Last Minute Christmas Cake!

Yes I should really know better, being a *proper* baker now and all, but my family Christmas cake is still, as yet, unbaked.  My dad is a big fan of Christmas cake and I'm also hoping to convert certain non-believers in my family with this one so I have a big challenge ahead.
 
Usually Christmas cakes, like most rich fruit cakes are matured for at least two months before eating.  There are a few reasons for this - one, it develops and deepens the rich flavour; two, you can give your cake regular "feeds" with brandy (or other spirits of your choice) to add even more flavour, moistness and festivity; and three, it makes the cake cut better without crumbling, which is particularly important for a wedding cake, where the cake must be cut into lots of small portions.
 
So how do you cheat it?  According to Jane Asher, the secret is to boil the fruit mixture with whisky, stout, orange juice and treacle for ten minutes and leave overnight before adding the rest of the ingredients.  She claims it will give the same "matured" flavour, and can be made as close to Christmas as you like.
 
So I'm putting her to the test, although I am making a few alterations to her recipe, mainly in the addition of ground almonds, lemon and swapping the whisky for Drambuie.  I would normally lean towards using brandy, but I inherited the bottle of Drambuie along with several slightly leftfield spirits in the drinks cabinet when my grandpa died and I've been waiting for a reason to use this one.  Plus it means there will be a memory of him in our Christmas celebrations, which makes me happy.

I've just boiled up the fruit and I have to say it has already put me in the Christmas spirit, as the house is filled with delicious festive aromas.  And as it's the season of giving, I thought I would share with you my version of Jane's recipe.  I will report back in the New Year with the family's verdict!
 
Last Minute Christmas Cake Recipe
(makes 1 x deep 8 inch round cake)
200g currants
200g raisins
100g sultanas
100g dates, chopped
75g dried prunes, chopped
75g dried figs, chopped
150g glace cherries, halved
100ml Drambuie
225ml Guinness (a little nod to my lovely wife's Irish heritage)
Zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon
Juice of 1 orange and 1/2 lemon (to make 75ml)
2 tablespoons black treacle
200g butter, softened
200g muscovado or dark brown sugar
200g plain flour
50g ground almonds
5 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice
75g blanched almonds, chopped
 
1. Take a large saucepan and fill the pan with the dried fruit, Guinness, Drambuie, orange and lemon juice and zest and treacle. Bring the mix to the boil and simmer gently for ten minutes, stirring every so often.  I like to add a bit of Irish Christmas spirit by singing out loud very badly to The Pogues' Fairytale of New York as I'm stirring, but that's optional.
2. Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool.  Once it's cold, tip the mix into a bowl, cover and chill in the fridge overnight.
3. The next day, preheat your oven to 140C and double line an 8" round cake tin with parchment.  Make sure your parchment is a good 4 inches tall as the cake is quite deep and can rise higher than your tin.
4. Seive the flour, baking powder and spices into the bowl of your mixer, then add all the remaining cake ingredients except the chopped nuts and beat thoroughly until smooth. 
5. Fold in the fruit mixture and chopped nuts.  At this stage you can add good luck by asking everyone in the house to give the mix a stir**.
6. Pour the mix into your prepared tin and smooth the top, making a dip in the middle so that it rises up evenly.
7. Bake the cake for 3 hours and check with a skewer to see if it's done.  It may need 30-60 minutes more so keep checking every so often and cover the top with foil if it's browning too much on top.
8. Cool the cake in its tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely.
9. Once cool, wrap the cake in baking parchment, then foil and keep somewhere cool until ready to ice.  Feed the cake by skewering a few holes and drizzling over 1-2 tablespoons of Drambuie every few days.

**I remember the tradition of stirring the cake mix when my mum made our Christmas cake every year and I loved the chance to be involved from a really young age, when I had to stand on a chair to reach the bowl.  We also did this at our primary school, and all 100 pupils plus all the teachers would line up in the Dining Hall at lunchtime to stir the giant mix in the bowl.  I wonder if any schools still do that?  I hope so.

UPDATE 8th December: I baked my cake today - it took nearly 4 hours in total and it's a lovely deep cake and smells beautiful, just like my mum's Christmas Cake.  It's still cooling now, and I can't wait to eat it!

A week of ups and Sussex downs...

This last week we really seem to have been on a rollercoaster with the Brighton Bakery. 

At the start of the week I made a footballer birthday cake for our friends David and Denis that they both really loved and said it looked and tasted amazing (thanks guys). 

While I was in the middle of making their cake, the phone rang and I took our very first wedding cake order.  I'm so excited to make it and really proud we've reached this milestone, especially considering the website's only been up for 6 weeks!

On Thursday we got an email from Brighton Council to say that we've been allocated an allotment at the top of Whitehawk Hill.  There's a great community atmosphere there and a fantastic view over the Marina.  One day we'll be able to offer cakes with fillings made from our very own fruit trees :o)  Unfortunately the allotment is currently an undulating patch of brambles, weeds and rubbish... but Melissa and I aren't afraid of hard work and this allotment is going to be a huge part of the lifestyle that we dreamed of when we decided to move down to Brighton.

Yesterday we took part in the first ever Indulge Sussex Sunday in Hove.  We spent almost two full days preparing and baking our hearts out and were looking forward to finishing the week off on a high with a successful stall day. 

We set up our stall at the Hove Town Hall, and in pride of place was a Christmas showcake I made with carol singing penguins:

We had high hopes that we could get some pre-orders for our luxury Christmas Cakes as well as selling plenty of our regular sweet treats and cake slices.  We had some of our regular favourites plus new additions of Autumn Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes (completely yummy and totally vegan), Banana and Butterscotch Muffins (a great flavour combo) and a Seriously Good Chocolate Orange Cake (which definitely lives up to its name).  The weather seemed perfect for the indoor event - bright and sunny to get people out but with a cold wind to drive people indoors.  As the only cake stall and a potential for 2400 visitors surely this one was a sure thing?

The event started slowly at 11am but that's not unusual.  We'd learnt from experience that prime cake time is 3pm-5pm so we weren't too worried as it was sure to pick up later. 

At about 1.30pm at was still kinda quiet, but we figured people were having Sunday lunch and were probably going to come afterwards, plus it still wasn't quite cake o'clock.

It reached about 2.30pm there just still weren't many people coming through the doors. 2400 people?  We reckoned the total was more like 240.  The chances weren't looking that good for us to make much money.

At 3.30pm we still had an hour and a half to go when we realised that a couple of stalls behind us had already packed up and gone.  Ten minutes later the stall beside us (the excellent Lurgashall Winery) was also packing up.  The event organisers decided to wind up an hour early, right in the middle of caking hour.

Oh dear. Well it had to happen sometime - Sunday was our first market stall flop.  Two days of both Melissa and me working solidly (plus me preparing all the day before that too) and just taking into account our stall fee, ingredients and parking we came out with a loss of £7.64.  And we can't exactly sue ourselves for not earning the minimum wage...

But at least we did sell something (some stalls didn't even sell a single thing), we got our name out there and the people that did buy our cakes really seemed to enjoy them.  We've got a couple of leads for Christmas cakes and birthday cakes too so it's not all bad.  If you see it as a marketing exercise, £7.64 isn't a big price to pay. 

Plus we were home and unpacked by 4.35pm, so we walked up to our new allotment site and then considered our plan of action over a well earned pint looking out onto the sea as the sun went down.  We might not make much money, but I think Melissa and I are living the dream.