Christmas Fruit Cake

Fruitcakes were a running joke in the comic strips of my American youth. They were portrayed as the unwanted gift, the oddly imperishable foodstuff that unpopular relatives offered when they came to visit. Once received, it would go deep to the back of the cupboard where the strange, dense block would remain buried until the following year, when the recipient could gift it upon some new enemy

It looks like a ceiling fixture as I forgot to flip it before uploading. Blogger hasn't updated its app, so this process is taking a bit longer these days.

My family, being of Australian origin, took some offence at these portrayals of this sacred celebratory food. My grandmother was proud of her fruitcake, making it for special occasions such as birthdays and weddings, decorating it with skill I could never possess (largely because the piping bag is my nemesis, and also because life is too short to draw lace onto a cake.) No slice was wasted; in fact, she once baked a birthday cake for her daughter-in-law's mother, but only if my mother would promise that a large portion of the cake would be taken back to America for her own son to eat. This was not requested as a favour, but instead given as an instruction not to be questioned, so after the party, under the critical eye of her family my mother dutifully wrapped the remaining cake in foil and clingfilm, packing the parcel in her bags to travel back across the Pacific Ocean where the cake was scoffed down in a matter of seconds. 

Now I live in the UK, where Christmas Cake usually means fruitcake, and traditional wedding cakes are studded with currants. Times are changing; most families prefer a chocolate yule log to a Christmas pudding, and a sponge to a fruitcake for their matrimonial vows. At our own wedding some 12 years ago, I made two separate cakes: a fruit cake for the Baby Boomers and beyond, a lemon sponge for the younger ones. While everyone still seems to enjoy a mince pie at Christmas, fewer insist on a slice of fruitcake, so it was mostly out of a sense of nostalgia that I decided to tackle one this year. 

According to tradition, one must begin the process in November at the latest, soaking your fruit in booze for days, weeks, even months before mixing it into your eggy batter. That just doesn't happen in my house. I don't really get in the mood to even being prepping things until mid-December, and by then it seems like a lost hope to attempt a cake according to these stern rules from years gone by.

But then recently I was speaking to a fellow baker who revealed her secret - she never makes her cake in advance! She may soak the fruit for a while, but overnight has served fine on many an occasion, and her cakes always go down a treat with guests and family alike. Right, I thought, this I can do.

So she passed me the recipe and I looked at the recipe versus what I had in my cupboards. I should add that it was New Year's Eve and I wasn't in the mood for going to the shops unnecessarily. So I made a few modifications: 

To soak

200g prunes apricots chopped

300g currants

100g glace cherries, chopped

150g dried figs dates, chopped

175ml stout the better part of a bottle of rank mass produced ale that someone brought over as a joke a couple months ago

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For the cake

175g unsalted butter, softened

175g soft light brown sugar

4 large eggs

2 tbsp black treacle molasses

Zest of 1 orange

125g dark rye flour

50g plain flour  50g + 125g = 175g plain flour

2 tsp mixed spice pumpkin spice

1½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

75g blanched hazelnuts, finely chopped   Brazil nuts, chopped. Kind of. 

So yes, I changed about half of the ingredients. But the spirit of the recipe was still the same, surely?

Boozy fruit. I had to remove a dinosaur egg from this vessel before use. It's ok, the dinosaur has hatched.

After assembling the fruit and soaking it overnight, it was time to start the great mix-up. Butter is never "room temperature" at our place, as our flat is rarely warm enough to bring anything to a soft temperature. I could have played a dangerous dance with the microwave, but instead decided to attack the brown sugar and butter with the pastry blender, then the wooden spoon.

After than, in went 4 eggs. There are always lots of warnings about how to prevent your mixture curdling at this point, but I never find them even remotely successful. I just let it curdle, knowing it will be just fine, as Mary Berry looks at me with disappointment and disapproval

One of my favourite "hacks" is greasing a spoon before putting in a sticky syrup like molasses or treacle. You just pour in a spoonful of oil into the spoon, then pour it back into the oil, then use the spoon for your choice of tar-like substance. Look how it just plops out of the spoon into the batter! Very satisfying, I tell you.

Then went in some zest, some dry ingredients, mix-y mix-y, choppy nutsy.

Then, the finale: the boozy fruit.

Dear God, sweet Jesus that is a lot of fruit.

At this point you lovingly gather your family round, making sure each family member takes the spoon and gives one stir to the mixture before pouring it into the tin.

Well, you think of it, but then you realise the children are being awfully quiet and good with their electronic babysitters, so you just ignore that step and bash it all together yourself. The tin for this, unlike most of my other tins, is silver rather than black in colour so as to conduct less heat, and this cake is treated to a double lining in an attempt to prevent any scorching. Why? Because this baby goes in the oven for no less than three and a half hours at a low heat, that's why. This ain't no rush job. I literally climbed up a mountain and returned back while this was in the oven and had time to spare.

It was a small mountain.

Now, halfway through, I did take it out of the oven and cover the top to prevent burning, but it seems that the fan in my oven decided to be particularly vicious, and my protective foil was ripped off and tossed around the oven. Naturally I didn't discover this until the damage had been done.

It didn't look too bad at first, but then it continued to cook outside the oven and I decided further measures needed to be taken.

If you look carefully, you'll see a knife slicing the top off the cake on the right. The thing was, even the scorched bit didn't actually taste burnt, AND I got to sample the cake pre-decoration. A win-win. So yes, always a good idea to trim cakes.

I then carefully whipped up a batch of marzipan.

Trust me, I made it once myself and it was not worth it in the slightest.

Then it was a simple matter of heating apricot jam, eating the heated jam, then heating more apricot jam and spreading it on the cake to help the marzipan stick.

Then it was time to roll out marzipan and pretend I knew how to decorate a cake

Just doing the ironing.

It's a ghost!!

I then sort of tried trimming it and decorating it

And this was the end result. I don't see any point in fondant or royal icing - they taste of nothing but sugar, so in the words of Prue Leith they simply aren't worth the calories.

My children keep looking at it, confused. "Why is there dough on the outside?" "When are you going to bake it?" "What IS that?" 

Obviously another great success. 

Ruby Tandoh’s easy fig and ale Christmas cake (yes, I know)

This is a last-minute affair compared with many Christmas cakes – but you should still soak the fruit overnight or at least for a few hours. It is still moist, dark and rich, and made in a fraction of the time it might usually take.

To soak

200g prunes, chopped

300g currants

100g glace cherries, chopped

150g dried figs, chopped

175ml stout

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For the cake

175g unsalted butter, softened

175g soft light brown sugar

4 large eggs

2 tbsp black treacle

Zest of 1 orange

125g dark rye flour

50g plain flour

2 tsp mixed spice

1½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

75g blanched hazelnuts, finely chopped

1 The day before you make the cake, combine the fruit in a bowl and douse with the stout (a good porter or, at a push, brown ale will suffice, but the mellow, chocolatey depth of stout is best). Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave overnight – or at least for a good few hours – until the fruit has absorbed most of the liquid.

2 The next day, when you’re ready to make the cake batter, preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2, line a deep, 20cm round cake tin with baking parchment and wrap the outside in a couple of layers of foil to prevent the cake’s edge from drying during the long baking time.

3 Cream the butter and sugar together until completely smooth then, one by one, add the eggs. The mixture is likely to curdle a little at this point, but don’t panic: just add 2 tbsp or so of plain flour to smooth the mix. Stir in the treacle and zest. In a separate bowl, combine the flours, mixed spice, baking powder and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until roughly combined.

4 Add the hazelnuts to the batter along with the soaked fruit mixture (including any stout left unabsorbed). Combine thoroughly. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and place on the middle shelf of the oven. Bake for 3½-4 hours, or until a small knife inserted into the centre of the cake emerges clean. If the top of the cake begins to darken too deeply during the baking time, just cover with foil.

5 Once baked, let the cake cool completely in its tin before decorating. It could take overnight to cool, but it’s crucial to wait until it’s stone cold before slicing. It will continue to firm, set and mellow as it approaches room temperature. Decorate it (or not) however you please.

Mince Pies

This morning, our family were doing their best to appear holy by attending our local Catholic mass. The children wriggled, the hymns were quietly sung off key, and as we finished, the priest issued welcomes to all the prodigal children come home, instructing them to come to teas, coffees, and cake after the service so that he could chat to them. This was met by whispering and huge gesticulations.
"Oh," he said as his face fell. "No coffee and cake?" He paused, looking around, his eyes pleading to be told otherwise. "Well, that's ruined my Sunday." He blessed us and we shuffled out into the cold December air.

It does seem odd, with Christmas being such a food centred holiday, that such an opportunity to issue baked goods to the masses was missed. The organisers assumed that the congregation would want to rush off to purchase pigs in blankets, to wrap their last few presents, rather than enjoy a few moments with each other on this holy weekend. The out of town relatives gathered outside for a brief moment, murmuring their disappointment, then vanished around the corner into their respective vehicles, a few declaring they would try the nearby coffee shop that had opened recently.

As we watched them disappear, we sighed. We are having a quiet Christmas this year, so I am not rushing about. There is no bedding to organise, no extra guests to cater for, no car to pack up. Just the five of us trying not to kill each other.

I say no extra guests to cater for, but there is one exception: Father Christmas. As a child, I usually left out a cookie or two for Santa, with milk to wash it down, plus a carrot and perhaps some nuts and raisins for Rudolph. Here, it appears that Father Christmas has somewhat more sophisticated tastes, preferring mince pies to cookies, and whisky or sherry to milk. Rudolph likes carrots the world round, it seems.

The end result

In the past, I have always been content to buy the pies, having never tasted a bad supermarket one. I mean, Mr Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes. But on Friday, when I asked the kids what they wanted to do THAT WAS FREE this Christmas holiday, Christopher piped up that we wanted to do some cooking. Plus, having been in on a mums Christmas conversation recently with a couple mothers who do ALL the things, I had a few tips on what to do to make mince pies tasty, namely scooping mincemeat from a shop-bought jar and adding a couple extra ingredients to pimp up your pies. So I figured, why not? This year, we would make Santa's snack from scratch. Sort of.

Mincemeat taken to the next level

So Lidl provided the jar of Brandy-laced mincemeat, into which I grated a wrinkly apple and to which I added the last few pistachios out of a packet, the zest of a clementine, the zest of half a lemon, and a handful of tired looking sultanas. "That looks disgusting!" my daughter exclaimed. I can't say I disagreed with her. I mean, look at it.

I made the pastry, and rolled it out, trying to keep the kids' fingers off of it. You know how occasionally, just occasionally, you go through your cupboards to clear out things you don't really need? Well, recently I did just that and looked critically at a range of circle cutters that I hadn't taken out in at least a year. I kept them in the end, and now I can fully justify retaining them in my kitchen cupboards of doom, because they were officially used for something culinary in 2017! An official stay of execution for these beasts.

Ok, so I should have used the crinkly side for both the bottom and the tops of the pies. And not let these two anywhere near:

Catherine loves the camera on her phone that doesn't work as a phone in this country.

Their presence is why I don't have any photos of the filling of the pies. No, they couldn't have taken photos, be quiet.

The jar stretched to 12 pies, the pastry covered them all quite happily with some scraps left in the fridge to be found months from now after they have been slowly edged to the back by other, more recently used items.

Into a hot oven they went for 17 minutes, and when they came out they were easily extracted from the muffin pan to cool on a rack where Robert stared at them suspiciously.

This was only the second time I'd ever made mince pies, and the last time I used puff pastry. I prefer shortcrust pastry fo sho. 

It quickly became apparent that none of my children wanted to actually eat any mince pies. Christopher had made mixed berry muffins this morning (under my supervision from across the room) which they all preferred to re-attack rather than sample any of my pastries.

Well, someone had to try them, and Michael was asleep.

None of the china matches, as I am really good at breaking stuff. Expert level.

It was most satisfactory.

So if you need a pie to leave out for Father Christmas, drop me a line. I've got 10 to spare. 

Hope you all have a Happy Christmas!

Recipe:

1 recipe shortcrust pastry (I use Joy of Cooking's recipe, but you could just buy some)
1 jar mincemeat
1 small apple
zest from 1 clementine
zest from 1 lemon
handful of shelled pistachios
handful of sultanas or raisins
Any other exciting ingredients that work in a mince pie.
Caster sugar

Preheat oven to 220C Roll out pastry, cut with circle cutter big enough to fill the middle and sides of a muffin tin. Fill a dozen wells, then pop the muffin tray in the fridge while you work on the mincemeat. Empty the jar into a bowl, then peel and grate the apple into it, and add the rest of the ingredients, giving it a quick stir. Take the muffin tray out, then fill them with even amounts of the mixture. Cut out circles, stars, whatever for tops of the pies. Listen to your daughter complain that they aren't pretty enough and don't have a fancy design. Mutter to yourself as you sprinkle sugar over the pies, then put in the oven for 15-20 minutes, turning halfway through. Remove from tin and put onto cooling rack, then make some tea and eat one. Keep one aside for Santa, and dispose of the rest however you see fit.

Gingerbread Nativity

So I think I'm a convert now to gingerbread.

I used to always use the Joy of Cooking recipe at Christmas for all my cookie cutters, and while it keeps its shape and is ok, it just didn't have the kick of ginger snaps or really much of anything going for it. I voiced this opinion and was told by a super secret person that they had a super secret recipe that I should try before giving up on gingerbread.

That recipe sat in my inbox until this week. To be fair, I got it in January, and I really don't get a hankering for gingerbread until at least Hallowe'en (I have spooky cookie cutters) or usually Christmas season. So I pulled it out, stocked up on molasses and gave it a whirl.

Naturally, it started, as all good recipes do, with lots of butter and sugar.

I wasn't in the mood for hand creaming this, so out came the electric beaters.

I decided this was blended enough for me.

Then in went an egg. It was on the last day of its life according to the box, but I wasn't too concerned.

After another egg was added in the mixture looked a bit curdled, but not so much as to worry me.

In went sticky, sweet, blackstrap molasses. High in iron, doncha know. That's why you can find it in health stores here, but will struggle to find it in supermarkets and most food stores. I also added in "sour" milk. I was supposed to add just a half cup, but I put in a whole cup. At this point I had not realised this. Oh, and some orange zest went in because I've always put it in gingerbread before and it felt strange not to.

Only when it looked like this did I figure it out. Oops. Time to improvise.

I asked myself, what would Robert do. He answered by licking the beaters of sugar and butter. Hmph. And yes, we do have a classy advent candle holder there in the background. It's proper fancy.

So I just decided to put an extra cup of flour extra into the flour, spice and leavening mixture and give it a whirl.

I started to panic a little as it was a very, very sticky dough compared to other rolled cookie doughs I've encountered. But when I looked back at the recipe, it said that even if you actually follow the directions and measure the ingredients correctly it is a fairly sticky dough.

So I said a small prayer and put 3 blobs between sheets of greaseproof paper.

I flattened them down a bit and placed them in the fridge overnight. I hadn't meant for it to be overnight, but life happened.

This morning I took it out and it looked like this. Not a perfect mixture, but if you are just baking for family and friends, who really cares?

A sprinkling of sugar went on before cutting out the cookies. Sparkles!!!

They were admittedly quite difficult to extract from their cutters, but they made it to the cookie sheet looking like this. It's a nativity set I got last year for Christmas - word of my baking hobby has spread.

A mere 8 minutes later I took them out and they had puffed to extreme proportions. I guess Joseph, Mary, and the kings just had too much salt in their diets. Hmmm. Normally I wouldn't mind too much but as the whole point here was they they were supposed to look like shapes that all related to each other I decided to do something extreme.

I cut them AGAIN while they were still warm. I saw them do this on the Great British Bake off and it seemed to work. The good things were I got to have the shapes I wanted as the end result and I got to taste the trimmings. The bad things were that all the cookies lost their lovely crunchy/chewy biting edge and I will now have them instead as a moment on my lips lifetime on my hips.

But I did it anyway. My son helped with the cut-offs.

Because they were amazing. Seriously the best gingerbread cookies I've had. I left the stable as it was, and ended up with this to greet the kids when they came home from school today.

So, without further ado, the super secret recipe...shhhhhhh....

Gingerbread Cookies!
1 Cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened, of course
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup sour milk (or add 1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar to the milk)
4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
5 cups flour

Blend the butter and sugar, add the eggs one at a time. Then add other liquid ingredients and mix.

Sift together the flour, rising agents & spices and add gradually to the batter.

This is the only cookie dough that I find really needs a stand mixer or a mixer of some sort, because it gets very stiff with all the flour.

Even for being very stiff, it's still quite a sticky dough right after the mixing. Wrap the dough in wax paper or plastic wrap, in sort of flattened discs, usually 2 or 3, and refrigerate it. The flattened discs are in preparation for rolling out the dough after it's chilled. I usually make the dough the night before and let it chill overnight, but I'm sure an hour or two would do it. The dough also keeps very well, if you make it and only roll out part.

Roll out the dough like you would any other cookie dough or pie crust, but fairly thick - about a 1/4 inch. We always sprinkle the dough with regular white sugar, and go at it with your cookie cutters.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. The cookies should puff up quite a bit and should still be a little bendy when you take them out of the oven. It also helps to store them in an airtight container with a piece of bread, so they stay soft.