Christmas Cake

I went mad yesterday. Seriously mad. No really, like, I-want-to-thank-my-family-friends-and-boyfriend-for-supporting-me-through-this-hard-time, mad. 

It was my day off and I’d decided to make a couple of Christmas cakes. Not too wacky- this is the right kind of time to make them, which is why this recipe is coming to you now.

But, upon waking, my train of thought went something like this:

“So I’ll do the first part of these cakes when I’m up/dressed and then finish it later.”

“Could be quite time consuming, I should find a podcast to listen to.”

“Or music! Could put on one of my iTunes playlists as I make these Christmas cakes….”

“Christmas…”

“C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s….”

“Music...and Christmas…”

“Christmas...music….”

“CHRISTMAS MUSIC! MUST BUY AN 84-TRACK CHRISTMAS ALBUM FROM AMAZON IMMEDIATELY AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH”

At 11am, on Monday the 29th of October, my mother walked into the kitchen to the sight of me dancing to Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine whilst chopping dried fruit. 

And then Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

And then In Dulci Jubilo.

I also made mince pies and scoffed a lot of them. I have no regrets. 

ANYWAY.

You should make a Christmas cake this year. They are fairly time consuming, but 90% of the time it takes to make them, you can spend asleep. Or being productive if you like. But I choose sleep.

The idea with Christmas cakes is that you make them now-ish, you wrap them up, feed them booze (I’ll get to that later), ice them just before Christmas and then eat them! It is SO WORTH making them yourself. You can decorate them how you like, you can alter the ingredients to your own preferences and you get the self-satisfaction of presenting it at Christmas as this crazy-impressive thing that actually isn’t that impressive. 

I'm going to break this recipe into 3 parts. Parts 1& 2 will be in this post, and part 3 will be in a month or two's time when I've iced the things.

Oh, p.s. if the ingredients look like a larger amount than what's in the recipe, that's because I doubled it to make two cakes.

PART ONE: The Fruity Bit - do this bit the night before you want to make the cake.

Ingredients:

- 450g (1lb) currants

- 175g (6oz) sultanas

- 175g (6oz) raisins

- 50g (2 oz) glace cherries, rinsed, dried and finely chopped

- 50g (2oz) mixed candied peel, finely chopped

- 3 tablespoons brandy

- Chop and weigh out the dried fruit and mixed peel into a mixing bowl. You can alter the fruit you use if you like, just keep the weights the same. For example, I had nowhere near enough currants. So instead of going to the shop like a normal person, I made up the weight with leftover currants and raisins, as well as dried prunes and dried apricots. It's fine.

 - Thoroughly mix in the three tablespoons of brandy.

- Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to soak for 12 hours.

PART TWO: The Cakey Bit - do this a month or two before you want to eat the thing.

Ingredients:

- 225g (8oz) plain flour

- half teaspoon of salt

- quarter teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg

- half teaspoon of mixed spice

- 225g (8oz) unsalted butter, softened

- 225g (8oz) soft brown sugar

- 4 eggs

- 50g (2oz) almonds, chopped (the skins can be left on)

- 1 dessertspoon of black treacle

- grated zest of 1 lemon

- grated zest of 1 orange

- Preheat the oven to 140C. Oh, and you'll need about 5 hours spare...

- Whisk together the butter and sugar in the largest bowl you have until it's light and fluffy.

- Whisk the eggs together in a separate bowl and add them to the butter and sugar a spoonful at a time. Whisk the mixture thoroughly after each spoonful until all the beaten egg is incorporated. Don't worry if your mixture looks a bit weird at this stage. It might split but adding the flour might fix this. This may or may not be the reason that there's no photo of this stage...moving on.

- Sift the flour, salt and spices into the butter-sugar-egg mixture and fold them in with a metal spoon. Try and keep as much air in the mixture as possible.

- Now fold in the boozy fruit, lemon and orange zests, chopped almonds and treacle until fully incorporated. 

- Take an 8 inch round cake tin (or a 7 inch square one) and line it with greaseproof paper. Spoon the cake mixture into the tin and spread it out evenly with the back of the spoon. Get a load of brown paper and wrap it around the cake tin, fastening it with string. Also, cover the cake mixture with a double layer of greaseproof paper with a 50p size hole in the centre. All of this helps to protect your cake from burning in the oven.

- Bake the cake on the lowest shelf of the oven for 4 and a half/4 and three quarter hours. It can sometimes take about half an hour more than this. Don't open the oven until after 4 hours. To test if it's done, gently press the top of the cake. If it springs back, it should be done.

- Cool for 30 minutes in the tin before transferring it to a wire rack. 

- This cake can be fed! To do this, used a skewer/toothpick/fork to make a few holes in the top and spoon brandy into the holes. Do this once it has cooled and then every now and again until when you want to ice it. Wrap the cake in greaseproof paper and then again in tin foil.

- Sit back, relax, and await my instructions on icing your magnificent creation. You bring the brandy, I'll bring the soundtrack. 

Rainbow Cupcakes

Something a little different this week, kittens. I made some rainbow cupcakes for a friend's birthday by using a very very very basic vanilla cupcake recipe, before jazzing them up with some food dye. If you need a recipe, just Google 'vanilla cupcakes' or look in the nearest decent baking book you own. 

Here are the photos from my baking session, be prepared to do a LOT of washing up afterwards....

Hot Cross Buns

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but if you go into any shops in the UK, it's Christmas. It's the start of October - we haven't yet had Halloween - but Christmas stuff is EVERYWHERE.

So I'm skipping past that and now it's Easter and I made you Hot Cross Buns. Sorry I'm not sorry.

Ingredients:

For the buns:
- 500g strong white bread flour (and some for dusting)
- 10g salt
- 75g caster sugar
- 10g instant yeast
- 40g butter, softened
- 2 medium eggs, beaten
- 120ml warm milk (semi-skimmed or full fat)
- 120ml cool water
- 150g sultanas
- 80g chopped mixed peel
- Finely grated zest of 2 oranges
- 1 eating apple, peeled, cored and diced
- 1tsp ground cinnamon

For the crosses:
- 75g plain flour
- 75ml water

For the glaze:
- 75g lemon and lime marmalade (normal marmalade would be great too, as would apricot jam...just use what you have to hand.


- Tip the flour into the bowl; add the yeast to one side and the salt and sugar to the other.

- Add the butter, eggs, warm milk and half of the water and start to mix together with your fingers.

 - Continue to add the water until mixture forms a rough dough and can be used to clean flour from the edges of the bowl. You might now have to add all of the flour, go slowly.
- Once the dough comes together, tip it onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for 5-10 minutes. The dough will change from a rough texture to a smooth, soft one.
- When your dough feels smooth and silky, put it back into the bowl and cover with cling film.

- Leave the dough to rise in as warm as place as you can find until it has doubled in size. An hour should be enough but you can leave it for longer if you like.

- Zest your oranges, peel and chop your apple. Add to a bowl with weighed-out sultanas, mixed peel and cinnamon.

- Tip the risen dough onto a lightly floured surface and flatten it as much as possible.

- Scatter the zest, apple, sultanas, mixed peel and cinnamon over the dough.

- Knead them into the dough until evenly incorporated. Again, go slowly because this can be quite messy.

- Place back into the bowl and cover with clingfilm. Again, leave it to rise for another hour. Mine went slightly nuts...

- After an hour, fold the dough inwards repeatedly until all the air is knocked out. Divide into 12 pieces and roll them into balls. 

- Place them fairly close together across 2 baking trays lined with baking parchment.

- Put each tray into a clean plastic bag and leave to rest in a warm place for another hour. After half an hour, preheat the oven to 220C.

- For the crosses, mix the plain flour and water into a paste and use it to pipe crosses onto each bun.

- Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

- Gently warm the jam or marmalade with a splash of water. Sieve it and brush it on to the buns to glaze.

- Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Hot cross buns just want to be loved. Their popularity shoots through the roof at Easter but for the rest of the year? Well, you have to search in only the largest supermarkets to find them. They're neglected. Help them. Make them yourself and see that a good hot cross bun, fresh from the oven, is perfect with a cup of tea in this horrible October weather. A hot cross bun is for life, not just for Easter.

Fudge, Apple & Pecan Muffins

Look! I'm here! Writing a recipe post within a respectable space of time since my cop-out post last week! How can this be?! Maybe I've taken time out of my busy working life in order to write to you, dear reader.
...or I'm still unemployed and even more bored than ever because everyone I know has gone back to university or started a new job or flown all the way to the other side of the planet.
Yep, baking is my only friend.
I made these muffins in a crazy "I NEED TO BAKE" whirlwind, in which I decided I would use whatever was in the house to whip something up. And then I went to the shop because I decided on this recipe and there were no fudge pieces just lying around the house.
Weird, I know.

Ingredients:

- 2 free range eggs, lightly beaten

- 80g caster sugar

- 240ml milk

- 100g butter

- 300g plain flour

- 2 tsp baking powder

- half a tsp salt

- half a tsp cinnamon

- 2 eating apples

- 100g of shop-bought fudge pieces

- 100g of pecans, plus extra for decoration

- Preheat the oven to 190C/380F/Gas 5 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.

- Melt the butter in a saucepan.

- Mix the eggs, sugar, melted butter and milk.

- Sift in the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Fold into the mixture.

- Peel, core and chop the apples into small chunks.

- Chop the pecans into rough-size chunks. Leave 12 unchopped for later.

- Add the pecans, apple and a handful of the fudge pieces to the muffin mixture and stir in.

- Fill each muffin case a third full with the mixture.

- Take the remaining fudge pieces and sprinkle a few on top of each of the third-filled cases.

 - With the leftover mixture, fill each case to two-thirds full. Top each uncooked muffin with one of your leftover pecans.
- Bake for 30-35 mins until well-risen and golden. Transfer to a wire rack.

One of my favourite things that I've concocted and suitably autumnal for my first September recipe. Bake them, they'll make you happy inside. 

Can I offer you some excuses?

It's been so long!

It's been so so sooo long. And that's my fault and I'm very sorry. My reasonings range from "I couldn't be bothered" right up to "I was attending a five-day horror film festival so didn't have my laptop".

Yeah.

So this isn't going to have a recipe in it as such. I have a couple of things that I've done and I need to make up my mind about what I post here...BUT! In the meantime, here are some things that I made but didn't take pictures of along the way. 

Normal blogging will resume soon, I promise.

 So these beauties were made for a job interview! At a cake shop! They asked me to make a couple of bits so I made these Peppermint Chocolate Cupcakes and my Norwegian Apple Cake. The cakes themselves were just flavoured with cocoa. I made normal buttercream icing and split it in two. One half was flavoured with peppermint extract and dyed green, and the other I added cocoa powder to. I spooned each flavour vertically into my icing syringe and then iced them! Oh, and I made peppermint creams. By hand.
I didn't get that job, but the cupcakes were lovely!

I made these as a snack for a girly weekend away in Taunton. It's just flapjack really, but I used the recipe from a Katie Morag book that we had when we were kids. Here's the recipe.

In other news, my friend Morgan packed her little suitcase and flew to bloomin' China for the year. She threw another girly-weekend-type party so I made this! For the cake I used a Victoria sponge mixture in an oven-proof bowl. The icing idea came from various books/internet sources.

Aaaand finally, there might be another reason why I haven't been blogging. My favourite programme, The Great British Bake Off has started again. It's awesome. And the week before last they had their bread episode, in which the technical bake was an 8-strand plait loaf of bread. I haven't made bread in a long long time but was inspired and so the next morning I made this, slightly-dodgy but pretty-tasty 8-strand plait loaf. Paul Hollywood, eat your heart out.

I'm completely smitten with bread making at the minute so, be warned, there could be an awful lot of dough-porn hitting your screens...

Apple Meringue Cupcakes

So, because it has been WAY too long since I last posted (or even baked, really) I decided to make you something special.

And you're so so welcome.

I've spent a week thinking about making lemon meringue pie. I'm not sure why. And then, yesterday, I decided to make lemon meringue cupcakes because apparently I can't resist making fun-sized things.

THEN, I decided I wanted to do something a bit more original and decided on Apple Meringue Cupcakes. My best friend once presented me with a pudding (I think she called it Eve's Pudding but when I googled that it comes up with a more spongy pud) which was basically Lemon Meringue Pie but...with Apple. And I decided to base some cupcakes on that because, frankly, it was wonderful.

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

- 80g (3oz) unsalted butter, softened

- 280g (10oz) caster sugar

- 240g (8 and a half oz) plain flour

- 1tbsp baking powder

- Quarter of a tsp of salt

- 1 tsp cinnamon

- 2 large eggs

- 240 ml (8 and a half fl oz) whole milk (although I used semi-skimmed!)\

- 1.5 eating apples

For the meringue:

- 200g (7oz caster sugar)

- 4 egg whites

- Preheat the over to 190°C (375°F), Gas mark 5, and line a muffin tin with 12 muffin cases.

- Using a hand-held electric whisk or a freestanding electric mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon on a low speed until the ingredients are well incorporated and resemble fine breadcrumbs...

 - Like so!

- Measure the milk in a jug and add the 2 eggs. Whisk together by hand. Pour three-quarters of the milk and eggs into the dry ingredients and mix on a low speed to combine.

- Increase the speed to medium and keep beating until smooth and thick.

 - Pour in the remaining milk and eggs and continue to mix on a medium speed until all the ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is smooth.
- Peel, core and chop the apples into 1cm chunks.
- Coat them in flour to stop them sinking to the bottom of the cakes.

- Add the apples to the mixture and fold in.

- Spoon the mixture into the paper cases, filling each case by about two-thirds.
- Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until risen and springy to the touch. You can check that they're done by poking one with a skewer or a knife; if it comes out with some residue, then your cakes need a few more minutes.
- The cakes will need to cool for 30-60 mins before you frost them.

- The recipe I followed uses Italian meringue. This is meant to be notoriously tricky, but I found it to be fine as long as I kept an eye on the sugar.

- Add the 200g of caster sugar to a saucepan and cover with water (about 150ml/5 and a half fl oz) and bring to the boil. Don't stir it!

- While this is happening, separate your four egg whites into a clean, dry bowl and whisk them with a handheld electric whisk or a freestanding mixer until they are just foamy.

- Allow the sugar to boil for 5-10 minutes or until it has reached the soft ball stage. The soft ball stage is when you use a spoon to drop some of your syrup into a bowl of very cold water. If the syrup has been cooked to the correct heat, it will form a ball in the bowl of water. When you remove this ball with your hand, it will flatten.

- Once the sugar has cooked for long enough, turn your mixer up to medium and carefully (really really carefully!!) add it to your egg whites.
- When all the sugar has been added, turn your mixer up to high and whisk it until the mixture has quadrupled in volume, is very white, smooth and quite shiny.
- You just made Italian Meringue (I was ridiculously proud of myself after this stage...)

- Spoon the meringue mixture on top of your cakes with a spoon (you can also pipe it!) and use the back of the spoon to make a cool-looking swirl.

- If you're fancy and have a cook's blowtorch then you can use this to brown the top of the cupcakes.
- I, however, am not so fancy, so I stuck my cakes under a hot grill for a few seconds. Keep a very careful eye on them - they don't take long to turn golden at all!

That's it! Cupcakes with tasty chunks of apple and posh Italian meringue = done!

Now excuse me while I enjoy mine in front of angsty Kenneth Branagh.