Christmas cake

I wasn't going to blog about my Christmas cake, but I was asked to so I decided I would.

You need to start your Christmas cake in October as you need lots of brandy in it which you feed into the cake as often as you like after the cake is cooked until you are ready to decorate it.

This is based on Delia's classic Christmas cake. I was trying to follow it perfectly but I made a couple of mistakes, One was I put my grated orange and lemon zest in to soak over night with the rest of the fruit and also once I'd put the cakes in the oven I realised I hadn't put the chopped almonds in-oops!! Also I made enough for 2 cakes (one large, one small). But it's not like I forgot the currents so it's just a nutless Christmas cake!

This blog will be edited after is it decorated and eaten so I can let everyone know if it tastes ok even though I forgot the nuts!!

INGREDIENTS:

(I found it easier to weigh in "old money" but you can look at Delia's recipe for a conversion-remember I did the recipe-plus half again)

1.5lb currents
9oz sultanas
9oz raisins
3oz glacé cherries, chopped
3oz mixed peel
5 tablespoons brandy (plus extra for feeding after the cake is cooked)

12oz plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon mixed spice

12oz unsalted butter
12oz soft brown sugar
6 eggs

3oz chopped almonds (which I didn't put in)
2 desert spoons black treacle

zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange

EQUIPMENT:
3 large bowls
one large jug
a tea towel
hand blender
wooden spoon
sieve
8" round cake tin
7" loaf tin
lots of parchment or greaseproof paper


METHOD:

(the bold words are so I can remember which order everything is meant to go for next year!!)

The night before you want to make the cake you need to weigh all the fruit, currents, sultanas, raisins, glacé cherries and  mixed peel (I also added the zest of the lemon and orange although the original recipe says to add these at the end). Then pour on the 5 tablespoons of brandy and stir. Then cover with a clean tea towel and leave for at least 12 hours (I left it for about 17 hours)

NEXT DAY

Line your cake tin

Weigh out the flour, salt, nutmeg and mixed spice and sieve together

Weigh out the sugar and butter and cream those together in your biggest bowl with the blender. This takes a while and is actually really hard work!!

Crack your eggs into the jug and whisk with a fork

Gradually add your eggs into the creamed butter and sugar a little at a time until all the egg is combined.

Fold the sieved flour and spiced into the sugar/egg/butter mix

Add the fruit, nuts (which I forgot about) and treacle and fold those in (this again is pretty hard work!!)

Then spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tins and smooth it so it's level. The cake isn't intended to rise but it will slightly.

I cooked it on 140oC for 2 1/2 hours for the small cake and 4 1/2 hours for the big cake

Once the cake is done, put it on a cooling tray and leave to cool in the tin for half an hour before removing it from the tin and paper and leaving to cool completely.

Once fully cool prick the cake several times all over with a cocktail stick. This is so when you feed the cake more brandy it can get into the holes. Then wrap it in more parchment and keep in a cake tin.

Once a week (r more if you like your cake boozy) remove the cake from the tin and parchment and carefully cover it in brandy then recover it and store away. Do this every week until you want to decorate it





SO..


2 months later after weekly stabbing with a cocktail stick and "feeding" with brandy the cake is ready to decorate. As I take the cake out of the box it's been in for 2 months I can smell the brandy so I'm recommending anyone who eats it does so when they don't have to drive!! (ignore the mess in the pictures, I am also making many other Christmas food items at the same time!!)

You will need:

Apricot Jam
Marzipan
Fondant
Decorations


First cover the cake in a layer or melted apricot jam

Roll out the marzipan and cover the cake, remove excess

Add another layer of apricot jam

Cover in fondant

Decorate

I took inspiration from THIS CAKE but you can do it how ever you want. There are no rules on this part!


THERE WILL BE ANOTHER EDIT WITH IT CUT AND HOW IT TASTES!

Rainbow Cake

First, this didn't turn out quite how I'd expected. I should have either used 2 lots of the cake mix or used smaller tins, also I didn't realise until it was pointed out to me that I should have used flower paste or Mexican paste for the letter as the cutters I bought for decoration don't work on fondant so I had to make the letters by hand (and late at night when I was mad at the icing and cutters) so they aren't great, bur really, it's a rainbow cake, who's going to care about the outside.

I made this for my son's 1st birthday. I got a lot of help and inspiration from friends. Also I'd like to say I cheated on this quite a bit, but mainly because it calls for a while cake mix and looking on line for how to make a white cake it called for all sorts of things that I had no idea what they were.

To make the colours really stand out you are going to need gel food colouring as this is much more vibrant than the liquid stuff you can get in the supermarket. It's pretty easy to use and work with, but if it gets on your skin your dyed (I currently have blue, green and red fingers)

For the added "WOW" for the grown-ups I covered it in white ready roll fondant icing (there is no way I'm making my own!!) so the un-suspecting adults were just expecting a cake nicely decorated but instead had a huge wow of the colours of the cake.

So, for the cake....

INGREDIENTS:

1 box of Betty Crocker WHITE cake mix (you can only get this off the internet unless you happen to have an american grocery shop near you)

3 egg whites
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup water
6 gel food colourings (I bought Sugarfalir ones)


METHOD:

Mix everything in a bowel with an electric hand mixer until smooth

Put equal amounts of the cake mix into separate small bowels. I used a ladle.

Use a cocktail stick to put the food colouring into the mix and stir (I actually found the red really hard to work it but I got there in the end. Also, yes they are weaning spoons!!)

Then pour the mix into the baking trays, most in the bottom layer and work your way up

Bake at 170oC for 25 minuets or until a cocktail stick pushed into the centre comes out clean (Someone came to the door just as it was time to take them out the oven so they were cooked a bit too long and spit, but they will be fine)

Wait for them to cool slightly then turn them out onto a cooling tray and wait to cool completely before decorating.

TO DECORATE

Obviously you can decorate it how ever you like but this is what I did.

INGREDIENTS:

Jam

butter cream (you can easily make your own but I bought white from the supermarket)

ready roll fondant icing (again, you can make your own but I also cheated and got it from the supermarket)

Gel food colouring

METHOD:

Put jam and butter cream on the top of one of the cakes and place the other talk on top

Then cover the while cake in butter cream so the fondant has something to stick to. Smooth with a spatula or pallet knife and put in the fridge to harden

Cover a clean work surface in icing sugar and kneed the fondant until it reaches a workable consistency (it's a bit like play dough). Then roll the fondant out until it is around 3mm/4mm thick, taking care to have plenty of icing sugar to stop it sticking.

Carefully pick it up, rolling it round the rolling pin and draping it over the cake. Then smooth it down and cut off any excess (there are loads of videos on Youtube on how to use fondant icing)

To colour the fondant use a cocktail stick to put some of the food colouring onto the fondant. Then (I'd recommend you wear food grade gloves so you don't die your hand) kneed the colour in. It doesn't take long before you start seeing it change colour. 

If it's not as dark as you'd like then ass more and kneed again. Remember to use plenty of icing sugar to prevent sticking

When all the colours are kneaded in you can decorate it how you like (I was going to put small letters on the cake but the cutters were meant for use with flower pate or Mexican paste)

If the fondant starts getting a little dry when your working with it then kneed it again and it softens up

And to stick the fondant down just use a little water

Also once it was dry all the icing sugar faded so it's not covered in white specks

It went down amazingly. Everyone was really shocked and quite surprised why I wanted them all to look at it before it was cut! I'm so glad I made it

Martini zabaglione

I got the inspiration loosely from this recipe

From making the champagne cupcakes I had 6 egg yolks left over so decided I would make zabaglione. I had some double cream in the house but was wondering what to put in for the alcohol. I looked online for recipes and they said "marsala wine" and a few said "vermouth". I had no idea where I was going to get either of these things from but my husband said that Martini was vermouth (which he learned from James Bond *sigh*) and I happened to have some of that in the house. So Martini zabaglione was made. And it was AMAZING. If for what ever reason I happen to have some Martini and/or 6 egg yolks hanging round the house I'll defiantly be making it again.

INGREDIENTS:
(it made 6-just)

6 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup Martini
1 teaspoon cinnamon
splash of vanilla extract
284ml double cream (obviously doesn't need to be EXACTLY 284ml of cream but that is how big the Elmlea pots are so it's a rough guide really)

METHOD:

Half fill a large saucepan with water and bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer.


Put the egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla extract and Martini in a large stainless steel bowl

Put the stainless steel bowl onto to the simmering pan (the water should not be touching the bottom of the bowl) then whisk the mixture for all it's worth for a good 10 minutes making sure the water doesn't boil.

It should look like this:

Take the bowl off for the mixture to cool but stir occupationally so it doesn't stick to the bowl

Whisk the cream in a separate bowl until it's stiff

When the custard as cooled a little add 3/4 of the cream to the custard mix and stir in gently

Spoon equal amounts into glasses

Add a spoon of the left over cream to each

Put them in the fridge to cool

And wow! That's all I can say about it!!

Champagne cupcakes with champagne icing

I got the inspiration from this recipe


These were also made for my mother-in-laws birthday along with the carrot cupcakes in my first blog. I used the same brown paper cupcake cases and I bought some edible (rice paper) butterflys to decorate.


Second piece of must have equipment is some "cups". You know, the american measuring cups which make measuring   ingredients easier?! Well, get some :-) 


Before I made these I was a bit sceptical that they were going to taste of anything and I'm not a huge champagne fan but someone showed me the recipe a few months ago and I happened to have 3 bottles of champagne laying round the house (like you do) and thought it would be a nice thing to make for a special occasion. Well, they are pretty amazing if I do say so myself. The sponge was so soft and the icing was unbelievably bad for you but it is a pretty perfect cake. 

INGREDIENTS
(it says it makes 20 but with my perfect measure of one ice cream scoop per cake it made 24)


2 3/4 cups self raising flour
3 tsp. baking soda (says babking powder on the original but I used soda to make it lighter
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
3/4 cup champagne (I used Veuve Edouard as it was just one of the ones I had in the house)
6 egg whites


ICING:
5 cups icing sugar
2 cups butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 tablespoons champagne
(I also added pink food colouring but this is totally optional)


METHOD:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  Prepare a cupcake pan with liners. 

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy.

Sift flour and baking powder into the sugar and butter mix.

Add the champagne

In another large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. 

Fold 1/3 of the whites into cake mix to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites.  

Divide the mix evenly between the cupcake cases using the amazing gadget-ice cream scoop ;-)

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

For the icing:

With an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter until soft. (beware this blows the sugar everywhere. I covered the bowel as best I could with a tea towel to avoid having a white kitchen).  

Add vanilla and champagne (and food colouring), beating on medium until blended.

Then pipe the icing on as desired.

The butterflys had to be added at the last moment before serving for the would have gone soft (this was a recommendation from the retailer)

Well they looked and tasted pretty amazing. You could defiantly taste the champagne and they left a soft, mellow champagne taste in your mouth for a while afterwards. I can actually taste it as I'm writing..mmm :-D Obviously these are NOT recommended for kids birthday parties ;-)