Short day, long night
Dec. 22nd, 2011 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI decided, almost on the spur of the moment, to bake a Christmas cake this year - I had almost all the ingredients, so why not?
I've written before about the recipe I use ('use' rather than 'follow' seems about right). This year's is definitely a plum cake: chopped prunes, a handful of the damsons from the bottom of the damson gin, and the gin itself as the main alcoholic additive. For the record, and because, when I was looking for this information earlier this week, I couldn't find it, these quantities fill the big square cake tin and one loaf tin - rather more than fill them, and although I could have squeezed it all in, I made five little buns (in a muffin tray) from the scrapings.
I reduced the oven temperature to mark 2, with the buns on the top shelf for an hour and a bit more, the cakes on the lower shelf for three hours (or thereabouts; I lost count).
One way and another, this seemed to take most of the day (surprising, since so much of the preparation was done the previous day - but then, it was one of the year's shortest days); the upside of this is that by the time I thought the cakes were ready to come out of the oven,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance was there to confirm that they were indeed done. We ate the little buns for pudding. They were surprisingly light and cakey - good, but not what I require from Christmas cake. But perhaps the scrapings of the bowl have a lower than average density of fruit? We shall see.
desperance and I sat up long into the night and a little way into the morning too, with a bottle of armagnac and much conversation to catch up on.
And now, though it's too soon to tell, the season turns and the days begin to lengthen.
Cake update: After cooking the cake remains lighter than usual in colour, and with a more cakey texture, though still moist. I think, in fact, that I have finally got the cooking time right, and while this is good, and it makes a pleasant change to have a cake I can offer to others without a health warning, I sort of miss the damp soggy thing that I usually bake. The damsons are not discernable, but I suspect their influence can be felt, though not identified.
Also, the marzipan: Jane Grigson's recipe makes too much for the larger cake, as you'd expect, even when the quantity of sugar is drastically reduced, and rather too little for both. It's good, though. I'd forgotten how much I like home-made marzipan.
I've written before about the recipe I use ('use' rather than 'follow' seems about right). This year's is definitely a plum cake: chopped prunes, a handful of the damsons from the bottom of the damson gin, and the gin itself as the main alcoholic additive. For the record, and because, when I was looking for this information earlier this week, I couldn't find it, these quantities fill the big square cake tin and one loaf tin - rather more than fill them, and although I could have squeezed it all in, I made five little buns (in a muffin tray) from the scrapings.
I reduced the oven temperature to mark 2, with the buns on the top shelf for an hour and a bit more, the cakes on the lower shelf for three hours (or thereabouts; I lost count).
One way and another, this seemed to take most of the day (surprising, since so much of the preparation was done the previous day - but then, it was one of the year's shortest days); the upside of this is that by the time I thought the cakes were ready to come out of the oven,
desperance was there to confirm that they were indeed done. We ate the little buns for pudding. They were surprisingly light and cakey - good, but not what I require from Christmas cake. But perhaps the scrapings of the bowl have a lower than average density of fruit? We shall see.desperance and I sat up long into the night and a little way into the morning too, with a bottle of armagnac and much conversation to catch up on.And now, though it's too soon to tell, the season turns and the days begin to lengthen.
Cake update: After cooking the cake remains lighter than usual in colour, and with a more cakey texture, though still moist. I think, in fact, that I have finally got the cooking time right, and while this is good, and it makes a pleasant change to have a cake I can offer to others without a health warning, I sort of miss the damp soggy thing that I usually bake. The damsons are not discernable, but I suspect their influence can be felt, though not identified.
Also, the marzipan: Jane Grigson's recipe makes too much for the larger cake, as you'd expect, even when the quantity of sugar is drastically reduced, and rather too little for both. It's good, though. I'd forgotten how much I like home-made marzipan.
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Date: 2011-12-22 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 08:00 pm (UTC)I can send the recipe, if you like (you've eaten my Christmas cake, so you know it's okay).
And yes, making fruit cakes till they give in is a fine plan.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-24 05:38 pm (UTC)(Also, ooh: shewhomust still has original-looking comments page, with quote button and subject line and everything. How does she do that...?)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 12:23 pm (UTC)Treacle is always good, and if I added any sweetening, I'd be trying that, too - but the not-so-secret of the recipe is a paste of cooked dried apricots and dates, which is plenty sweet enough, given all the fruit.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 04:00 pm (UTC)A Real Liff Christmas Cake is An Eternal Thing, as I recall members of
After it had happened and someone found the last one, hidden from greedy colocataires from the year before, in the depths of a cupboard...still edible, of course.
That´s why the russians keep their mammoths frozen, I suppose? Carnivores!
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Date: 2011-12-23 04:04 pm (UTC)So do I - espectially with the right interlocutor.
A properly eternal Christmas cake is not frozen, but embalmed - or perhaps just pickled! Either way, the essential ingredient is the alcohol...
no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 04:11 pm (UTC)