Claire's Cake Bake & Other Foodiness

I will ‘fess up now. I’m not a fan of Christmas cake but I really wanted to make one! So this weekend I jumped in the deep end…

The recipe – wow, there are so many to choose from! I ended up going with one from my mum’s Good Housekeeping magazine – November 2007 – Christmas Cake with a Hint of Dark Chocolate

Ingredients

• 250g sultanas
• 250g raisins
• 125g Agen prunes, chopped
• 125g ready to eat Apricots, chopped
• 150ml Dark Rum + 1 tablespoon for feeding the cake (we used original Antiguan rum from our honeymoon)
• Zest and juice of 1 orange
• 175g dark muscavado sugar
• 175g softened butter
• 4 medium eggs
• 125g self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1/2 level teaspoon cinnamon
• 75g Green & Black’s Dark 85% chocolate, finely grated
• 100g lightly toasted flaked almonds

And also:

• Greaseproof paper
• Clingfilm
• Tinfoil
• Brown paper
• Cotton
• 8″ tin

Start the night before you will make the cake

1. Put the rum and orange juice & zest in a large pan
2. Add the dried fruit and bring to the boil, then turn off the heat, cover and leave to soak overnight

The next day

1. Preheat the oven to 150 °c (130 °c fan)
2. Grease and double line the baking tin with greaseproof paper, allow it to stand proud at the top
3. In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light & fluffy – I used an electric hand mixer for about 5 minutes
4. Add the eggs one at a time, making sure the mixture doesn’t curdle (if it does add a little of the flour)
5. Gently fold in the flour, mixed spice & cinnamon
6. Next, fold in the chocolate and almond flakes
7. Lastly add the fruit and carefully mix through

Pour the mixture into the tin, taking care not to catch & pull the greaseproof paper off the sides of the tin
Level the surface of the cake

Wrap 2 layers of brown paper around the outside of the tin leaving a good inch above the top of the tin. Use the cotton to secure this.

Pop in the oven for 3 to 31/2 hours. Use a skewer to make sure the centre is cooked through.

Once cooked leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then take the cake out (leaving it in the greaseproof) and let it cool on a cake rack.

Once cold, wrap in clingfilm and then tinfoil and pop it in an airtight container.

After 2 weeks add the tablespoon of rum & re-wrap the cake. It will last for up to 3 months.

I am loving my Magimix -its letting me make and try new things and it speeds up others. For example:

New things

I quite like fish, but don’t eat much of it – with the reason mostly being that Mr C doesn’t really like fishy fish. He enjoys the Tuna Burgers I make but has never really enjoyed any of the salmon dishes I have tried.

Today, however, with the help of a fish booklet that fell out of Delicious Magazine we may now have a salmon dish to add to our menu. The salmon fillet is coated in a Chermoula which was very tasty and served with a light accompaniment of couscous…

Ingredients (For 2)

• 2 salmon fillets
• 1 small garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• just less than 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp chopped red chili
• Pinch saffron strands
• 1/2 tbspn lemon juice
• small handful coriander & same of mint
• 1 tbspn olive oil
• small pinch salt

For the Couscous:

• 1 red pepper
• 175ml chicken stock
• 140g couscous
• 1 tbspn extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 knob of butter
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 1 tbspn chopped mint

How to Do It

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°c (fan)
2. Roast pepper for 30 mins & the pop in bag to cool – once cool remove skin seeds – chop finely
3. Once pepper is cooked tun oven up to 210°
4. Make the chermoula – put all chermoula ingredients into magimix & blend
5. Line baking tray with baking paper.
6. Season skin side of salmon with salt & pepper then spread with some chermoula.
7. Turn fillet over, season again and add chermoula.
8. Cover the baking tray with tin foil – seal tightly
9. Pop salmon in over & set timer for 12 minutes
10. As soon a s salmon goes in the oven, make sure the stock is in a pan & boiling. Take it off the heat, add the couscous & cover (keeping it off the heat).
11. After 5 mins, fluff up the couscous, add butter & olive oil and mix well – popping back on heat briefly to ensure its warm through.
12. Take off heat again and add lemon juice, roasted pepper, chopped mint and season well.
13. Serve couscous and salmon for a very tasty meal…

Speedy things

I’ve used the magimix to make cakes twice. The first time we weren’t impressed by it but yesterday, due to time constraints, I used it to make some cupcakes and they worked much better. I did take a photo but the camera isn’t brilliant so you’ll have to wait until next time ;)

Its Mr C’s birthday on Tuesday though so I will be baking again but I think I’ll stick to my Dualit hand mixer for that!

Today I made some more bread & the magimix comes with a dough hook so I thought it silly not to give it a go. The outcome was a tasty fresh loaf and hardly any mess. All the ingredients are thrown in the magimix, it forms a dough ball and then you leave it in situ for half an hour. After this time you need to pulse the magimix 3 or 4 times and effectively, knock the dough back. The mixture then gets transferred to a big bowl and left to rise for 2 hours in the airing cupboard.

After two hours the dough is tipped out, gently moulded into a rectangle and placed in a loaf tin. I left it settle and rise again for 10 minutes whilst the oven heated up to 200°c. It cooked for about 35 minutes and produced a really nice loaf…

Thanks has to go to the lovely Jules at Trainee Domestic Goddess for firstly, finding this chocolate guinnessness that Hubby adores and secondly for converting the recipe from US to good old English measures.

I made the brownies yesterday & apart from them needing some chunky texture next time, they came out just as I had hoped.

I also bought a brand new silicone baking tin – its very flexible and I was slightly worried that when I picked it up full of runny mixture it would invert & land on the kitchen floor – but I was careful with my handling & it did the job very well indeed.

Recipe – Care of Trainee Domestic Goddess – link as above

Ingredients (for 16 brownies)

• 4 eggs
• 5oz caster sugar
• 12oz of various chocolate – dark & milk
• 2.5 oz unsalted butter
• 4 oz plain flour
• 2 tsp cocoa
• 290ml Guinness
• icing sugar

How to Do It

1. Preheat oven to 190oc and line 8 inch square baking pan with baking parchment
2. Combine eggs and sugar. On a medium heat melt chocolate and butter until smooth. Allow to cool for about 3 mins.
3. Beat chocolate mix into egg mix. Sift in flour and cocoa. Beat until well combined.
4. Whisk in Guinness, then pour into pan. Bake for 25 min until a skewer comes out just abour clean. It will continue to cook slightly after being taken out of oven.
5. Cool on rack, then dust in icing sugar and cut into 16 squares.