A piece of cake
MY Christmas essential, before the cake or the turkey, is a roaring fire. The orange flames licking the back of my cold and tired legs, the warm glow and the shadows dancing around the room are the essence of Christmas.
The smells of Christmas are ingrained in my memory: the boiling ham; the pine-fresh tree; the sausage rolls being taken from the oven; the pudding bubbling noisily away in its pot, filling the house with steamy windows; the chocolate icing for the Christmas log, and the smell of cinnamon cookies sitting on a baking rack.
The pudding and Christmas cakes have been baked by most of you avid bakers by now, but it is still not too late.
The cake recipe here is the one my mother has been using down for years, with the unusual addition of a tin of strawberries.
The almond icing to cover the cake is also nice eaten separately. I steal little pieces as I am rolling it.
Christmas is not Christmas without mince pies. The recipe here contains the basic sweet pastry that I use in all of my baking, for apple tarts, mini jam tarts, and chocolate ganache tartlets.
It is a great, staple recipe to have in your repertoire and works particularly well for a mince pie.
These simple, cinnamon butter cookies can be cut into whatever shape you wish.
I often use star or snowflake cutters for a festive feeling.
The Americans call the last confection bark.
You can tailor the recipe with your favourite ingredients, and use whichever type of chocolate you wish.
For more baking recipes, pick up Michelle’s The Cake Cafe Bake Book from www.thecakecafe.ie or in all bookstores.
250g of brown sugar
225g butter
270g raisins
270g sultanas
360g currants
120g almonds
275g plain flour
225g peel
222g glacé cherries washed and patted dry and chopped, (health food shops have real glacé cherries)
zest of 1 lemon
1 tin of strawberries drained
a glass of whiskey/ brandy or rum
1 apple, grated
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp nutmeg
5 medium eggs
½ glass of sherry
Put all fruit except cherries into a bowl, add the whiskey and leave to soak over night.
Beat the butter and brown sugar, then add the strawberries. Gently beat in the egg. Add a little flour if curdling. Fold in flour with spices.
Fold in soaked fruit, cherries and grated apple,followed by the sherry.
Line an eight-inch tin and bake in a cardboard box on a tray of salt for three hours at 100 degrees and one hour at 140 degrees.
250 g of icing sugar
75 g of honey
100 g of water
500 g of ground almonds
1/2 tsp of almond essence
50 g of brandy
I use a food processor for this as it takes a bit of blending. Place the ground almonds into the processor.
Meat the sugar and honey in the water over a low heat. Turn on your processor and pour the hot liquid onto the almonds. Pour in the almond essence and half of the brandy. Turn it up to a medium setting and allow to mix until it is completely smooth. Add the rest of the brandy as needed.
Wrap the ball in baking parchment and leave in the fridge of at least 3 hours. You will need to use icing sugar when you roll it out.
I use apricot jam to adhere the almond paste to the cake.
3 egg whites
600g of icing sugar
A couple of drops of lemon juice
Beat egg white and icing sugar to add air. Add the lemon juice slowly until the icing it is the right consistency for spreading over your cake. A little lemon juice goes a long way so be careful adding it.
Makes 12 with approx a 7 cm cutter
155g plain flour, sieved
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp white sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
125g of cold butter, cut into cubes
Preheat the oven to 160 C.
Mix the flour and both of the sugars with the cinnamon. Rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Bring the dough together to form a ball and leave in the fridge for at least an hour.
On a lightly floured surface roll the dough to about 5 ml thickness. Cut out the 12 stars.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes until they are turning golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
200g of dark chocolate, broken into little pieces about the size of a two cent coin
1 tsp of honey
60g of almonds chopped
60g of dried cranberries chopped
Gold edible glitter
Line a baking tray with parchment and set aside. You will need an oven proof bowl that sits snugly on top of a saucepan but it does not touch the base of the saucepan. Fill the saucepan to about third with boiling water. Place the broken chocolate and the honey in the heat proof bowl and place on top of the saucepan. Leave it to melt resisting the urge to stir.
Pour it out on to the parchment spread to what ever size you like. I like to keep it a bit thick. Then sprinkle with the almonds and cranberries.
Leave it to harden and break it into large pieces once it has set. Sprinkle with the gold glitter before serving.
Makes enough for about 30 mince pies depending on the size of your tin.
450g flour
275g butter
110g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 pinch of salt
Preheat your oven to 180C Sieve flour and salt. Rub in butter, do not over mix. You want it to look like large breadcrumbs.
Dissolve the sugar in the eggs, mix it lightly and add to the flour with a fork. Bring it all together with your hands.
Wrap in baking parchment and rest the pastry over night or for at least 3 hours.
To make the mine pies: Butter and flour 3 cupcake tins and set aside. You can make them in batches of 12 if you just have the one tin.
Roll out your pastry to about 3ml thickness and cut out 30 circles with an 8 cm cutter then cut out 30 smaller stars.
Gently place a circles into the tins. Do not wedge them in as they will gently fall in place by themselves.
Place a tea spoon of mince in the centre of each of the circles. Leave at least 5ml free of mince around the edge as it will spread when it is heated. Place a star on top of each pie and bake for about 15 minutes in an oven heated to 180C. The pastry should be turing golden and the mince bubbling. Once the pies are cool enough to handle pop them out of the tin with the tip of a butter knife and leave to cool on a wire rack. You can sprinkle them with a little icing sugar if you wish.
2 large apples, peeled, cored and grated
500g sultanas
350g raisins
200g chopped peel
4 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
500g of nuts finally chopped
200mls of dark rum
Zest of 2 oranges, plus the juice of 4
Zest and juice of 2 lemons
350g dark muscovado sugar
200g vegetable suet
Combine all the ingredients except the muscovado sugar and suet in a large saucepan. Place over a low heat and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or until the fruit has plumped up and most of the liquid has evaporated but it isn’t dry.
Set aside to cool, then stir in the muscovado sugar and suet.
Sterilise your jars in a hot oven after washing them. Divide the mincemeat between the hot jars and set aside to cool. Store in a cool place for up to six months. You will get just over 2 kg of mince.
