O Christmas Tree!

This was a big hit with the family.

The mould is from Lakeland. The recipe is from their blog, but it has some incorrect measurements that I've corrected below:

Preheat oven to 180C

Butter mould well and lay on a cookie sheet.

Add 60g butter; 60g dark muscovado sugar; 50g treacle and 50g golden syrup to a small saucepan and warm until ingredients melted and combined.  Cool.

In a medium sized mixing bowl combine 120g self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon ginger and 1 teaspoon mixed spice (or a combination of cloves, cinnamon and allspice). 

Combine sugar and butter mixture with dry ingredients. Add in 1 beaten egg and 60 ml milk.   Mix well. 

Pour into mould and bake 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the biggest segment is clean when removed.

Let cool before removing the sections.  Trim them flat if they've risen too much. 

Assemble, using a stiff icing in a piping bag.  Try a blend of 200g icing sugar; 2 teaspoons orange essence and 2 teaspoons water.   It should be quite stiff.  Add the icing generously. I was too stingy above and had lots left over.

If decorating with sparkles etc add them right away, as the icing hardens quickly. 

Easy Eggnog

Blogging this one so that we don't forget!  Fabulous stuff. 

Recipe from: https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-homemade-eggnog-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-214298 

• 6 
  large eggs
• 1 cup 
  granulated sugar
• 2 cups 
  whole milk
• 1 cup 
  heavy cream
• 1/2 to 1 cup 
  bourbon (or other booze - whisky, rum, brandy etc)
• Freshly grated nutmeg, for serving

Separate the eggs and beat yolks with sugar until light and creamy.  Blend in milk, cream and alcohol.  Mix well.  Let rest in fridge (overnight if possible).  

When serving, beat whites until soft peaks form, then fold into eggnog.  Dust with nutmeg. 

That's it. 

Nanaimo Bars

When I was little,  my parents' friends would exchange baked goods on Christmas Eve. We all loved the Dutch butter cake we used to get with almonds on top, but each of us had favourites from the plate of mixed cookies that another colleague's wife made.  Two in particular we have tried to recreate for our grown-up Christmasses -- butter tarts and nanaimo bars - both Canadian classics.

Here's our favourite version of Nanaimo bars - based on a recipe in Annie Bell's Baking Bible.

INGREDIENTS

Biscuit Base
150g/5.3oz/ 2/3 cup softened unsalted melted butter
100g/3.5oz digestive biscuits  broken into pieces  or 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
60g/2oz walnut pieces (a generous half cup)
40g/1.4oz / 1/3 cup good quality cocoa powder, sifted
100g/3.5oz / 1/2 cupgolden caster sugar
80g/2.8oz / 7/8 cup desiccated unsweetened coconut
2 large eggs, beaten

Custard Cream
100g/3.5oz/ 1/2 cup  softened unsalted butter
2 tbsp custard powder (or a little more if you like them extra custardy as advocated here)
½ tsp vanilla extract
250g/8.8oz / 2 cups icing/confectioners sugar
2 tbsp milk  (or Tia Maria/Kahlua for a flavoured version)

Chocolate topping

150g/5.3oz dark chocolate at least 70%

25g/1oz 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 Tablespoons black coffee or coffee liqueur (tia maria or kahlua)

To assemble: 

Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F). Butter or line a 23cm square x 4cm deep cake tin or brownie tin (or equivalent traybake tin, for example, 25cm x 20cm).

Whiz the digestives and the walnuts to crumbs in a food processor. Add the cocoa and sugar and whiz again, then transfer the mixture to a large bowl.

Mix in the coconut. Stir in the melted butter, then add the beaten eggs, stirring until combined. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and leave to cool. Don't overbake!

For the filling, beat the butter in a large bowl for about a minute until pale and fluffy.  Mix in the custard powder and the vanilla, and then the icing sugar.  Mix in the milk or kahlua in until smooth and creamy, like a stiff buttercream frosting.  Spread on the cooled base, and chill. 

For the top layer, break up the chocolate and gently melt it with the butter  and coffee or liqueur in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan containing a little simmering water.   If the chocolate separates, beat briskly with a tablespoon or two of cold water until it comes together again.  

Remove from heat and leave to chill slightly, then smooth the chocolate mixture over the custard cream. 

Chill, cut into small pieces and serve. 

Cranberry-Orange Relish

Although it was a staple of our holiday table, when I was a child, I didn't much care for Cranberry-Orange Relish, preferring partridgeberry jelly (aka low-bush cranberry, lingonsylt, preiselbeeren). 

As an adult though, I've come to love the tart contrast with roast turkey and game. It was always a production to make - my mother would get out our old-fashioned food-grinder that was screwed on to the table top, and the whole family would join in the hard work.  

Just after I moved to the UK, Delia introduced cranberries over here, but everyone seemed to make jelly, which I find bland. Luckily, with cranberries now available in the shops, I was able to reinvent the family relish, despite not having the food-grinder. 

It turns out that any sort of food-processor works just fine. For years, we used our immersion blender, but we now have a mini food-processor.  The recipe is very simple - one bag cranberries (fresh or frozen) - pick over and take out any that are brown or very wrinkled. The proportions are rough, so don't worry too much about the size of bag.  One average sized orange, washed and roughly chopped (peel, pith and all).  In small batches, blend the cranberries and orange together until well chopped, but not pureed.  

Then add 1 cup (200 gr) granulated or caster sugar (in volume terms, this is about 1 part sugar to two parts cranberries).  Mix well, and let sit to macerate, then refrigerate. 

Ideally, this is made a few days before it it needed to let the flavours blend, but at a pinch, even just a couple of hours will do. 

Sour Cherry Stollen

Another Dan Lepard classic here. I've not changed much, except that I soak the cherries in aquavit or sacred gin (which is flavoured with botanicals, not juniper), and then use that to libate the loaf when it comes out of the oven. 

100g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
Finely grated zest of an orange
½ tsp each ground cardamom, cinnamon and cloves
½ tsp salt
1 medium egg
150g quark cheese
325g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g ground almonds
150g sour cherries
200g marzipan
Rum (or other booze), melted butter and icing sugar

Beat the butter, sugar, zest, spices and salt until smooth, then beat in the egg and quark. Add the flour, baking powder, almonds and cherries, and mix to a soft, even dough. On a floured worktop, pat out to an oval roughly 20cm long x 15cm deep. Roll the marzipan 18cm long, and lay in the centre of the dough. Fold the dough in half and seal with water. Place on a tray lined with nonstick baking paper, and bake at 190C (170C fan-assisted)/375F/gas mark 5 for 40 minutes, until just golden and baked when a skewer is poked in. As soon as it's out, brush first with rum and then lots of melted butter. Once cold, brush with more butter, and dredge heavily with icing sugar. Wrap well and leave to mature for a week

Christmas pudding

This is my version of a Dan Lepard recipe that appeared in the newspaper the week after my daughter was born - Stir up Sunday as it is called in England. We'd never made a christmas pudding before, but it has now become family tradition.  It's ideally suited to being at home with a baby because you just add all the ingredients gradually to a big bowl, then steam for ages - as long as you don't need to go out, you're fine.  Nowadays I usually steam it in a slow cooker overnight, but above is a picture of last year's pudding on the stove top.

200g raisins
150g candied fruit peel 
50 g dried or candied cherries

75g beef suet
200g dark brown muscovado sugar

100g treacle
125g brown bread crumbs
50g plain white flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

1/2tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp grated nutmeg 
2 eggs, beaten
50g grated carrot (about one medium carrot) 
Zest and juice of an orange

125ml dark ale

After mixing all the ingredients together, simply spoon into a buttered pudding basin, cover with parchment and foil, tie string around (or just use a plastic basin with lid), and steam for 4 hours, or over night in a slow cooker. The original recipe called for the wrong size bowl, and we've never figure out what size it is supposed to be.  We usually make either two large puddings or 3 small ones. 

Never having made a pudding before, the whole pudding basin, foil and string thing is definitely the worst bit for me - and worrying that I've done something wring and it will go mouldy. But every year it turns out just fine.  A very forgiving cooking style.