Classic Rich Christmas Cake

Every year Anna makes a tasty Christmas cake, in a variety of styles.  This year we had the classic christmas fruit cake.

Christmas cake just like your Granny makes it.

This style of Christmas Cake is a bit bonkers to make.  You start it in September, and feed it Brandy once a week like some strange creature under the stairs.  This gets it good and moist and delicate, and probably keeping it sloshed stops it escaping in the middle of the night after tearing up the soft furnishings in the living room.  Anyway, when its time you cover the whole thing in marzipan and then again in royal icing as the British have done since time immemorial.

The main problem with this cake is that store bought ones are actually pretty good.  There is a slight juiciness (and a real brandy hit) present here that you wouldn’t otherwise get, and for those of us who don’t want nuts in the cake its good to make one without.  Of course, this cake tastes great if you like fruit cake, and it keeps forever so I can be merrily stealing slithers well into March if it’s not gone by then.  A foresighted sort of chap like myself sees this as a great reason to make your own Christmas cake, preferably two sizes too large.

Who made it: Anna did all the work, Dan helped with the decorations.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, page 91.

Love Heart Fairy Cakes

For Valentines Day Anna surprised me with

Love Hearts

Which are fairy cakes coated in icing and decorated with, well, hearts!  We all know how yummy fairy cakes are when fresh, and the presentation here adds something a little special.

The Marks and Spencers Chocolate Hearts on top are really tasty!

Anna actually made two types: the chocolate heart and silver ball design above, and a red marzipan heart:

Anna had to keep me out of the kitchen whilst making them, so she couldn't wait for the red food colouring to dry...

We’re never that successful at using food colourings to make things look professional – here the problem was that the red colouring in the marzipan wasn’t dry.  To get it right it needs to have a couple of hours in the fridge but of course Anna couldn’t keep me out of the kitchen that long

These are tasty as you’d expect, and extremely moreish. For “research” purposes we had shop bought cakes at lunchtime, and they weren’t a patch on these!  Fresh fairy cakes are a magical thing.

Side note: I figured out how to use manual focus on our camera, producing better results I think (top picture).  This is my first food photography that I’ve been happy with.

Who made it: Anna.

Recipe: “Fairy Cakes” by Joanna Farrow, page 31.  Though really you don’t need a recipe because google knows how to make fairy cakes and the decoration has to use whatever you have!

Christmas flavoured fairy cakes

Fairy cakes come in all shapes and sizes.  So next Christmas why not try:

Mini Christmas Cakes

A “Fruit and nut” variation on the standard fairy cake, when coated in royal icing and decorated accordingly these cakes have all the good bits of Christmas Cake with the best of fairy cakes.  Not as heavy or stodgy as their bigger, jolly cousin, they are still more substantial than an ordinary fairy cake and keep a lot better.

Left: Icing sugar inverse holly leaf. Top and Right: Mini Christmas Cakes coated with marzipan, royal icing and sugar decorations.

These were boxed up attractively and given as a Christmas gift to a family member (Hi Tony!), along with some standard fairy cakes in a variety of decoration schemes.  I can’t speak for his opinion, but we’ve made these before and they are really tasty.  The nuts help create a more complex flavour, but it is important not put in too many bitter varieties to keep the taste sweet.

These obviously belong in with the December posts but these were delayed due to bad weather… there was the wrong type of snow on the internet wires or something.  Oh yes – I was worried the snowmen in the field would come and get me if they saw their poor doomed friend above.

Who made it: Anna made the cake, and insists Dan helped by cleaning up the leftovers. That is not true, of course, but I better not tell her that..

Recipe: “Fairy Cakes”, by Joanna Farrow, page 30.

Yum, its Christmas…

I’m starting this blog at Christmas, so no surprises that the first thing we see is:

Christmas Cake

This a “fast Christmas Cake” recipe, and doesn’t need to be made months in advance.  Basically you throw “mincemeat” (the mixed fruit you get in mince pies) in with flour and other basic ingredients, bake, then put some marzipan on (shop bought).  It then gets left for a week (I don’t know why…) before getting covered in the amazing looking “Royal Icing”, which is icing sugar, egg and water in a really thick solution.  You ooze that onto the cake, then as it dries create the little “peaks” for decoration.

Fast Christmas Cake

As for taste, its pretty good.  Soft and moist compared to traditional Christmas Cake, but with a fairly standard taste that doesn’t scream originality.  This makes it better than most shop bought cakes, but you might beat it with a luxury buy.  Well, I suppose Christmas Cake is eaten everywhere the Empire has been for a reason – it is hard to improve on!

All in all, quite a success.

Who made it: a joint effort between Anna and Dan, with Anna doing the bulk of the planning.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, page 99.