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Sunday, December 12, 2010

Christmas Baking

Christmas Cake

(based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's one from the Guardian website)

200g sultanas (I used golden raisins - sultanas are hard to find in the US)
200g currants (used raisins - currants also hard to find here)
150g dried apricots, chopped (used mixture of figs, peaches, raisins)
150g prunes, diced (used mixture of dates and cranberries)
150g raisins (used cranberries)
60g candied peel (see below for recipe)
60g dried cherries or cranberries (used glace cherries)
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange (used 2 clementines)
Grated zest of 1 lemon
200ml Somerset apple brandy (used 150ml Pimms)
110g hazelnuts, roasted and roughly chopped
200g unsalted butter (used vegan margarine)
100g light muscovado sugar (used golden sugar)
80g dark muscovado sugar (used dark brown sugar)
4 eggs, lightly beaten (used flax eggs)
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 heaped tsp mixed spice (ginger / cinnamon / allspice)
1/4 of a nutmeg, grated
1/4 tsp salt
90g stem ginger, finely chopped

Recipe said to soak first nine ingredients in a bowl, add the brandy, stir, cover and leave for 48 hours - I didn't do this and added the booze when I mixed up the ingredients instead.

Preheat the oven to 140C/275F/gas mark 1. Grease a round 22-24cm x 9cm, loose-bottomed cake tin, and line with parchment to come 4cm above the sides. Pulse half the hazelnuts until very fine. Beat the butter and sugars till fluffy, then beat in the 'eggs' one by one (if it begins to curdle, add a little flour). Sieve the flour, baking powder, spices and salt, then stir gently into the batter. Fold in the fruit, nuts, pimms and ginger, spoon into the tin, smooth and bake for two to two and a quarter hours (took more like 3 1/4 - think I would increase cooking temperature if I made it again, just to like 300F or so), until a skewer (or knitting needle) comes out clean. (If it browns before it's done, cover with parchment.) Leave to cool in the tin, then remove and wrap in a double layer of foil. Store in a cool, dry place, feeding it with a slug of brandy every two weeks.



For decorating:
300g whole dried fruits, such as figs, apricots, apple slices, cherries
120g nuts, such as hazelnuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds
150g warm apricot jam, strained

A day or so before the big day, brush with warm apricot glaze, lay the fruit and nuts on top, and glaze again. Store in an airtight container.

Took a long time to cook. Perhaps 160C / 320F would have been better? I made it 2 weeks before Christmas so that is how long it'll have to mature I guess - will have to see how it tastes then.

Edit: Fed once with more Pimms a week after making, then it was Christmas a week later so I decorated it on Christmas Eve.  Warmed a little strawberry jam (didn't have apricot) and brushed it on top, then rolled out about half a pound (maybe more) of marzipan from Polcari's in Little Italy to about 0.5cm thick and pressed it around the cake.  Brushed a little more jam on top (used about 5 tbsp jam total I guess) and then arranged sliced dried figs, walnut halves, halved glace cherries and hazelnut on top and glazed with a little more jam.  Would have tied ribbon around the outside if I had some (perfect stuff left over from happy hour is sitting at work, oh well.  It was fun to mix in the good bits of cake decoration - I don't like royal icing much, but I have a guilty love for glace cherries.  It tastes really good!  A bit sticky, perhaps because of the smoke alarm going off and me therefore curtailing the cooking time a little, but it's yummy.  The candied ginger addition really made it, I think - definitely try and use ginger in future xmas cakes.


Candied Peel

Wash and chop peel (say 1 cup - any mixture of lemon, orange, clementine, grapefruit etc). Put in pan with water. Bring to the boil for 10-15min then drain. Repeat 3 times. Then make sugar water syrup (1 cup of each) and boil with peel until evaporated. Spread on a baking sheet and put in switched-off oven overnight to dry out.


Mincemeat 
(do about several weeks in advance of use)

-adapted from a recipe I found somewhere in the internets and forgot where (sorry).

3/4 pint cider
1 lb / 450g soft dark brown sugar
1 lb cooking apple (cored and chopped finely / not peeled - any kind of apple will do if can't find cooking apples - they are hard to find in the US)
1 tsp mixed spice (cinnamon / nutmeg / allspice / ginger / cloves)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
pinch ground cloves
12 oz currants (used golden raisins)
12 oz raisins
8 oz sultanas (used cranberries)
4oz glace cherries (used dried cherries)
4oz candied peel
4 oz chopped almonds (used flaked)
1 orange, juice and zest (used 2 clementines)
1 lemon, juice and zest
1/4 pint brandy or rum (used double amount of Pimms)

1) put cider and sugar in a pan, heat til dissolved
2) add rest except alcohol and boil (stir constantly)
3) lower heat and partially cover. simmer ~45min to thicken
4) cool completely. add alcohol. put in sterile jars (pack down carefully to avoid air bubbles).
5) Add discs of greaseproof or waxed paper to tops of jars, then lid and store.

deffo fine after 2 weeks. not sure how long it'll last - no suet as preservative, is it enough booze? a less thick texture than using fat, but still tastes really good.


Mince Pies

Traditional Pastry
4oz (~100g) plain flour
2oz (~50g) vegan margarine

(for sweet pastry add 1oz sugar)

Rub fat into flour. Add a little water to combine. Rest in the fridge for 30min.


Seed / nut / pulse pastry (vegan / gluten free)
50g ground almonds
60g cooked chickpeas, mashed to a stiff paste (organic tinned are fine)
100g Doves Farm gluten-free plain flour (or 50g gram flour, 50g rice flour)
2 tbsp sesame seeds
40g sunflower margarine (or cold-pressed plain sesame or safflower oil)
sparkling water, to bind

Combine seeds, ground almonds, flour (used normal flour) and ground chickpeas. Rub in fat and mix with a fork. Add a little water to combine. Rest in the fridge 30min.

For any pastry:
Roll out and cut into rounds for pie bases (deep fill used tall plastic measure beaker / normal size used Coke glass). Put bases into bun tin (or muffin tin - that's all I had and it was OK). Fill with mincemeat or a mixture of mincemeat and cooked apple (or pear, or nashi pear - I cooked with a little sugar and a little cinnamon). Cut out stars and put them on the tops. Bake at 400F/200C for ~20min, til golden brown and crisp. Leave to cool before trying to remove from trays.



Both types of pastry came out better than I expected. We liked the seedy one - more interesting. Seedy stuff made 11 deep fill mince pies; classic stuff in total made 14 normal size ones - I guess the quantities are intended to do about 12?


Also managed to set off the fire alarm (good to test it I guess?) through overspill from xmas cake onto bottom of oven where it burned. We wafted it and it was OK.
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