I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about gifts this year, to be honest I always do. I love finding or making things completely personal to the person I am giving it to. I sometimes go slightly overboard.
I have a friend I have know since Primary School. We’re both quite skint this year, so I have bought her something little and personal (which I am not writing here in case she sees). I have also got her little neice something, as well as her sister and hubby. For her Mum and Dad I have made a Christmas Cake. Which I will also be travelling with *cries*.
I’ve used my favourite Christmas Cake recipe, which is lighter than most you get. I think the original is from BBC Good Food, but don’t quote me on that! I have coupled it with a fluffy Orange flavoured icing instead of the Orange Marzipan and Fondant I used last year. But either is good. Really good actually. Though possibly not traditional at all.
I’m not sure about the blue. My icing was a vague yellow. You can’t have yellow snow on a cake, that’s just wrong, so I bunged blue food colouring in. Now it’s blue snow, which looks even stranger. Win some, lose some.
Ingredients
For the cake
350g Rasins
125g Currents
125g Sultanas
50g ground Almonds
1/2 tsp mixed Spice
1 tsp ground Ginger
1 tbsp Treacle
200ml Ginger Wine
200g unsalted Butter
200g dark Muscovado Sugar
4 eggs
200g plain flour
For the Icing
350g Icing Sugar
150g unsalted Butter
4tbsp Double Cream
4tsp Orange Extract
Method
1. Soak all the dry fruit in the Ginger Wine overnight, so that the fruit becomes plump.
2. Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease and line the baking tin with baking parchment.
3. Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy and light. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. Then add in the flour, ground almond and spices.
4. Stir in the fruit and any of the wine that hasn’t soaked in. Add the treacle and mix until everything is well combined.
5. Put the mixture into the lined tin and bake for 30mins. Turn the oven down to 150C and bake until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool before turning out of the tin.
6. Beat all the icing ingredients in a bowl until fully combined, then when the cake is fully cooled, ice. The Christmas trees I have used on mine are just Ice Cream Cones. You dip them in melted White Chocolate, and rolled in Sprinkles. I have also added gold and silver Dragees as baubles.
Note: The original recipe called for the cake to be baked for two hours at the lower heat. But I have never done that, and it seems to have worked out fine!
