Easter Biscuits

Posted on April 3, 2012 by timeforalittlesomething

Another Easter recipe for you! This one’s a bit more old fashioned, and would make a great afternoon tea over the holiday weekend.

It comes from Alexa Johnston’s sequel to Ladies, A Plate – A Second Helping. They’re rather lovely biscuits – crisp and lemony, with crunchy sugar on top.

The dough is a delicate one to deal with – so chill it well before you roll it out so it’s good and firm. I rolled out half and left the remainder in the fridge, then started again.

Easter Biscuits

5oz butter, slightly softened
4oz caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 egg yolks
8oz flour
¼ cup currants
pinch mixed spice

for the glaze:
1 egg white
extra caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar with the lemon zest. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Work in the sifted flour, spice and currants until you have a fairly stiff paste. Put the dough in the fridge in a covered bowl, and leave there for 10-15 minutes.

Sprinkle the bench with cornflour to help the dough from sticking, and roll it out fairly thinly (I think 3-5mm), and cut biscuits (I used a 7-8cm fluted cutter). Place carefully on the lined baking trays, and brush with the lightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Bake for 10-15 minutes – mine only took 10, and watch them carefully, as they turn from lightly golden to crispily brown very quickly. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

Home-made Easter Eggs

Posted on March 24, 2012 by timeforalittlesomething

Easter is turning into my second Christmas with all sorts of things to try in the kitchen. Hot cross buns, Easter Biscuits (keep an eye out, I’ll post them), and today, Easter Eggs!

I tried these last year and fell in love with them! You need a bit of time to make them, and they do create a few dishes, but they’re actually really easy and very fun. And I imagine they’re super cool to make with kids.

The recipe below is for either strawberry or peppermint eggs, they’re my favourite so far, but you could experiment with flavours. I’ve been thinking about trying orange, caramel, mocha… or rum. Maybe not one for the kids.

Marshmallow is easy and very cheap to make at home; it’s one of those things you wouldn’t think to make yourself, but once you start you may never stop. So you just whip them up, shape into eggs, let them set and roll them in chocolate. I came across the method of shaping them by making your own egg ‘mould’ out of flour in a magazine last year, and it works really well for these. Have fun!

Home Made Easter Eggs

Stuff you’ll need:

a couple of deep baking dishes or trays (you don’t need to bake anything in them, they just need to be 4-5cm deep and fit in your fridge).
a small egg (I used a small-ish size 6)
quite a lot of flour – probably a whole packet (1.5kg). You don’t actually use any flour, just borrow it – you can tip the lot back into the packet when you’re done.
an electric beater. My trusty kenwood did the trick, or the hand held electric kind would probably be ok, but I wouldn’t recommend mixing by hand.

Ingredients:
¼ cup cold water
1 Tbsp gelatin
1 cup sugar
another ½ cup cold water
small squeeze lemon juice
½ tsp strawberry or peppermint essence
few drops pink or green food colouring
packet dark chocolate buttons (I like Nestlé)
1 tsp flavourless oil (rice bran, canola etc)

1. Time to make marshmallow. Put the first measure of cold water in a small ramekin or bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the top and put it to one side to let the gelatin swell. Put the sugar and second measure water in a medium saucepan, and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Tip the gelatin mixture in and stir til that dissolves too. Increase the heat and get it boiling. Boil steadily for 5 minutes. Keep an eye on it as it has a tendency to rise up quickly. After 5 minutes, take off the heat and set it aside to cool.

2. While the gelatin’s boiling, fill the baking dish with flour. Take your size 6 egg and press it gently into the flour so you leave an egg-shaped impression. This is the mould you set the marshmallow in. I just press the egg in about a third of the way down – this means you end up with finished eggs about the size of bought marshmallow eggs. Your mould should look like this:

3. Back to the marshmallow. You only need to cool the gelatin for 3 or 4 minutes, then carefully pour it into the bowl of your mixer, and get it moving. Mix on high speed for a few minutes (5 or 6 I think), until it looks like pavlova mixture – thick, creamy, but still runny enough to pick up and dollop with a spoon. Kind of like this:

Add the small squeeze of lemon (or white vinegar would probably do the trick), essence and food colouring and beat again til it’s mixed through.

4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into each egg hollow. When the tray’s full, pop it in the fridge. I leave mine to set for about half an hour, but longer would be fine too if you want to pop away and do something else.

5. Once you’re ready to coat the eggs in chocolate, gently melt the chocolate in a clean, dry bowl, and stir the oil through. Get a piece of baking paper ready on the bench. Gently pick each egg up – you’ll find you can easily handle it with your fingertips on the flour-y side of the egg. Gently brush off the excess flour, and roll the marshmallow in the chocolate to coat it. Use whatever works for you, I’ve settled on using two teaspoons. Leave your easter eggs on the baking paper to set (or put them in the fridge on a warm day), then try to make them last!

This is also my entry for Sweet NZ, a monthly food blogging event started by Alessandra Zecchini and hosted this month by Emma at My Darling Lemon Thyme.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

One ha’penny, Two ha’penny

Posted on March 20, 2012 by timeforalittlesomething

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons,
one ha’penny, two ha’penny, Hot Cross Buns!

And other nonsense.

Are you looking forward to Easter? We don’t have any plans as such but I’m looking forward to a couple of extra days off to relax.

And I really love doing a bit of baking in the lead-up to Easter! I relax my usual policies on healthy eating in favour of a wee few treats. Starting with these hot cross buns.

I know not everyone’s into spicy, fruity hot cross buns, but I think they’re delicious. Has the first person in your office warmed up a hot cross bun in the microwave at work yet? I’ve always taken that as the signal that autumn has arrived (although the weather is also giving some strong clues today).

I think I was the first one this year! I took one of these little buns to work for morning tea yesterday. Sometimes you need to cheer yourself up on Monday mornings.

This recipe comes from the lovely Dame Alison Holst and her son Simon, from their New Zealand Bread Book. This is a terrific book if you have a breadmaker. I’ve made all sorts of stuff from it, and it’s been really tasty (see posts on pizza dough, catalan tomato bread, and yoghurt rolls). Easy recipes to adjust to your own taste, and experiment with too, if that’s your thing.

I won’t reproduce another recipe from the Holsts’ book, but I’ve found a very similar one they published in the newspaper last year which I can share with you. This one differs from mine by including cocoa powder and honey, yum! I like their Xs instead of + crosses, too (by the way, you can make your own pastry for these instead of store-bought stuff by mixing 30g cold butter, 1/2 cup high grade flour and a wee splash of water).

For those that aren’t so much about the spicy, fruity hot cross buns, I might make some chocolate ones too, so stay tuned. And I’m having kind of a crazy few days so unfortunately there won’t be a Friday’s Favourite Five this week. But check back later in the week for some home made marshmallow chocolate Easter Eggs!

Nigella’s Pavlova and a different kind of holiday

Posted on January 17, 2012 by timeforalittlesomething

For me, the summer holidays end today. I’m back to work tomorrow. Well, not back to work, really – I’m starting a new job. And like all new job starts, it’s part exciting and part scary.

I’ve been on holiday for a few weeks now – probably the longest holiday since I was at university, (when I worked most of them at cafes and restaurants anyway). And I have to say, the days before Christmas still didn’t feel like a holiday! I enjoyed them, but there’s something about those 2-3 middle weeks of December that just breeds hectic busy-ness. Then we had a very full house over Christmas (so full my easy-going brother was sleeping across the inside of our front door, guard dog-style), and a slightly-less-full-but-still-double-the-usual-population for a week over New Year’s. It was such a blast having family and friends with us to celebrate the festive season, and it seems so quiet once you wave them off from the driveway. You turn around to an empty house and an even emptier fridge (easy-going brother helped here, too).

Then my husband went back to work, and I still had 10 days of holiday. I’m a little bit of an organisational freak, so I wanted to make sure my days had some kind of structure, but not so filled with endless jobs that I started the new year and my new job tired and behind the 8 ball.

I usually keep my blog posts to recipes, but I’ve had such a great week, I felt I had to share my secret to a great holiday. These are some of the things I’ve done over the last few days. Doesn’t it look boring??! But I really do feel relaxed, refreshed, and ready for new adventures. So during my last few days off, I…
<ul.

went to bed early every night

got up early and did fun and challenging exercise every day

drank gallons of water

ate as much central otago stone fruit as I could lay my hands on

enjoyed taking my time preparing simple, tasty, healthy meals

started a herb garden

took religiously good care of my skin and teeth

read magazines

had coffees, lunches, dinners with old friends

painted my toenails

got a massage

listened to my favourite music, old and new – including the Kylie Minogue of my childhood (put your hand on your heart and tell me you don’t love old school Kylie)

went for walks in parks, gardens, wildlife reserves

managed to avoid sunburn – with my complexion, this is probably the biggest achievement of the week

I don’t write this to be smug! And I am truly sorry to all parents reading this. Don’t worry, I’ll get my come-uppance one day when I have littlies of my own and I’m too exhausted to re-read this post and wish, wish, wish for another week like this. But if you get the opportunity for a few days to yourself, this is a great way to spend them

This feels like a celebratory kind of post, so I thought I’d include this new pavlova recipe (which I tried before my holiday, of course). My dear husband gave me Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat for Christmas, and my nose has been stuck in the book ever since. On top of that, mum and I have been re-thinking whether our family pavlova recipe really is the best one out there, and with thoughts of improving it, I gave Nigella’s a whirl. It’s included in How to Eat as part of a dinner party menu for six titled, as only Nigella could, “Camp, but only slightly, Dinner for 6″. It’s a darker pav than our family one, but Nigella’s tip of serving the pav upside down is a keeper. I’ve included her comments below too.

Pavlova
From Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat

Nigella says: This version comes, appropriately enough, from an Australian book*, Stephanie Alexander’s compendious, addictive Cook’s Companion. I was taken by her family tip of turning the cooked meringue over before smearing it with cream, so that (in her words) the marshmallow middle melds with cream and the sides and the base stay crisp.

4 egg whites at room temperature
250g caster sugar
2 tsp cornflour
1 tsp white wine vinegar
few drops pure vanilla extract
300ml double cream, whipped til firm
pulp of 10 passion fruits

Preheat oven to 180°. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Draw a 20-23cm circle on the paper if this helps you dollop the meringue into an even circle.

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until satiny peaks form. Beat in the sugar, a third at a time, until the meringue is stiff and shiny. Sprinkle over the cornflour, vinegar and vanilla and fold in lightly. Mound on to the paper on the baking tray, flatten the top and smooth the sides. Place in the oven. IMMEDIATELY reduce the heat to 150° and cook for 1¼ hours. Turn off the oven and leave the pavlova in it to cool completely.

Invert the pavlova on to a big, flat-bottomed plate, pile on cream and spoon over passion fruits scooped – pips and all – from their shells. Don’t be tempted to add other fruit**.

*Um, I don’t intend to start that debate on this blog, but felt it needed to be indirectly referred to.
**I was tempted. And yielded. Because I didn’t have fresh passionfruit, ok? I put fresh kiwis on it and served it with beautiful fresh blueberries. I’m sure Nigella would understand.

Raspberry Cloud Cake

Posted on January 7, 2012 by timeforalittlesomething

Golly, I thought I was off to a good start writing my first post back on 1 January 2012, but then I haven’t been back until now! I’ve been trying some new dishes over the last week so I’ve got a few things to share with you over the next few days. I hope you’re enjoying a fabulous summer!

It was my birthday earlier this week. Hooray! I was very spoilt. We had my husband’s sister and her partner staying, so all had pancakes at our local cafe Peppermill, then my sister-in-law and I went into town for manicures and the boys cooked us a bbq dinner. Obviously our nails were too delicate to do dishes, so the boys covered that too.

As for dessert, I told my family that I wanted to make it myself. The thing is, I have loads of dessert and cake recipes marked to try, but throughout the year, there’s only two of us, and we’re fairly conscious of eating healthily, so I don’t always have the opportunity to try them out. So on my birthday, I allow myself to make whatever I want, regardless of how terrible it is for you, or how few people there are to eat it (ironically, this recipe isn’t actually that bad for you, and there were four of us, so we got through it over a couple of days).

I chose this recipe from Annabel Langbein’s The Free Range Cook. It’s a lovely book and worth having for the scenic photography alone. I’ve made a bunch of recipes from the book; I love the way it lists a recipe that might turn into a marinade, salad dressing, dipping sauce, etc. for loads of different foods and dishes, so you get a lot of mileage out of the time you invest in the kitchen. I’ve had my eye on the gorgeous photo of the Strawberry Cloud Cake for ages. The time had come. I used my favourite raspberries in this version, but you can use fresh sliced strawberries, too, as per the original, or I was thinking blueberries might also make a nice variation, maybe with lemon or orange…

I used frozen raspberries. I know they’re in season at the moment – but they are so expensive fresh! And when you’re just going to freeze them anyway… fresh seemed like a silly idea. I used Orchard Gold berries which were terrific.

This cake looks impressive but is SO easy. My sister-in-law asked how I made it, and I told her the ingredients, and described the method as “Stir. Put. Chill. Beat. Put. Freeze.”

Make sure you do have a springform tin before you start; I wouldn’t like to try turning this out of a plain cake tin! And I’m no nutritionist, but please also note that as it contains uncooked egg, very young ‘uns and pregnant ladies might like to steer clear.

One more tip – if you use a dairy-free spread, this cake will be dairy-free, and I think the biscuit crumbs are the only gluten-containing ingredient, so if you use gluten free biscuits, you’ll have a gluten-free cake, too.

Raspberry Cloud Cake
Adapted from Annabel Langbein’s “Strawberry Cloud Cake” in The Free Range Cook
Serves 8-10

Base
150g wine biscuits, crushed into crumbs (or any plain sweet biscuits)
½ cup dessicated coconut
1½ tsp cinnamon
100g butter, melted

Filling
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
250g frozen raspberries (don’t thaw them, use them frozen)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

To serve
fresh or (thawed) frozen raspberries
white chocolate

Line the base of a 26cm springform cake tin with baking paper. I also gave the sides of the tin a light spritz with non-stick spray, just in case.

To make the base, mix the biscuit crumbs, coconut, cinnamon and melted butter together, and press firmly into the base of the prepared tin. It will be quite a thin base. Put that in the fridge while you make the filling.

Put the egg whites, sugar, frozen raspberries, lemon juice and vanilla in an electric mixer and beat for about 8 minutes. The mixture will be thick and fluffy, and you shouldn’t be able to feel any gritty sugar when you rub a little bit of the mixture between your fingers. Using a scraper, pile the mixture on top of the chilled base. I had serious doubts about whether all my mixture would fit, but keep flattening it down and you should be ok!

Place a sheet of baking paper over the top of the filling, and put the cake in the freezer for at least 4 hours. Annabel says it will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to a month.

To serve, top with extra raspberries and white chocolate. Note: did I bother to properly drain and pat dry the thawed raspberries? No. Did the colour start spread out across the cake as soon as I placed them on top? Yes. Did I try and disguise it by hurrying white chocolate buttons onto the cake? Yes. Did it work? Wee-eell, I suggest drying the berries next time, but keeping the chocolate anyway.

Cut the cake with a knife that’s been run under very hot water and dried. Prepare to gasp as you bite into the marshmallowy deliciousness.

Watermelon & Mint Salad

Posted on December 18, 2011 by timeforalittlesomething

Time for another salad for bbq season!

This may be my favourite salad ever. Mum picked it out of a newspaper years and years ago and we make it all the time during summer. Specially to take to bbqs – people love this salad and always ask for the recipe. And the colours are so beautiful! I think I might make this as part of our Christmas dinner spread.

The original recipe used watermelon, red onion and red capsicum; I was making it to take somewhere a couple of weeks ago and there wasn’t quite enough watermelon available at the supermarket, but they did have pomegranates on special, so I added the seeds to the salad to juzh it up a bit. They may become a permanent feature

Watermelon & Mint Salad
Adjust quantities to taste, and to how many you need to serve…

Watermelon
Red onion
Red capsicum
Pomegranate seeds (optional)
Mint sauce

Just toss together chopped watermelon, sliced red onion, sliced red capsicum, and pomegranate seeds, if you’re using them, and dress with mint sauce. A few fresh mint leaves wouldn’t go astray, either.

Enjoy!

Christmas Fruit Mince Pies

Posted on December 14, 2011 by timeforalittlesomething

Judging from the comments on my Christmas Cake posts (I and II), not everyone enjoys dried fruit! So maybe fruit mince pies don’t hold a universal following.

For those who are fans, here’s my recipe for these little pies. I keep them in the freezer and just defrost them when we want to have them with a cup of tea. If you do have the time to make them from scratch, they make beautiful gifts. Last year I gave someone a dozen; he later told me he ran a blind tasting with his family, pitting home made pies against shop bought – home made won hands down.

You can ‘lid’ these pies any way you want to. I like little stars (I’ve also tried other shapes like hearts; nothing seems to work quite as well as stars), others like to do lattice tops, or others still like a full round lid, maybe with a glacé cherry on top. Let yourself be consumed by this ancient question and choose a favourite.

I used to make these mince pies with my mum when I was a teenager. This is our family fruit mince recipe. It doesn’t use suet, so you don’t have to cook it – just whiz it in the food processor and you’re done. We’ve always used the Neenish Tart pastry recipe from the Edmonds book. It suits fruit mince really well; it’s nice and sweet – but doesn’t crumble when you bite into it, spilling fruit mince all down your front. Handy.

If you can be bothered, doubling the pastry recipe is a great idea. I doubled it, and made as many fruit mince pies as I had mince to fill, then just baked the other cases empty. You can freeze the cases, and use them later for lemon tarts (fill with lemon curd, top with a fresh raspberry), caramel tarts (fill with caramel, ice with chocolate icing), or last year I made Neenish Tarts (following the Edmonds recipe). If you’ve got the cases in your freezer you can assemble a batch of filled tarts in 10 minutes. Handy.

Fruit Mince

I can’t recall how much this recipe makes; I think 2-3 cups. Certainly enough for 2-3 dozen mince pies.

1 lemon, rind and juice
1 orange, rind
1 cup brown sugar
2 apples, cored and cut into large pieces (leave unpeeled)
2 cups sultanas
2 cups mixed fruit (use chopped dried fruit of your choice, or cake fruit mix)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp finely grated nutmeg (fresh is best, if you have it)
½ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp salt
¼ cup rum, brandy or whiskey – or use orange juice if you prefer

Place the orange and lemon rind in the processor with the brown sugar, and whiz until finely chopped and mixed. Add the apple, lemon juice, and half of the sultanas and mixed fruit. Whiz until the apple is finely chopped, then add the remaining sultanas and fruit, spices, salt and rum/brandy/whiskey/orange juice, and whiz again, just until everything is combined.

You can use this straight away for mince pies (see below), or refrigerate or freeze for later use. There are other uses for Christmas fruit mince – you can bake filo pastry parcels filled with fruit mince for dessert, there are a few recipes for Christmas fruit mince muffins, or you could make festive cinnamon buns or a wreath of bread with fruit mince spread through the dough.

Pastry Cases
from the Edmonds Cookery Book‘s Neenish Tarts recipe

I doubled this recipe, and had enough for 4 dozen standard sized tart cases (half of those filled and topped with stars, half empty, lid-less and destined for the freezer), plus a dozen mini fruit mince pies (also topped with stars). The mini size is nice, and a shade more elegant for guests.

125g butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (I run the cake mixer for about 5 minutes). Add egg and beat well. Sift flour, baking powder and salt, and mix into the butter mixture, stirring well. Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured board and knead well. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°. Lightly grease a muffin tin – standard or mini size. Roll the pastry out to 2-3mm thick. Cut out rounds with the appropriate sized cutter, and gently line the muffin holes with pastry rounds. Prick the bases once or twice with a fork. If you’re baking empty shells for future life as a Neenish tart, pop them in the oven for about 12 minutes, until cooked and light golden.

If you’re making fruit mince pies, fill the uncooked, pricked bases with fruit mince. Cut out small stars from the pastry and use them to top the mince pies – or cut out rounds to make lids, or strips to make lattice tops; whatever floats your boat. Filled mince pies will take 20-25 minutes to bake, also at 180°.

UPDATE: This is also my entry for December’s Sweet NZ, hosted this month by Bron Marshall. The event was started up by Alessandra Zecchini (details available here).

Traditional Christmas Pudding

Posted on December 7, 2011 by timeforalittlesomething

I know, I am annoyingly organised, but I made my Plum Pudding a few days ago and it’s tightly wrapped and sitting in the fridge, ready to be re-steamed on Christmas Eve. I made my first Christmas pudding last year, and it really was yummy (even better the next morning). And you do almost all the work long before you eat it, so there’s almost no preparation on the day. Suits me.

I got a pudding basin with a lid last year from Moore Wilson’s for about $25. The lid fastening is a little dodgy so I don’t rely on it solely when lifting the basin in and out of the giant pot of hot water, but other than that, cooking the pudding is a cinch.

However, I’m not really sure how one goes about steaming the pudding without such a basin. I guess you can use any heat-proof bowl and do some serious tin foil work on the top. I know there is also the method of tying the pudding up in calico and suspending it into the hot water from a stick. These look awesome but a leeeeeeetle daunting for me.

I mashed this recipe together from all the recipes I could find in my books, taking the yummiest looking bits out of each recipe. I also refuse to use suet, so this recipe uses butter. It seemed to work ok!

As with Christmas Cake, I think the important thing about a Christmas Pudding is the quality of the fruit. So I buy a mixture of fancy dried fruits from the bulk bin (this time around it was prunes – obviously, so I could call it a plum pudding – strawberries, crystallised ginger, cranberries, cherries, apricots, dates and apple chunks). Then I top the fruit up to the quantity listed in the recipe with bought cake fruit mix. Other possibilities include currants, sultanas, mixed peel, raisins, figs, etc.

Time for a Little Something’s Christmas Pudding
Serves 6-8 at least

2 cups flour
75g butter, softened
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
3½ cups mixed dried fruit (see above), chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
½ tsp ground ginger
½ cup golden syrup
½ cup trim milk
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 orange, grated rind
1 lemon, grated rind

To get ready, spray a pudding basin and the inside of its lid with cooking spray. You really don’t want to go to all this trouble and have it stick. Get a Very Big Pot (a stockpot is really the only answer) and half fill it with hot water, and get it heating on medium heat so it’s boiling by the time you’re ready to start steaming the pudding. In the bottom of this Very Big Pot, you need a trivet, or something the pudding basin can sit on so it’s not on the floor of the pot. I have a shallow ceramic baking dish which I turn upside down.

Place the flour in a large bowl (I use my cake mixer), and rub the softened butter in using your fingertips. Add the brown sugar, chopped dried fruit and spices, and mix to combine.

Warm the milk in the microwave (just a little – 20 seconds) in a medium bowl, and stir in the baking soda to dissolve it. In another little jug or bowl, warm the golden syrup in the microwave (again, 20-30 seconds), and add that to the milk, along with the eggs and grated lemon and orange rind. Beat with a fork, and pour it onto the dry ingredients.

Stir (or turn the cake mixer on) until the pudding batter is well mixed.

Pour the mixture into your prepared pudding basin, making sure there’s at least an inch or so of room at the top, as the pudding will rise as it steams. Put the lid on tightly and carefully lower into your Very Big Pot of boiling water, sitting it on whatever platform you have devised. When I cooked my pudding, the water came about a third or a half way up the pudding basin. Put the lid on the Very Big Pot and gently boil the pudding for 4 hours. Check back every so often to make sure your Very Big Pot still has enough boiling water in it, and top up if needed.

After 4 hours, carefully remove the pudding basin from the Very Big Pot. Take the lid off and invert the basin over a cooling rack. Fingers crossed, the pudding will slide out nicely and sit smugly cooling on the rack.

When it’s cold, wrap it first in tin foil, and then in a plastic supermarket bag with a knot tied snugly at the top. I’ve put mine at the back of the bottom shelf in my fridge, and there it shall stay until I need it on Christmas Eve. Then, I will unwrap it, poke it a few times with a skewer, pour a couple of tablespoons of brandy over it, put it back in its basin, and repeat the steaming process for another 2-3 hours. Then I’ll turn it out onto a serving plate, pour about ½ cup of brandy over it, set it on fire, and carry it to the table to rapturous applause. When the flames have burned themselves out (and, fingers crossed, not set fire to my hair), I will slice it up and serve it with my husband’s family Rum Sauce.

Now, there is one problem with this blog post. I forgot to take a photo of my steamed pudding before I wrapped it snugly and put it in the fridge. D’oh. But to be honest, a steamed, undecorated pudding is not a thing of beauty.

For your viewing pleasure, I have found an image of a Christmas Pudding online, in case you haven’t seen one before. Obviously, mine looks exactly like this. Exaaaaactly.

(image found here)

Good luck if you decide to try one!

Decorating your Christmas Cake

Posted on December 5, 2011 by timeforalittlesomething

Now that it’s December, our Christmas Tree is up, the fairy lights have been switched on and, possibly most importantly, the Christmas Cake has been decorated. And cut. And a little bit eaten.

I made our cake about a month ago and have been giving it a light dousing with sherry once a week since then. So to finish it off, I iced it in the traditional way – with a layer of almond icing, and then a layer of white icing on top of that.

I usually use bought almond and white icings (I think I used Pettinice brand last year which seemed ok), but this year I’m on holiday. So with all this time on my hands I thought I’d have a crack at making my own. Just to see if it was nicer/cheaper/easier.

I’ll go into more detail on the icings in the recipes below, but the short answer is: Almond Icing is DEFINITELY worth making at home. It’s cheaper than buying it, it’s really easy to mix up, and actually it’s easier to roll out and place on the cake than the bought stuff. Plus, it does taste nicer. Significantly more marzipan-y.

With white icing, the jury is still out. It’s definitely easier to roll out and place on the cake. It is marginally cheaper. These factors may tip the scales for some. I can’t say it was easy – not in the skills department; the recipe is simple, but in the elbow grease department. The icing is so thick, the Kenwood refused to co-operate. So I pretty much did it by hand. Put it this way – I didn’t need to go on a run yesterday. As for taste, I can’t say I noted an enormous difference from the packet stuff. Friends I fed it to last night said they thought it was better. Maybe they were just being nice. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Try it yourself, and see what you think! Does anyone else make this stuff at home? What are your thoughts?

A few words on the decoration of cakes. Following the almond and white icing layers, I usually mix up Royal Icing and decorate the top of my cake with little kisses or stars. This year, I think mixing the white icing cleaned out my kitchen motivation reserves. I was content with just a big tartan ribbon and this funny little bird decoration that I’ve fallen in love with.

Others save up the scraps of white icing, and cut shapes out of them, and place the shapes on the cake (see this one by Hungry and Frozen).

The other decorating option is to use tacky but heart-tuggingly nostalgic plastic decorations. When I was little, my mum put the almond and white icing on the cake, and my brother and I were allowed to sit on the bench and “help” by providing advice on where the little plastic red house should go, where the jolly fat Santa should sit, and at which strategic intersections the royal icing kisses should be applied. We also had tiny plastic Bambi deer, which we pressed lightly into the white icing a couple of times, before settling on a position. This made ‘hoof-prints’ in the icing, as if the tiny Bambi had happened upon the Christmas Cake in the wild, and walked around a bit before deciding it was an excellent place to set up camp for the month. Man would not come to the thicket here.

I was (abnormally) thrilled to find that you can still buy the very same little red house for $3.99 at Spotlight, along with jolly fat Santas, wandering Bambis and gold “Merry Christmas” text plates.

I should add, too, please don’t let all this talk of home made icings, month-long sherry dousings and plastic Bambis put you off making or decorating a Christmas Cake! Although I made mine a while ago, it’s definitely not too late to make one now, and it will still taste amazing. My recipe’s available here. And in terms of decoration, you could just place extra dried fruits and nuts on the top of your cake, and brush with a lightly beaten egg before you bake it. It will look shiny and beautiful. If you’re keen on the almond and white icing combination, the bought stuff will definitely do the trick. The instructions for rolling it out and placing it on the cake below might help.

I have surprised myself with how much there is to say about decorating a Christmas Cake. I feel that a summary is needed. So:

Home made Christmas Cakes are delicious. You can bake one following this recipe, and either:
Place pretty dried fruits and nuts on top of the cake, and brush with warmed up golden syrup, or a beaten egg, before you bake it; or
Bake the cake plain, and ice it with a layer of almond icing, followed by a layer of white icing, either home made or bought; and then:
Leave it as is; or
Tie a big ribbon around it; or
Cut out shapes from white icing and stick them on; or
Go crazy with piped royal icing and/or nostalgic plastic decorations.

So there you have it! If you have any energy left, the recipes and my tips for home made almond and white icings are below, along with instructions on placing them on the cake. Have fun!

Home Made Almond Icing

This recipe is slightly adapted from Alison Holst’s Christmas cookbook. This mixture made enough to go over the top and down the sides of my huge Christmas Cake, so you may like to reduce quantities if you have a smaller cake, or if you just want the icing on the top.

200g ground almonds
2 cups icing sugar
1 cup caster sugar
2 egg yolks
½ tsp almond essence
4 Tbsp lemon juice

Place the almonds, icing sugar and caster sugar in a large bowl (I used my Kenwood cake mixer), and mix to combine. In a little bowl, mix together the egg yolks, almond essence, and 2 Tbsp of the lemon juice. Mix this mixture into the almonds, and add the remaining lemon juice, a little at a time, until you have a paste that will be easy to roll out, but not too sticky.

A wee note – I’ve made a note to myself to try replacing some of the caster sugar with more icing sugar next year, to make a smoother paste.

Home Made White Icing
This recipe is also adapted from Alison Holst’s Christmas cookbook. It makes a large quantity – you can freeze leftover white icing.

1 Tbsp gelatine
3 Tbsp cold water
3 Tbsp liquid glucose (also called glucose syrup, most supermarkets stock it with the baking supplies)
2 tsp glycerine (also called glycerol; easiest place to find it is at a pharmacy)
1 kg icing sugar. Yes, you read right. 1 kilogram.

Mix the gelatine and cold water in a small microwave-proof bowl, and stand for 3-4 minutes. Warm it in the microwave – I put it in for 20 seconds, gave it a swish around, and in for another 20 seconds. You just need to dissolve the gelatine. Mix in the liquid glucose and glycerine. Tip: run your measuring spoon under hot water first, these two ingredients are like golden syrup.

Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl (again, I used my Kenwood mixing bowl). Pour the gelatine mixture into the middle of the icing sugar, and mix. I started off using the dough hook of my Kenwood, but this only worked for so long before it gave up. After that I just kneaded it with my hands. I also added a few splashes of very hot water when I thought the icing was just too dry and crumbly to work.

Putting It All Together

Christmas Cake
Apricot Jam (my cake used about a third of a 500g jar)
Almond Icing, home made or bought
White Icing, home made or bought
Patience

First, warm your apricot jam in the microwave, and pass it through a sieve. Brush the cake with the jam so the almond icing has something to stick onto.

Sprinkle your bench or a board with icing sugar, and roll out your almond icing until you have the right size to cover your cake. You can fill in any little holes or dents in your cake with scraps of the almond icing first, so you have a smooth surface to place your icing onto. Then, lightly drape your almond icing over the cake. This can be tricky.

I have a very useful little plastic or silicone placemat sized thing I bought for about $3 at Moore Wilson’s. It’s very thin and flexible. I’m not sure what it’s purpose is supposed to be (maybe a hot plate?) but I use it as a rolling board. That way, I’m able to pick up my board with the icing still on it, and invert it over my Christmas Cake, then gently peel the board off the icing, leaving a crease-free smooth surface without risking breakage. Just make sure you dust the board with plenty of icing sugar before you start rolling.

Whip round the cake with a sharp knife to cut off any overhang, and then smooth the icing, and repair any cracks as much as you can by lightly pressing with your fingertips.

Now, brush the cake again, very lightly this time, with more sieved jam, so the white icing can stick onto the almond icing.

Sprinkle your bench or board with more icing sugar, and now roll out your white icing, again so you have an area big enough to cover your cake. I did my board inversion trick again, but if you don’t have a flexi placemat type thing, just lift your icing onto the cake as best you can with the aid of spatulas, fish slices and family members. Hopefully you can avoid any major cracks or splits as you place it on. Again, cut off any overhang and smooth the icing down.

All done! Now you can finish your cake off with any other decorations you like, and munch away!

Christmas Cake

Posted on November 13, 2011 by timeforalittlesomething

I love Christmas!!!

And I’m lucky this year to be getting a good break before Christmas, so I’ve got all sorts of decorating, cooking and baking projects in mind. I may well become unbearable.

But first things first. I’ve made my Christmas Cake nice and early so it can mature for a good few weeks before we make a start on it. And it’s a GIANT cake, so even if we start eating it on December 1 (the day the Christmas tree goes up), we’ll probably still be eating it well into January.

This is my family’s traditional Christmas Cake recipe. It’s quite a typical New Zealand Christmas cake I think, with the trifecta of vanilla, almond, and lemon essences rather than alcohol (although that’s added later). I love it. Like many ‘family’ Christmas things, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas without it.

I have been trying little tweaks to the recipe over the last 3-4 years, and I think I just about nailed it last year, so I’m expecting the 2011 vintage will be the best yet. It’s a simple cake to make, but I’ve included quite detailed mixing instructions – Christmas Cakes aren’t cheap to make, so you want it to be as delicious as possible.

Time for a Little Something’s Christmas Cake
This mixture makes a very large cake – my tin is 10×10″, and about 3½” deep. You can halve the recipe to fill an 8×8″ tin (or 2/3 it if you want a deeper cake)**.

1 lb butter
1 lb sugar
½ cup golden syrup
10 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp almond essence
1 tsp lemon essence
1½ lb flour, sifted
2 kg mixed fruit*

*Firstly, a note on the mixed fruit. The quality of the cake really rides on the fruit you use. This year, I bought as much high quality bulk bin dried fruit as I could afford, and finely chopped it, then topped that up to 2kg with packaged mixed fruit (again, the best you can afford). The fruit from the bulk bin included dried pears, apples, figs, peaches, strawberries, apricots, kiwifruit, papaya, cranberries, raisins and currants. Alison’s Pantry bulk bins do a good mix called “orchard fruits”, and another called “berry zest”.

**Another instructional note – I mix my Christmas Cake in my Kenwood mixer. And it’s such a huge mixture that I can’t mix it all in one go – so I make the cake in two halves.

OK, down to business. Preheat the oven to 160º(C), and grease and line a 10×10″ cake tin. Soften the butter (just to room temperature), and chop the mixed dried fruit.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the golden syrup, and then the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. If the mixture seems like it’s starting to curdle, beat in 1 Tbsp of the sifted flour – that should fix it. If not, it’s probably not that big a deal.

Mix in the essences and the sifted flour, and then add the fruit, and keep stirring until it’s evenly mixed through. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin, and smooth the top with wet fingers (this should stop any rogue raisins sticking it out the top and burning). My family tradition is to leave the mixture sitting in the tin overnight, but I don’t know how much of a difference that makes. I’m still too superstitious to skip this step, in case the ghosts of great grandmothers past come back to haunt me for disrespecting the recipe.

I always ice our Christmas Cake, but if you prefer to decorate the top with glazed nuts and more dried fruit, this is the time to add it. I like almonds and cherries, but use whatever you like really! Place them on the cake, and brush with beaten egg to glaze the cake, and leave it 15 minutes before baking. (I’m going to make baby Christmas cakes in another couple of weeks and decorate them this way, so I can do better instructions then).

Bake the cake for 4-5 hours (mine took exactly 4 this year). If you find the top is darkening too quickly (I always do), place a baking tray, or a layer of aluminium foil over the top of the tin. Place the tin on a cooling rack, and leave the cake to cool in the tin. While it’s still warm, pour over about ¼ cup sherry over the cake. I’m sprinkling an extra tablespoon or so of sherry over the cake about once a week now too.

In another 2-3 weeks, I’ll be icing our cake with homemade almond icing, white icing, and then decorating with royal icing, so I’ll put posts up on those steps too. But until then… it’s never to early to get excited about Christmas!

Time for a Little Something

Baking and Making in Porirua

Category Archives: Celebrations