Traditional Christmas Cake

Yes, it's the 'C' word - Christmas. I haven't even started to think about anything else related to Christmas other than the cake. This is simply because this cake needs to be made in advance to mature for Christmas and be at it's best. It does seem early, but just trust me on this!

This recipe is our family recipe for Christmas cakes, used by my mum since before I was born I think. It originally came from one of the booklets that my mum collected in the 1970's as part of the Cordon Bleu cookery course. There were quite a few of these booklets hanging around the house when I was younger, but my mum being the tidy person she is (and not a hoarder like me, I got that from my dad) chucked most of them out. However, the booklet with the Christmas Cake recipe was always earmarked to stay safe. The cake is made every year for varying numbers of family members - grandparents, aunties and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces and is also make in mini tins (200g baked bean size, in case you were wondering...) for cake sales at church. Not a cheap cake sale cake, but my mum has requests for these every year from many members of the congregation and they are always massively popular. I think perhaps I'd better start saving my baked bean tins for her again...

There have been a number of minor amendments over the years and so I thought I would record my version of this cake here. As you will see, this is destined to be a Christmas gift (for my dad - I don't think he reads this blog, but if he does... Hi Dad!... then he'll be rather relieved that the cake is made and it's the right one this time) so there are no inside shots.

Last year I completely ran out of time and didn't make this cake, reasoning that I would be better to make a cake that was intended to be eaten soon after making. I found Delia's Last-Minute Sherry Mincemeat Cake and made that instead. It was a disaster. In fact, I was so ashamed of it that I wouldn't even let myself take a photograph of it. I used fruit and nuts for the topping as shown, but they all sank into the middle of the cake, the edges ballooned up and I was embarrassed that I would have to give such a monstrosity as a gift. But having run out of time, I gave it anyway. Hence the need to get ahead on this year's effort.

The year before last I used this same recipe but for some reason (and what with being nearly two years ago I really can't remember what times/temperatures etc I used) the fruit and nuts darkened far too much. I guess I must have misread my recipe. I'm happy to report a better outcome this year.

NB When baking the cake I noted that quite a bit of fat came out of the cake. I was using a lined loose-based tin and having spoken to my mum since making it, she says that this happens to her too, so she doesn't use a loose-based tin. It's up to you, but I'd recommend something under the cake tin to catch the escaping butter if necessary. Hopefully the cake won't be dry....

Traditional Christmas Cake
Ingredients
115g plain flour
pinch salt
1/4 nutmeg, grated
1/2 tsp mixed spice
225g sultanas
175g raisins
115g glace cherries, halved
85g slivered almonds (or blanched almonds, chopped lengthways)
85g butter
grated rind 1/2 lemon (or orange)
85g dark brown soft sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp brandy/rum/sherry or 1 tbsp orange juice

To decorate

Your choice of nuts and fruits - I used brazil nuts, almonds and glace cherries, but my mum always includes walnuts. You could also use hazelnuts, or whatever takes your fancy.

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line a 6"/15cm round, deep (it needs to be deep) tin with a double layer of parchment paper round the sides and on the base - this helps to protect the cake as it bakes.

Preparation stage (can be done the night before):

Put butter, sugar and zest into a large bowl. This needs to be large enough to hold all of the mixture towards the end of mixing.

Put flour, salt, spices into a small bowl.

Put all dried fruit into a medium bowl with the nuts and toss with a tbsp or so of flour.

- Cream the butter, sugar and grated zest until soft and light.

- Add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour after each to help prevent the mixture curdling.

- Fold in half of the flour.

- Fold in the fruit and nuts until well mixed and then add the remaining flour mixture and alcohol/fruit juice and continue to mix until all amalgamated.

- Smooth the top of the cake (if baking without nut decoration, smooth with wet fingers to protect the surface of the cake) and arrange the fruit and nuts as you wish. Our family have always gone for concentric circles.

- Bake for 45 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 160C/Gas 3 (or just under, Gas 3 is apparently 170C), cover the cake with a double thickness of parchment weighed down with an old wooden spoon (or a silicon one like I used) - this is just to protect the surface from over-browning. Continue to bake for a further 45 minutes - 1 hour. Test with a skewer/cake tester. If it comes out clean the cake is done. I ended up leaving mine in for two hours in total.

A note on decoration: The cake is perfectly suitable for making as a plain cake to be covered in marzipan and royal (more traditional) or fondant (newfangled) icing. However, in our family it is always, always covered with a fruit and nut topping. This dates back to the 1970's when there was a shortage of icing sugar and so royal icing couldn't be made. (Yes, I know this sounds odd, but it was 1974, the year of the 3 day week, and many things were in shortage, sugar included! There's an article here.)

To store: When completely cold, wrap the cake in greaseproof paper and over-wrap it with foil. Keep in a cool(ish) place (i.e. not next to a radiator...) until needed.

I don't actually know how long this cake keeps, but a good while if properly wrapped. One year, my mum (making the cakes in September...) was either super-organised and thought to make two for the household, or miscalculated how many relatives needed one and there ended up being two cakes. One was consumed over Christmas and into January and then the other one stayed on top of a tall cupboard, hidden with kitchen rolls or some such kitchen related item. It was eventually rescued in about July, cut into, pronounced 'mature' and 'rather delicious'. So I reckon it'll keep for a while.

Sherry and Craisin Cake

I was searching through various recipe books this weekend, looking for inspiration to bake for a cake sale being held at work today. One of the books in my pile for inspiration was Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet. My criteria for baking were that the item needed to be (relatively) cheap to make, not too time consuming to mix and bake, be sturdy enough to transport without falling apart (getting the bus to work is a pain when it comes  to transporting delicate items or anything involving buttercream!) and have an interesting twist. After all, although I wanted it to sell well I wanted to make something new and different too!

After much flicking of pages, I eventually decided on the Sherry and Cherry cake. I had always skipped past this recipe in the past, assuming (wrongly) that it was a cherry cake using glace cherries. I already have a recipe for a cherry cake that I'm very happy with and didn't see the need for a new one. But when I looked more closely, this was made using dried cherries and as I happened to have (a little) sherry in the house this recipe looked very appealing.

I didn't use cherries though - I used sweetened dried cranberries, sometimes known as Craisins. Simply because I appear to have bulk bought them at some point in the past when they were on special offer, and they now need using up. My sherry (of which I used a touch less than specified because I'm running out!) is a fairly standard supermarket amontillado (the same one as I used for my sherry raisin cheesecake). This is labelled medium dry, rather than the sweet specified in the recipe. Ah well!

The slightly unusual method of layering half of the batter into the tin, then topping with half of the cranberries then repeating worked well to stop the cranberries all ending up at the bottom of the tin. Along with the batter being slightly stiffer than cake mix sometimes is, and tossing the cranberries in a bit of flour, my cranberries floated! In fact, the ones on the top of the cake barely moved at all, in spite of me gently pushing them down a bit as specified. The only (very minor) down side to this was that the cranberries tossed in flour that stayed put on the top had a tendency to be a little on the dark side, and looked a little 'floury' in places. Minor quibble. Next time I might only toss half of the cranberries in flour and push the ones on the top in a bit more! A version of the recipe can be found here on the Guardian website. You'll have to buy the book for this version!

A quick note on tin sizes. I have 2lb loaf tins that have internal measurements of 11x22x7cm at the top of the tin, and two sizes of loaf tin that I regard as 1lb loaf tins. These are a squat tin (traditional style) with measurements 15x9x7.5cm and finally, a broader tin with measurements of 19x9x6cm. It was this final size of tin that I used, with the recommendation being a 'deep, 17cm long loaf tin or similar'. I was pleased with this choice - the cake mix would have been dwarfed in the big tin, and the little tin would have taken ages to cook through. I left my cake longer than specified (about 10-15 mins) but it would have taken longer still in the smaller tin.

What a lovely cake! The crumb was quite sturdy - making it idea to transport into work for the cake sale and perfect to accompany a cup of tea or coffee. I found the flavour here really intriguing - I didn't really think that the cake tasted obviously of sherry (and wasn't expecting it to - there isn't that much sherry in the recipe!) but there was a lovely, lovely background note of something I couldn't quite identify but which blended really well with the sweet crumb of the cake and the slight sharpness of the cranberries. Overall very successful indeed.

Sherry, raisin and apricot cheesecake

I'm not very keen on traditional Christmas pudding, and my very kind family gave me free rein to create this year's Christmas dessert. I honestly have no idea how I decided to make this particular thing, because I don't like sherry either!

J mentioned to me that she really likes baked cheesecakes, and had previously mentioned that she likes the kind of cheesecake with dried fruit baked in it, so I went with that as an idea.

I searched a few sites for a cheesecake recipe, and eventually decided to adapt this recipe on the BBC Good Food website. It seems to have pretty much universally positive reviews and as a relative cheesecake novice, especially with baked ones, I wanted a pretty foolproof recipe. My adaptations were to add the flavours I wanted and to change the tin size - there weren't going to be many of us, and an 8" cake would have been too big. I wanted to halve the recipe and bake in a 6" round, but although being convinced I had one somewhere, couldn't find it and ended up with a 7" springform tin. Calculations told me that I should do 3/4 of the recipe, but I actually ended up with nearer 2/3 of the recipe, which gave a deep enough cheesecake for us.

I made this on Christmas Eve, to allow it to sit overnight in the fridge for Christmas day. I was travelling to family during the day, and so put the raisins and apricots to soak in the morning, making the cheesecake in the early evening.

Sherry raisin and apricot cheesecake
Ingredients
For pre-soaking
100g raisins
70g dried apricots, chopped to be about the same size as the raisins

approx 100ml Amontillado Sherry (I have unsophisticated tastes in alcohol, feel free to substitute something you like!)

For the cheesecake
100g ginger biscuits
50g butter
400g cream cheese (I used 250g full fat and 150g half fat cream cheese from Tesco)
10g plain flour
120g vanilla caster sugar
small splash vanilla extract
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
100ml soured cream

Method

- In the morning, put the raisins and chopped apricots in a small tub and cover with the sherry. Leave to soak. The liquid will not all be soaked up.

When ready to make the cheesecake

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

- Melt the butter over a gentle heat and crush the ginger biscuits.

- Combine the two and press onto the base of a 7" (18cm) springform tin.

- Bake for 5 minutes.

- In the meantime put the cream cheese, flour, soured cream, sugar, vanilla extract, egg and egg yolk in a large bowl. Beat well until combined. Mine did not go fluffy as the website recipe suggests. I just mixed until it was smooth.

- Tip the soaked fruit into the creamy mixture and mix to combine, but don't tip in the remaining liquid sherry - this is cook's perk - drink it if you want!

- Pour over the ginger biscuit base, trying to ensure the fruit is fairly evenly spread.

- Wrap the tin in foil to contain any leaks, unless you're very sure of your baking tins. I'm glad I wrapped mine because it leaked just a little.

- Bake for 40-50 minutes - see notes below. I think I probably left mine in for about an hour.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.

- Refrigerate overnight before serving.

Notes

- I completely forgot to grease the tin, but it didn't seem to matter too much. I ran a knife around the edge to release the cheesecake.

- I overbaked my cheesecake - it cracked fairly deeply, but I'm never sure how much 'wobble' to leave and I would rather over than underbake it. None of us minded the texture (and in fact, I'm not sure how the texture should have been!)

Well, I'm not sure it would pass muster with cheesecake experts but I thoroughly enjoyed this dessert! Which is saying something really, because I really am not keen on sherry or alcohol much in general. Both T and J enjoyed this too, and there were leftovers for a couple of days too, which were very welcome. I will definitely have to experiment further with baked cheesecakes, I had forgotten just how much I love the taste and texture and this was utterly gorgeous. Yum, yum, yum!