
5. Once all combined, pour into the prepared loaf tin and back for 45 mins or until risen and golden. To make sure it is cooked, insert a cake tester or skewer and make sure it comes out clean.
6. The prepare the syrup, put sugar and lemon juice in to a pan. Heat until the sugar dissolves, make sure that it doesn't burn.
7. Take the cake out of the oven and stab it in order to create holes in the top of the cake.
8. Pour the syrup over the top and let is absorb it while the cake cools.
9. Remove the cake from the tin once cooled, not before or it will all fall apart due to the liquid.

insert boring photo of a loaf cake..

I promise it tastes lovely and if you want to make it prettier you can make a glaze by mixing icing sugar and lemon juice and drizzling it over the top. 

Christmas Countdown: Christmas Tree Meringues

Yes, I have got rid of the day countdown as I have not exactly been consistent...

I love meringues, they are basically sugar, what is not to love?
But they are not very festive... so here is a simple way to make them so. TURN THEM INTO CHRISTMAS TREES!

Easy.

If you follow the meringue recipe which I have shown earlier on this year =  http://girlbaking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/perfect-meringue-recipe.html

BUT, add green or blue and yellow food colouring once the sugar has been added.

Then with a slightly spiky, or zig-zagged nozzle, pipe the meringue. I find that the easiest way to fill a piping bag is to rest the nozzle in the bottom or a tall glass, then roll the bag around the rim so that it stays open. You then just drop the mixture in.

Pull away from the greaseproof paper in short bursts to give a slightly layered affect.

Once they have all been piped, this may take a while to perfect a tree shape (some of mine were a bit lopsided), add a small sugared star on to the top of the tree to give it that christmas tree.

DO NOT USE SILVER BALLS. they melt and burn holes in the meringue, but other decorations should be fine... edible glitter maybe?

Bake for about 35 mins and then remove.

For the final touch, take some "Rolo"'s or other similar chocolates. Melt them at the ends. Then stick them to the base of your meringue to create a trunk-like effect.

Then, ta-da! your meringues made festive and perfect little bites of Christmas.

Pre baking... they look white but I promise that they were green!

The finishing touches... they do stay green the lighting is lying to you...

Christmas Countdown: Day 2: Lemon Macaroons

No, not the most festive of treats, but treats none the less.

Anyway, for those who don't know a macaroon is basically a meringue with ground almonds and extra sugar mixed in to it, it is then colored, pastel shades normally, and then piped in to small discs. The discs are then stuck together using a butter cream or other paste.

I chose lemon flavor as that is what John Whaite makes. However, from what I can gather, the flavor comes mainly from the filling, not the macaroon itself, meaning that I made a yellow macaroon with lemon butter cream. Simple.

I have never attempted macaroons before, and to be quiet honest it was very hard and I nearly cried while trying to put the mixture in to the piping bag. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?!

I had, also, never eaten a macaroon before in my life, ever. So I don't actually know what it is supposed to taste like. But on a general cake scale they were yummy.

Mine were a little irregular after the whole piping disaster, which concluded with my having cake mix up my arm and on the verge of tears, but they were fine in other ways, and it's what is on the inside that counts!

Well that's what I tell myself anyway...

Christmas Countdown: Day 1: Gingerbread

HAPPY ADVENT!

In the run up to Christmas, I am going to post every single day.

So to start it all off... Gingerbread...

Usually when one thinks of gingerbread, one thinks of a gingerbread man and family altogether happily in their little gingerbread house. Or if you are of my generation (but mainly if you are younger), Gingi from Shrek...

(property of es.shrek.wikia.com)

Anyway this is not gingerbread like the above, this is proper gingerbread, as in bread-like consistency gingerbread, the hard core stuff.

The main difficulties with making gingerbread is that it contains black treacle, which is a pain to get hold of and rarely have in your cupboards so you have to go and buy it specially. However as luck would have it, there was a tin of it already in my kitchen cupboard....weird...

Gingerbread is made by heating butter (150g) with muscovado sugar (110g), ginger from a jar, sliced, (2tsp), cinnamon (1tsp) and a hell of a lot of golden syrup (200g) and black treacle (200g) together over a low heat so that they melt.

You could also add a bit syrup from the ginger jar to make it more sticky and gingery.

*QUICK TIP: Pour a bit of oil over the spoon which you are going to use to measure out the treacle as then it doesn't stick, it just slides off!*

Put 1tsp of bicarb in 2tbsp of hot water until it has dissolved and is cool. Then mix with 2 eggs and 230ml of milk. Add this to the mixture which has just cooled. 

Beat the liquid ingredients in to 300g of plain flour, sifted. Mix this thoroughly until there are no pockets of flour as I have found in the past that the flour tends to clump together, which isn't so nice when eating... 

Pour in to a greased rectangular tin of about 30x20x15. And bake for 45 mins.

Then I find that if you pour a lemon glace icing over the top using water, lemon juice and icing sugar. Left to set, the lemon cuts through the musky ginger flavor making a nice contrast, and decreasing the heaviness.

Perfect to get you in to the festive spirit.