Dilemmas of the Christmas Cake variety

I'm coming to the conclusion that our taste buds have memories.

Most of the year I can happily do without fruit cake. Chocolate usually springs to mind. Yule logs are chocolaty and rather festive, aren't they? One might think they're the perfect combo, for this time of the year. I had noticed, earlier in the month that Pig in the Kitchen had come up with a tempting looking recipe, for one of these. However, come Christmas, it seems desirable, in fact necessary, to partake of the slightly more traditional fruit-full festive favourite. 

Growing up, I remember that I didn't enjoy the cake at all - although I loved the covering - marzipan and icing. However, with age, it grew on me, to the point where I couldn't imagine Christmas without it. 

You might wonder why I'm blogging about this after the Big Day, but you see the thing is, over the years, my mother only seemed to get 'round to decorating her cake, after the event - usually Boxing Day. I seem to have inherited this trait, which seems slightly lacking of me, BUT, it turns out that this is actually more traditional than you might think! The origins of the Christmas cake apparently came from the tradition of baking a cake to celebrate Epiphany and the arrival of the Three Kings on Twelfth Night - a tradition that ended with Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan ideals.

The Hub is not a fan of Christmas cake. Baby does not like fruit cake. So it was that a month or so ago, I was puzzling over what to do about a Christmas cake this year. I did consider making a gluten and dairy free version, but fairly quickly abandoned the idea - after all, much as I love this cake, I couldn't imagine eating a whole one, all my myself!!!

However, I rather wanted to continue the Christmas cake decorating tradition - I have fond memories of decorating the cake, with my mum, and wanted to recreate that with Baby. I did consider buying a ready-iced slice, or what can only be described as a 'chunk,' of Christmas cake (such forms of Christmas cake are readily available in the supermarkets) but really I wanted a small round version -  a miniature of the 'real thing.' I wanted something that could be marzipanned, iced and so on.

I finally found the answer in a cake by a firm called 'The Village Bakery,' which I found in my nearest health food shop. It's organic as well as both dairy and gluten free and being only 450g in weight, the perfect size, so I thought, for me... and maybe Baby as well, if she fancied it.

And here it is:

The ingredients (just in case you're wondering) were as follows:

Sultanas, Raisins, Ground Almonds, Eggs, Sunflower Oil, Brown Rice Syrup, Dates, Apricots, Concentrated Apple Juice, Manioc Flour, Molasses, Cinnamon, Mixed Spice, Raising Agent, Baking Powder

All I needed (on Boxing Day, of course) to do was coat it with some jam, (I think you're supposed to use apricot, but I only had strawberry to hand) roll out some marzipan and slap it on.

The marzipan I used was by Dr Oetker. It contained Sugar, Almonds, Glucose Syrup, Invert Sugar and Water.

The final layer, the icing, was mixed from scratch. It contained the usual: icing sugar, egg white, water and a dash of lemon. 

Icing on, Baby (with a little direction from me) added the decorations.

It may look a little over decorated to you, but believe me, this cake is getting off lightly - you should see the other cake, which Baby decorated unleashed!! That one had a large Easter chick on it - foolishly left in the box of cake decorations, by my mother!!

Once the cake was decorated, Baby couldn't wait to eat it and neither could I, but we had to let the icing set... we didn't leave it for that long though - just an hour or so.

Baby had some. I had a bit more and it was alright, although not as rich as I remembered the Christmas cake of my childhood - maybe I should have fed it with some booze. I'd give that a try next year, but for some reason this cake has made my gut sore - not it's fault - I seem to have developed as sensitivity to a spice or two (following a recentish porridge enriching experiment, I'm thinking the cinnamon). 

So, for me, it's back to the drawing board *sigh*! Next year I may have to begin a new tradition - of baking yule logs. At least I know where to find the perfect recipe!

Related Posts:
Dairy free ways to decorate your tree
Treating Father Christmas (Mince Pies)

Baking with Baby - Flapjacks

Hurrah! Got home from my Monday mum's group, this morning, to find my latest acquisition poking through the letterbox - my new dairy free and gluten free cookbook. Although, as I often explain, I'm no 'Nigella' I was 'sold' this book the other day by an online review from 'Pig in the Kitchen.' 


'Pig' in case you don't know posts lots of yummy recipes online, which I honestly like the look of but have not been brave enough to try... yet! For now, I just follow her posts and drool!! However, I took a sneaky peak at 'The Intolerant Gourmet' online, at Amazon (having read Pig's review) and thought I might just give it a go - particularly as it contained a recipe I thought would suit even me!

'Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!' I thought, after ordering the book.' Even I can make flapjacks.' With that thought in mind, and not able to wait until the new book arrived, I grabbed my old faithful cookery book off the shelf and dug out the flapjack recipe. Yep! Everything I needed I had in the cupboard and there was stuff that Baby could do too - Baby LOVES cooking!

"Let me! Let me!" squeaked Baby, so we got out the baking tin and rubbed margarine round it. I put the oven on and got out the saucepan. Baby helped scoop out margarine (150g/6oz) and put it in the pan. Having set that on a gentle heat to melt, we weighed out the demerara sugar (150g/6oz) and we added it to the pan. Once the sugar and margarine had melted and been mixed together, we added the oats (200g/8oz - gluten free) and mixed them in too, with a wooden spoon. It really took no time at all. 'Wow! I thought, 'I'd forgotten quite how easy they are to make and pretty quick too!'

As we emptied the mixture into the pan, it really didn't look like it was going to cover the bottom of the tin and even if it did, it looked as though it would only make wafer thin flapjacks. I looked back at the recipe. The lovely pile of flapjacks pictured there looked nothing like those that we were making. 


Just then, I noted that the recipe actually said that for a moister flapjack, you should use half the amount of sugar and use golden syrup instead. 'Rats!' I thought, 'golden syrup would make it yummier and a moister flapjack would be much nicer!' At that point, I had my first brainwave! I decided to make a second batch with just golden syrup  (1 tablespoon = 1oz) and combine the two. That way the mixture in the tin would look more generous and we would have more to eat as well!

That done, we put the flapjacks in the oven and I set my new baking best friend (my kitchen timer) to the right time (30-35 minutes). My timer has made all the difference in the world to my cooking (along with my other new baking best friend which is my oven thermometer). Before I had these, my cakes came out very badly indeed - partly because our the temperature of our (inherited) oven doesn't seem to match with the thermostat and partly because I wasn't keeping a close enough eye on it. 

My new BFF

The only problem, was that I should have turned the oven down (to 180 degrees C/gas mark 4) earlier. I had put it on high as the oven takes so long to heat up and as a result my flapjacks came out looking  somewhat overdone. 'Oh dear!' I thought, 'I can't even cook flapjacks any more!' 


However, I consoled myself with the recollection that whenever my mother had a baking disaster, when we were kids, we had eaten it and enjoyed it anyway. 


It was then that I had my second brainwave of the afternoon - to pick off the most burnt looking bits and use the wedding anniversary chocolate from Hotel Chocolat.


Originally, this had been intended for a bit of romantic 'a deux' fruit dipping, but those plans had been rudely overturned by Baby. However, this was now melted and drizzled 'artistically' over the top of my flapjacks. Et voila! Not only did they look quite good (by now) they also tasted quite good too (even better the next day, I discovered). 

Et Voila! (Try and ignore the overdone bits!)

'Maybe I have the makings of a domestic goddess after all,' I thought. 'After all I bet Pippa Kendrick never drizzled chocolate over her flapjacks.' And indeed, I found (as I studied her book, with glee) she hadn't. However, as I perused her book a bit more, I realised that indeed I still have along way to go. 'Pippa,' I decided, 'you need fear nothing from me. I am far from being a gourmet of any description, never mind an intolerant one!'


Mind you, bet she's never come across Mrs Watkin's Yum Yum cake - more on that another day! In the meantime, there's a few intolerant recipes that I might have to try... rhubarb streusel looks yum and so do some certain chocolate brownies!