Summer fruit compote

Lots of fruit in the house - cherries, currants, raspberries and strawberries from the garden, needing eating. Remembered Delia's recipe, which I used to love so much. Figured it should work with all kinds of fruit. Made a version with 1 plum, lots of cherries, pink currants, blueberries, strawberries. And then another with apple, cherries, pink currants, and a few bluebs and strawbs. Both were great, I should make this more.

3 peaches
6 apricots
6 large plums
225 g / 8 oz blueberries (half = 112.5g)
175 g / 6 oz raspberries (half = 87.5g)
50 g / 2 oz sugar (half = 25g)

Slice peaches, apricots and plums and put in an oven dish with the blueberries. Add sugar. Mix. Bake uncovered for 25-30 min at 180C, until tender. Remove from the oven and stir in the raspberries.  Check the sweetness and add more sugar if it needs it.

Made a half quantity in our smaller baking dish. Was plenty. Used coconut sugar. Tempted to try with no sugar - there is a lot of sweetness in the fruit itself, perhaps it was a little too sweet? Still love it. Ate some with rice pudding, was yum.

Raspberry coconut rhino biscuits

An idea from little s. I more-or-less used this recipe, except I switched out a little bit (75 g?) of flour for desiccated coconut. And didn't have quite enough freeze dried raspberries so used a little acai powder as well. s helped me make them - he cut out almost all the shapes! And we used almost all the different biscuit cutters we have - rhinos were a favourite, but also moose, bear, squirrel, snail, pterodactyl, t-rex, stegosaurus, triceratops, flower, heart, egg, dinosaur footprint, stars... 

(makes quite a lot - maybe 30 biscuits of various sizes and shapes)

15 g / 1/2 oz freeze-dried raspberries (used about 12 g rasps plus 3 g acai powder)

114 g / 4 oz sugar

227 g / 8 oz butter at room temperature

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp vanilla powder

1 egg at room temperature

340 g / 12 oz plain flour (subbed c. 75 g for desiccated coconut)

Crush raspberries a little - not to a powder, just until they are broken down to individual drupelets and a wee bit powdery - I used a pestle and mortar. Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Beat butter, sugar and salt together in a large bowl until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and mix until smooth. Add flour, beat until mixed. Add raspberries and mix until just mixed.

Split the mix into two balls. Roll out the first on a lightly floured surface until 1/4 inch thick. Cut out shapes and put them on prepared baking sheets. Chill on the sheets for 20 min.

In the meantime, heat the oven to 150 C (300 F). Bake for 20-30 min - until the edges start to turn golden. Take out and let cool for 5 min before transferring to a cooling rack.

 

These are good! Buttery and raspberry-y. Hold their shape really well, without being tough. It is quite a lot though, and you can't halve the recipe without halving an egg... If making again, I might try increasing the proportion of coconut. Could also be good with all acai - or matcha powder.

Baked donuts with raspberry icing

This morning, little s suddenly started talking about donuts. I have no idea why - I am pretty sure he has never eaten and probably never even seen a donut.

I'm not a donut fan, but we ended up agreeing that we would make some. I looked for a recipe while he napped. No way was I going to deep fry anything (it's so stinky), so I looked for a baked donut. Went with this one, but halved it. And did a raspberry-cream cheese glaze with desiccated coconut sprinkles.

Improvised a donut tin by molding little squares of foil around my finger and then pressing them into a muffin tin so the finger stuck up in the middle.

(makes 12 small ones)

For the donuts:

26 g butter

25 g veg oil

48 g sugar

35 g brown sugar

1 egg

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp nutmeg

3/8 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla powder

159 g flour

113 g milk 

 

For the decoration:

c. 6 frozen raspberries, microwaved for 20 sec to defrost and smushed with a fork

c. 4 tbsp icing sugar with vanilla

c 2 tbsp cream cheese

2-3 tbsp desiccated coconut

 

Heat oven to 220C (425F). Grease the 'donut tin' lightly with oil. In a medium bowl, beat together butter, oil, sugars until smooth. Add egg, beat to combine. Stir in baking powder, bicarb, nutmeg, salt and vanilla. Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk (start and end with flour). Batter will be thick - wooden spoon should leave a furrow. Spoon batter into the tin, leaving about 1/4 inch of the finger sticking up. Bake for 10 min. Take out of the oven and wait c. 5 min before turning out, peeling / pulling off/out the foil.

While the donuts bake, prepare the icing. Make sure there are no lumps in the icing sugar, then put it in a small bowl and beat in the raspberries. Beat in the cream cheese. Check the consistency and colour is as you want it. This only made a little - enough to ice about the top third of each donut.

After removing the foil, check the holes are still intact. I iced the bottoms of the 'donuts' because they looked neater. Ice the donuts while still warm, right after turning them out. I spread it out with a teaspoon. When the icing is on, sprinkle with desiccated coconut (toasted if you wish). Let cool or eat while still warm.

These are very cute. They didn't look great when I took them out the oven as the batter rose too much and engulfed the fingers (ideally make them stick up higher than the tin!), but I cut the holes back into the side they were missing, and the donuts survived the operation pretty good, and then the icing and sprinkles and holes made them look quite legit (if tiny). 

 

They aren't all that much like donuts, although they looked the part - not yeasted or deep fried. But that's fine with me; and they taste pretty good - the spices and brown sugar make for a tasty batter, and the raspberry goes pretty well with that. Wonder how well they will keep (we ate about half for dessert but the rest are kept til tomorrow).

Third Birthday Cake

Little S turned three on Tuesday. He is crazy about cars / vehicles at the moment, so this year he clearly had to have a car for his birthday cake. I thought about a fire engine, but it seemed like you'd have to have the colour, shape, writing etc bang on for it to look recognizable, and I wanted to allow myself a bit more leeway.

So I went for a dumper truck. Still a favourite, still easily recognizable, still a truck - but could be any colour I want, no writing needed, and somehow felt like it would still look ok even if the shape went a bit wrong.

The cake was this one, baked in a loaf tin. I cut it into three pieces: about a third from one end to make the front part (standing on the cut side), all the rest except a couple of inches to make the back part, and then the last piece to cut into six wheel shapes. Then I shaped the front, cut out the hopper, shaped the wheel beds and evened out the wheels.

The icing was this one. Instead of cinnamon, I added a few different powders to colour it: the icing on the back part of the truck is with freeze-dried raspberry powder, the icing on the front part is with acai powder, and the icing on the wheels is with cocoa. I considered a few other powder (spirulina or matcha for green; turmeric for yellow), but then realized it took quite a lot of powder for a get much colour and I more wanted it to taste nice...

The decorations are: mango-coconut balls for the load and lights, dried kiwi slices for the wheels, and raspberry-apple fruit 'spaghetti' for the writing, window shapes and stripes on the back part. It would have been best presented straight after decorating, but it looked ok the next morning.

It tasted good but yet again I made a sage birthday cake that failed to rise properly (it rose beautifully, and then dropped a lot). This time I had even decided to follow a proper cake recipe to the word to prevent this... Oh well, the icing works!

And, most importantly, S liked it and recognized it as a dumper truck. He got a yellow dumper truck from the 1950s from my dad so it all fit together perfectly.

Leftover raspberry porridge baby biscuits

I made some baby biscuits the other day and they have been quite good for a snack for S when he is shuffling around - they are in the freezer but defrost easily with 30 sec in the microwave; and they aren't crumbly so don't make too much mess (he's hating on sitting in his high chair recently)...

After his breakfast the other day there was quite a bit of delicious raspberry porridge left over (just normal porridge with a few frozen raspberries added before cooking - thicker prob best). And most of a banana. And there was one egg in the fridge. And I was thinking, that added up to pretty much a similar thing to the baby biscuits I made the other day, with the advantage of not throwing away the leftover porridge... The ingredient quantities are a little bit improvised, but these came out quite good and I suspect it is reasonably robust to using up variable amounts of stuff.

I made these right after breakfast on a day S was home sick from vuggestue, alone with me, and it took all of about 30 min from beginning to end, and I didn't half feel like we'd done far too much winning already before 09:30...

(makes c 15 small-medium biscuits - keep for a few days or store in the freezer)

c 1/2 cup leftover porridge (with raspberries in it)
2/3 of a medium banana, mashed
1 egg
c 1/2 cup flour
c 1/4 cup oats
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp vanilla powder (or cinnamon)
(veg oil)
(raisins)

Heat oven to 180C. Mix porridge, banana and egg together with a fork. Add flour, oats, baking powder and vanilla and mix until just combined. Dollop in biscuit sized clumps onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper, and bake 25-30 min until lightly golden on top.


I realized afterwards that maybe should have added some oil or melted butter - if I try this again maybe I will. If the leftover porridge hadn't had raspberries in it I might have added some raisins and cinnamon. Also, the mix was a little bit runnier than I would have liked - and note that runniness will depend a bit on the consistency and amount of the leftover porridge, so may need to adjust amounts of flour and oats.

Raspberry chia kombucha

I long meant to experiment with adding things to my kombucha. I also long meant to open and eat the bag of chia seeds in the drawer. Eventually I made this. It is the simplest ever, and it tastes amazing.

Approx. 250 ml kombucha
about 6 frozen raspberries
1 tbsp chia seeds

Pour the kombucha into a glass bottle with a lid. Crumble the frozen raspberries into the bottle, and pour in the chia seeds. Invert a few times to mix, and make sure the chia seeds are not clumping too much. Leave at room temperature or in the fridge for at least an hour. Keeps fine for at least a day in the fridge.


It's pink and full of gloopy chia seeds and sweet and tangy and lovely. And only takes a few seconds to assemble.

Chocolate raspberry hazelnut muffins

All weekend I was resisting a craving to cook, all the time... We had pretty epic evening plans: Friday was dissection party followed by cabaret in the Dome of Visions. Saturday was Sonar Copenhagen (Zebra Katz!). So daytimes needed to be a bit chilled. It wasn't quite as sunny as some days recently, so cooking and chilling didn't seem like a bad use of time.

Biggest part of the craving was baking-related. I am very much hooked on anything with chocolate, hazelnut and/or raspberry at the moment. So made these muffins, with all three. Hazelnuts just on top, as I find they are wasted mixed inside a cake. Had been a while since I baked anything with egg, and these are appropriately light and fluffy. Slightly adapted this recipe.

(makes 12)

200 g / 7 oz plain flour (used about 70:30 plain and white spelt)
25 g cocoa powder
15 g / 1 tbsp baking powder
115 g / 4 oz sugar
100 g dark chocolate, chopped (used 50 g)
2 medium eggs, beaten
150 ml / ¼ pt milk (used yoghurt mixed with water 50:50)
115 g / 4 oz butter (used coconut oil), melted
200 g / 7 oz raspberries (skimped a bit)
2 tbsp chopped hazelnuts

Heat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/GM 4. Prepare a muffin tin. Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a bowl. Stir in the sugar and chocolate nd make a well in the centre. Mix the eggs, milk, and melted coconut oil/butter together and pour into the well, then stir until just combined. Fold in the raspberries. Spoon the batter into the muffin cases. Sprinkle chopped hazelnuts on top of each one. Bake for about 25 min, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Best still warm from the oven, but still good when cooled.


Hit the spot, predictably. Very light and tender.

My version of Cranachan for Burns Night

It was Burns Night yesterday. I didn't get my act together to have people round this time, but S and I went out and bought some whisky today and I made haggis (following last year's recipe as I liked it surprisingly much) and this: my version of cranachan. Cranachan has long been a highlight of Scottish cuisine for me - toasted oats, raspberries, honey and whisky are lovely together. I have never really liked cream though. It dawned on me that I really didn't have to use cream - so long as there was something bland and creamy - why not yoghurt? I've always loved yoghurt. With this substitution, I think cranachan becomes truly delicious. Although if you like cream you may as well stick with whipped cream where I've used yoghurt.

(makes two)

~300ml of the best plain non-dairy yoghurt around (coconut is my fave, soy an easier to find substitute... note if you can't find a plain version then vanilla, raspberry or peach would all be OK but reduce the amount of honey you add as they will be sweeter... nb oat yoghurt would be great for this)
3-4 tbsp of rolled oats
1/2 tbsp honey mixed with 1-2 tbsp (to taste) good whisky (not too peaty)
3-4 tbsp fresh or frozen raspberries - if frozen defrost in advance

Spread the oats on a baking sheet and put in a 350F oven to toast until they smell nutty and start to brown (prob 5-10 min) - alternatively you can toast them in a dry frying pan. Take out and allow to cool. Mix the yoghurt with the whisky-honey mixture. Once everything is cooled and ready, take two clear glasses and layer the yoghurt mixture followed by oats followed by raspberries until you've used everything up - finish with a layer of yoghurt and a sprinkling of oats. Eat straight away so the oats don't soften.


Predictably, I love this even more than the real thing. I made one last night before we got the whisky using ginger wine instead of whisky (and no honey since it's already really sweet) and that was good too.

Raspberry-almond buns (gluten-free)

Seb made me a birthday cake with lemon cake and raspberry icing. He woke me up with cake and candles. He did an awesome job. Not to mention the day of presents and greetings and surprise friend-mob of a house show and whole room of lovely people singing 'Happy Birthday' to me with yet another cake+candles...

There was some icing left over. I wanted to use it up, got a copy of 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World' for my birthday (exciting: I look at her blog often but didn't have any of their books), and am having a GF person over for dinner tomorrow night so decided it would be a good idea to test out the GF vanilla cupcake recipe and top it with the leftover raspberry icing. Of course I didn't have the exact right combination of GF flours so didn't exactly follow the recipe, but nevertheless they came out quite well.

(made 11, could have filled a bit less full to make 12)

1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup veg oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp almond essence
1/4 cup tapioca flour (used glutinous rice flour)
2 tbsp ground linseed
1/3 cup corn flour or almond flour (used corn masa flour)
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour (used ragi flour = millet flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350F and line muffin tin. Mix milk, oil, sugar and essences in a large bowl. Add tapioca flour and linseed and mix thoroughly. Add corn flour, rice flour, quinoa flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt and mix thoroughly (don't worry about overmixing). Fill cups and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before icing.


Gosh, these look like they should be for a little girl's birthday party or something. The buns rose quite nicely and also taste pretty good: the predominant flavour is almond - it would appear that almond essence is pretty powerful stuff. S assures me the colour of the icing is entirely from raspberry, which is awesome... He doesn't remember what recipe he used but I suspect it may have been this one.

Icing:
1/2 cup coconut oil, softened
1/2 cup margarine, softened
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2-3 tbsp raspberry jam
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cornstarch

Heat 3 tbsp raspberry jam in a pan. Mix cornstarch with a bit of water and add to the raspberry jam. Stir until it become clear and thick. Push the sauce through a sieve to remove the raspberry seeds. Beat the softened coconut oil and margarine together to a fluffy mixture. Add the icing sugar alternated with the raspberry sauce and vanilla. Beat to a smooth and even consistency. (note: S had evidently had trouble softening the coconut oil as it is Winter and so I warmed the icing a little and beat it some more to make it smoother and more evenly coloured, which worked well).


I decorated them with flaked almonds, basil flowers and red sugar crystals.


These taste most strongly of almond.  Quite nice texture.  Alvin liked them.  They froze well (apart from the flowers, obv).

4th July: No-bake chocolate pie

Independence Day is another one of those American holidays we never really know what to do for - we just don't have the back-history with it.  What I hear is you're supposed to have barbeques and eat pie and watch fireworks.  We failed to go out as I have a crappo summer cold, but we had a barbeque on the balcony (featuring the awesome marinated tofu and courgette again, plus a few mushrooms and potatoes, and S toasted bread on the grill).  And we did watch the fireworks from the Summit Park, which was hilarious: an awkward juxtaposition of middle-class families with pockets of super-drunk college students in Stars n Stripes bikini tops etc, all standing neatly organised in two long lines to see between the trees.  A huge lightning / rain storm started up pretty much the exact same time as the fireworks, it was awesome (we had an umbrella).

And, I decided we should have pie.  It had to be be a super simple pie, and should not involve switching on the oven, because it's still very hot and sticky, esp in our apartment under the heat-absorbing roof.  So that meant a raw-style pie crust, which I was totally in the mood for anyway.  And I felt like it should have fruit in it somewhere, although we didn't have much fruit in the house.  I daydreamed about pie while looking back through recipes I made before and at ppk, and ended up doing this...

Note: Today I made enough crust for a mini pie plus a half quantity of filling as I just wanted a wee one for S and me to share.  So quantities below haven't been fully tested, but should be about right for a full-size (8 in) pie.  If just making the filling for a quickie pudding snack a half quantity should be plenty.


Crust:
1/2 cup pecan pieces
1/2 cup almond meal
3 tbsp linseed meal
pinch salt
1-3 tsp mulberry molasses

Filling:
3 cups fake milk
1/4 cup cornflour
1/3 cup sugar (half quantity = 2 tbsp)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch salt
3 tbsp chocolate, chopped
1 tsp vanilla essence

good handful raspberries, fresh or frozen (or chopped fresh strawberries)

First, prep the crust: put the pecan pieces, almond meal, linseed meal and salt in a blender and grind til smooth.  Add the mulberry molasses bit by bit and pulse til the crumbs are just starting to stick together. Empty out of the blender and then press the crust into a pie tin or dish lined with foil.  Put in the fridge until needed.

(Note, the molasses is just to stick the nuts together and add sweetness, alternatives could be soft dates or frozen banana, or maple syrup.  Be careful when adding not to add too much as it would become too soft and sticky and make the finished pie not come out of the tin properly).

Next, filling: put 1 cup of fake milk in a pan with the cornflour and whisk together until the cornflour is distributed and there are no lumps.  Then add the cocoa, sugar, salt and the rest of the milk and whisk together.  Bring to the boil, whisking constantly until it thickens.  Remove from the heat, add the chocolate and mix until it is melted.  Then add the vanilla and mix.

Assembly: take the prepared crust and sprinkle the raspberries evenly over the base.  Then pour the chocolate mixture all over the raspberries and fill up the crust (any extra can just be poured in a separate bowl).  Leave to cool, then transfer to the fridge and leave for a couple of hours or so.


I actually used both frozen banana and mulberry molasses as sticky stuff in the crust, and ended up with something a bit too sticky but very tasty.  I went ahead and used it anyway - the pie didn't come out of the dish very easily but it still tasted good.  So the quantities described above reflect what I was aiming for rather than what I actually did.  The chocolate pudding mix was great - super easy, using stuff I always have in the cupboards / fridge, good just on its own as well as as a pie filling.  It's a good alternative to the silken tofu based chocolate pudding I've made often, perhaps even a more pudding-y texture (and doesn't require silken tofu, which I don't have any of at the moment).  Really into cornflour thickening in desserts right now - nice smooth texture with no flavour distraction.  All in all the pie was really yummy - S had thirds - and with a little tweaking of the crust mix I think it could be awesome.  Perfect for a hot day's pie craving!

Fruit picking

One of my favourite things.  Went to Cider Hill Farm at Amesbury near Newburyport in N Mass.  Had screened quite thoroughly for ones that had blueberry and raspberry picking and didn't sound too kid-orientated / have too much going on.  It was exactly as we had hoped - quiet, laid back and pretty good picking.  It was early season, esp for the raspberries.  But we got what we wanted - about 2 punnets of each.  I'd never picked blueberries before (excepting happily stuffing my face with wild ones on Cape Cod last weekend), so was especially excited about those - seemed like an important American experience to take in.

I made some raspberry-cornmeal muffins with some of the raspberries, and both blueberries and raspberries are disappearing very quick straight into our mouths, just as they are.

Muffins: Gluten-free raspberry cornmeal / apple and raisin

Based on recipes from How it All Vegan! vegan cookbook by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer.  I bought the book as all the baking I tried from it was really successful, and these were no exceptions.  I made these to take to garden brunch.  Muffins were the plan as they are easily portable and I needed to bike to JP with them.  As Hannah eats gluten-free I wanted to do some gluten-free but didn't have much g-f ingredients so just did a few g-f ones and some other ones too...


Raspberry cornmeal gluten-free vegan muffins

1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1 1/2 cups flour (used sweet rice flour to make GF)
dash of salt
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup fake milk (used soy)
3/4 cup orange or apple juice (used orange)
1 tsp vinegar
1 cup raspberries (used black raspberries frozen from orchard days in Summer)

Oven to 400F.  Stir dry ingredients together.  Add wet ingredients and berries.  Mix til 'just mixed'.  Spoon into lightly oiled or lined muffin tins and bake for 35-45 min.  Test with a knife for readiness.

These were super simple and amazingly good!  The sweet rice flour had the amazing effect of making a GF baked product that stuck together really well (it was the stuff we bought for mochi) - the texture was a little odd but I thought they were wonderful.



Sugar-free applesauce muffins

I realised having settled on this recipe that they had no sugar (and hardly any fat) in them, how odd...

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup fake milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp oil
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 cup applesauce
3/4 cup raisins

Oven to 375F.  Sift dry ingredients together.  Add rest.  Mix til 'just mixed'.  Put into lightly oiled / lined muffin tins and bake 15-20min.  Test with knife.

These were good too.  Good texture etc.  Could maybe have done with a little more sweetness, and they didn't keep very well though.

What an exercise in -free baking!

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.