A tale of two cakes

I made my first ever Christmas cake in 2016 - it turned out really well but for some reason I never blogged it. I therefore made a different recipe in 2017, but only realised when a Facebook photo popped up with a caption specifying a recipe from Mary Berry. This year I did James Martin's, and next year I'll return to the fold of St Mary. These photos are from 2016.

 

The biggest difference is that this year's cake was undercooked, despite passing the skewer test and being cooked for a bit longer than specified. It's still tasty, but definitely squidgy in the middle, and despite covering for the last part of cooking I would say the top is a bit burnt. The recipe is also wetter overall: it has less fruit (over 25% less) and less flour, but the same amount of egg and alcohol plus the juice of a lemon and an orange.

Other errors were mine. I fed with brandy, which is just not as tasty (to me) as sherry or rum, and I made the icing wrong, omitting one egg white, so the icing is very crumbly. (However, a useful note - the egg whites make this a good partner to the Christmas shortbread recipe which needs yolks.)

I don't roll out marzipan for the whole cake at once, but match up a circle (drawn around the outside of the cake tin) and a couple of strips wrapped around the sides. The icing recipe given by Mary (3 whites, 675g icing sugar) is quite a lot for a 20cm cake, and personally I prefer a thinner layer of icing. However it keeps well and is good for piping on biscuits. I piped filligree stars on the top of the cake after lightly pressing a biscuit cutter into the icing to give a template.

Next year I also need to make multiple smaller cakes, as a 20cm one is too much for us really. I see that various blogs and recipe sites suggest using small baked bean tins, which is genius. Must remember that it would use more marzipan and icing, to do them all over, or much less, to just do the top.

Taking (or giving) the biscuit

Biscuits are easy to make but also easy to jazz up into nice gifts. My favourites come from Holly Bell, on Recipes From A Normal Mum:

St Clement's Shortbread Stars - Super easy, and look very classy if you can manage to keep small hands away from the decorating. Of course, the splodges-and-sprinkles look is also great, especially for teacher and grandparent gifts...

Cut Out Vanilla Biscuits - the best for fiddly cutters.

Lemon Animal Biscuits - For playdough-style moulding rather than cutters.

I've previously done Nigella's Christmas Spice Cookies and they are good too.

Dairy free Christmas goodies

This year:

First up, stollen spirals as before. Lovely and light - I did the second prove in the oven on ultra low.


Gingerdoodle surprise muffins  - these were supposed to be Snickerdoodle Biscoff sandwich cookies, but I think the Vitalite sub for butter was the culprit. I made the mix largely as per the recipe (apart from the butter switch, using 3 very small 50g eggs instead of 2 large 75g, and adding some ground ginger because I was worried it would be bland), but it was cake-batter-like in texture. "Roll into balls and in the sugar and cinnamon" - pa ha ha ha. Out came the muffin cases (just 11 left in the pack, of course) and in went the mix. There was TONS. Given it supposedly makes 24 cookies, and I made 11 very generous muffins and a cupcake, I'm wondering what happened.

Anyway, I put the mix in the cases, sprinkled with a mix of granulated and demerara sugar plus cinnamon, and baked for ~35 mins at 170°C fan. They went a bit volcanic (the sugar sprinkle was widely spread!) but stayed in the cases and had a nice texture, close but light. When cool I cut an inverted cone out of the top, removed some of the cake, and filled with Biscoff spread slackened with soya milk. I omitted the sugar as it sounded far too sweet but I think another time I should re-add some, or use maple syrup in the soya.


"Healthy" 4-ingredient vegan fudge. With peanut butter, coconut oil, maple syrup and peanuts as the ingredients you can take the healthy label with a pinch of unhealthy salt. This came together quickly and seemed to last fine in the freezer. Tastes of the pan scrapings were yummy, approximating fudge to a fair extent. I made it in silicon cups and gave them with the gift!


Cherry chocolate coconut flapjacks. A straight sub of coconut oil for the butter this time, and again weirdness. When I melt and bubble the butter and sugar it goes treacly and beautiful. With the coconut oil I had a sublayer of treacly sugar, and a stubbornly separate layer of fat, no matter how much I mixed. This made for quite a dry flapjack and I had to try rescuing it with more syrup and some vitalite (as I'd used all my coconut oil). Adding cherries and dessicated coconut, and topping with generous drizzles of dark chocolate, sorted it. You have to cut it when cold, but refrigerating it makes it brick-like.


Finally, Chef John's Bacon Jam. I have wanted to try making bacon jam for a while, and went for this recipe. The one I really wanted was from Time To Cook, the blog by Mary-Anne Boermans who is one of my favourite ever Bake Off contestants. However, I couldn't really justify buying kecap manis and gentleman's relish for one recipe, so chose the simpler version. It seemed to work, despite me halving the bacon and onions and then forgetting to halve everything else. Lessons learned: cut the onions smaller, fry the bacon until crisp but not hard, and chucking in piri-piri seasoning (because it's easier than faffing with spices) works but... hooo-eeee, go easy on it! Subbing white wine vinegar for the sherry vinegar worked fine, and a splash of maple syrup was also a good addition. Getting really good bacon from the butcher is a must - I used streaky, because it's an American recipe and that's all they know. I realised I forgot the final olive oil - maybe this avoids the issue of the bacon fat going white in the fridge?

Stollen spirals and other festive gift goodies

Stollen spirals - really just festive Chelsea buns I guess...

BBC Good Food recipe

Take 1 (test run, not a gift):

All went fine except I crammed too many in the tin and the middle ones were too doughy. Next time space them out better/use more tins. Also use more fruit, and slice the marzipan rather than using a big wodge in the middle.

Take 2:

Made these dairy free by subbing in coconut oil for butter, and soya milk for the milk. Not a deliberate choice, just what I had in the house to make them for a dairy-intolerant recipient. Also made the changes as above, and happened to use more sultanas and cranberries, no mixed peel, no nuts, and no icing, purely for time reasons. They fit perfectly, with room to expand, at 12 to my big roasting tin, with the remainder (I hesitate to say rejects) in a smaller tin. The 12 were frozen as soon as they were cool, defrosted in the car while travelling, reheated in a low oven for half an hour or so, and hoovered up in no time, so this recipe is definitely a keeper!

Take 3:

Easterised as follows: soak the fruit (a sultana/cranberry/cherry mix) in a mix of tea and amaretto; sprinkle it in the buns along with grated marzipan and dark chocolate chips. Serve warm so the marzipan and chocolate are a bit gooey.


German cinnamon star biscuits

Outdoor Chics recipe

These went OK but cooked too quickly in my oven at 200°C, so were a bit toasty. They have a chewy macaroony texture. I put allspice in the icing, as I'd run out of cinnamon, and some lemon zest. The icing was very sticky to apply, and I also found the mixture a bit crumbly and liable to get stuck in the points of the star cutter,


Nigella's bar nuts

Recipe

Sweet, salty, spicy, herby roasted nuts. Yum. Again, made with coconut oil not butter - no difference.


Ginger cupcakes

A Jamie Oliver recipe

I was a bit worried by the amount of oil in these but they didn't come out greasy at all. Would be good with some sort of spicy dark chocolate topping.

Christmas 2013

My first crack at a proper Christmas dinner :)

I decided on pork as I love crackling, so I ordered a roast from the local butcher as I know their meat is far better quality than the supermarket's. I didn't specify what cut but it looked like loin and there was plenty of it (I ordered for "3-4 plus leftovers") so I cut the smaller end off and it's in the freezer for another week.

Good old Delia came up trumps for a recipe: roast pork with crackling. All I had to do was dry the skin and salt it, and place the meat on a topped, tailed and halved onion. I adjusted the oven temperatures down slightly for our fan oven, and did 25 mins at 220° and then another 2h at 180°. This was a bit of a mistake as I calculated the time on the original weight and not after I'd cut a bit off. Still, the pork was well done rather than overcooked, with perfect crackling and very tender meat.

What did perhaps suffer a bit was the meat juices. Although they were supposed to go to make gravy, it was entirely fat in the tin. I poured it off, and what was left was very dark - not tempting crusty bits so much as blackened. The outer layers of the onion had also burned, so I binned those before deglazing the pan with cider and making up gravy with that, stock (~150ml each) and flour (1 tbsp plain), with water to taste later - there was a definite dark tang to it but I had no other means to make gravy so had to make it work! Straining the finished product removed the onion bits before serving, and the verdict was fairly good but by no means perfect.

Of course, it's not just the meat - alongside it we had apricot stuffing, roast potatoes, red cabbage, brussels sprouts and parsnips. Oh, and sausages in bacon, but they negate the point about the meat :)

Apricot stuffing: a fairly random recipe pick, it's American style stuffing involving an onion and 2 cloves garlic, cooked in butter with thyme, then adding chopped dried apricots, bread, and cream. It turned out rather sweet, and a dash of worcester sauce evened it out. Next time I'd use the suggested variation of subbing some of the cream for stock as it was quite rich.

Potatoes: large King Edwards, parboiled (or rather boiled, since I forgot them) and then tossed about a bit in vegetable oil and a dash of salt, and roasted in the oven for a good 30 minutes.

Red cabbage: braised with cider and apples. I used 600g cabbage, made necessity-based substitutions of a bramley apple, white wine vinegar, and tangerines, and used half of all the other ingredients except the sugar which I reduced a bit further. An hour's cooking time was fine.

Brussels sprouts: peeled, halved, and stir fried/braised with streaky bacon trimmings from the sausages in bacon. Several splashes of water, and a lid on the pan, kept things moist and helped them to steam as well as fry in about 20 minutes.

Parsnips: peeled, chopped, roasted in oil, honey and wholegrain mustard with a dash of black pepper. I didn't really roast them for long enough, so next time would pop them in for 45 mins to an hour.


Dessert wasn't my responsibility, so that's it for this year :)

More Christmassy goodies

I'm not a big one for "stuff" (ornaments, keepsakes and that sort of thing) and consequently have no eye whatsoever for what "stuff" (if any) might appeal to other people. This, along with the fact I enjoy cooking and baking, means I tend to gravitate towards food gifts for Christmas. I've blogged Christmas Spice Cookies and white chocolate and cranberry cookies before, so here are some other recipes I've used  more recently.

Pretzel bites (pictured, right) are ridiculously easy and almost as ridiculously moreish, if you are into the sweet-salty thing. The verdict from my brother and his clan was that the bag barely made it home! The basics are:

150g salted pretzels, broken but not crushed to smithereens.
250g chocolate - white, dark, plain, any flavour you like
50-75g 'extras' - dried fruit or other goodies.

Melt the chocolate and stir in the pretzels and any other goodies. Dollop into bite-size mounds on foil, clingfilm or a silicon cookie mat, and refrigerate until set.

The original recipe uses white chocolate and sultanas, which I then varied to white chocolate and dried cranberries for extra Christmassy pep. Candied peel would also work, I think. This year's variation is dark mint chocolate (I used Green & Black's), and crushed candy canes sprinkled on top of the bites before they set. I will say that candy canes, if they are of the chewy variety, are harder to smash than you think! I conceded defeat with the rolling pin and had to blitz the last few big bits.


Peppermint creams are an old favourite - this recipe was good but a bit wetter than ideal. Given that just a little more or less liquid can really make a difference to icing sugar I'm surprised at the use of the naturally variable amounts of egg white and lemon in the recipe. Next time I'll measure, and not add all the lemon at once. I'd also hold back just a bit on the mint, as it was more extra-strong than candy cane!

1 free-range egg white

½ lemon, juice only

1 tsp peppermint flavouring

425g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting

(optional - tiny drop of food colouring if you want)

175 dark chocolate, for dipping/piping

Whisk egg white to stiff peaks and fold in everything else except the chocolate. Work until smooth on a surface dusted with sugar - if you want to use colour for only part of the mixture, divide it here and work in the colour to one half. Roll out to pound coin thickness and use cutters of your choice to cut out shapes, then chill until set. Melt the chocolate and dip, pipe, drizzle, or use some other inventive method to get it on the creams.


The Rocky Road to Christmas Excess (pictured above, left) - adapted from this Nigella recipe. Like a normal Rocky Road, but with festive goodies. Indulgent, and serves several people as a present since it's so rich it's able to be cut into very small pieces!

400g dark chocolate - I used 200g plain and 200g of Green & Black's Maya Gold
175g butter
4tbsp golden syrup
Moderate handfuls of Christmassy inclusions - I used:
Gingerbread pieces (mix of lumps/crumbs)
Shortbread pieces (ditto)
Mini marshmallows
Glace cherries (halved or whole)
Candied peel
Sultanas soaked overnight in Cointreau (sherry, brandy, whatever... or tea for a non-alcoholic option)

Nigella says you can melt the chocolate directly over a gentle heat with the butter and syrup, but I don't trust my electric hob to be gentle so I used the double boiler method for the chocolate and stirred in the separately-melted-then-cooled-a-bit butter and syrup. Then add that mix to the goodies in a mixing bowl, and stir gently until well combined (the marshmallows will melt and mix in if you are too rough). Pour into a clingfilm-lined deep tray and refrigerate overnight. Turn out, chop into bite-size cubes and dust with icing sugar and maybe edible glitter or lustre if you're feeling sparkly.

Truffles

You can't go wrong with chocolate, cream and booze.

Boozy bitter chocolate truffles
(Maison du Chocolat, via Chez Pim)

I didn't chop the chocolate into small enough pieces and had to put it and the cream over some simmering water to melt it fully. I used amaretto as the alcohol, and rolled half the truffles in ground almonds, half in cocoa. And 30-40 truffles? Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. I think I got 20.

Ingredients
8oz very dark, very bitter chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream [= whipping cream in the UK*]
1/8 to 1/4 cup armagnac or rum

Method
Chop up the 8oz chocolate very small, and place in a medium glass bowl. In a small pan, bring the cream to a boil, then remove from heat immediately and pour it over the chocolate. Let stand for a couple of minutes to melt.

Stir the chocolate and cream until well incorporated. Add the alcohol, mix well. Chill until firm.

Put the cocoa powder in a medium bowl. Using a tablespoon measure, scoop up slightly less than the tablespoon of chocolate and gently roll it into a ball, then coat it in the cocoa.

* searching for the UK equivalent to heavy cream led me to this post and an interesting blog about UK/US language differences.

Christmas spice cookies

Not a new one - I made these last year.

Christmas spice biscuits
(Nigella, via Food Glorious Food)

I substituted treacle for the honey, giving a slightly darker flavour. The only difference to the method was a lack of a food processor. I rubbed the butter into the flour/spices by hand, as for crumble, then added the sugar and went from there. I forgot the caution about not adding all the egg/honey, and had to add quite a bit more flour as it was far too sticky.

This would make good gingerbread people as well, just roll a bit thicker, omit the black pepper and up the ginger.

Also, consider doubling the recipe right off. This doesn't make many at the required ~1cm thickness, and you might as well make it worth getting the food processor out!

Ingredients

• 150g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 50g soft butter
• 50g soft dark muscovado sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp runny honey
• royal icing

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 170C. Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper or non-stick baking sheets.
2. Whizz together flour and spices in a food processor. Add butter and sugar and whizz until you have fine breadcrumb consistency.
3. Beat together the egg with the honey. With the motor running, slowly add the egg mixture. Go carefully as you may not need to add it all - stop when a dough is just formed.
4. Chill the mixture for 10 minutes or so.
5. Liberally dust the work surface with flour and roll out the dough to 3-4mm. (Go thicker if you like, but they may need extra baking time.) Cut out your favourite festive shapes. Work quite quickly and set the biscuits on the tin.
6. For decorations: Using a skewer, cut a small hole just below the top of each biscuit so that you'll be able to tie ribbon through later for hanging on the tree.
7. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the biscuits are no longer dough-ey in the middle. Watch them to be sure the edges don't burn. Transfer biscuits to a wire rack and allow to cool. Mix up the royal icing according to the sugar packet's instructions. Spoon into a piping bag and decorate the biscuits once cool.
8. Be patient and leave the icing to set. Once set, wait another ten minutes or so (just to be sure) and carefully thread pretty ribbon through the holes.