Wedding cake - a scary prospect realised

We're scarily close to the wedding, so last week I made the cakes *insert petrified face here* In our original plans wedding cake making seemed like a fun part of the whole DIY wedding thing, as those plans changed it became a necessary aspect of a thrifty wedding. Thank goodness for Sainsbury's basics is all I can say.

I put the fruit into soak back in January.  I used my Christmas cake recipe as it is always so well received (and I like it). Based on Ruth of The Pink Whisk's Boozy fruit cake, the dried fruit was soaked in ginger wine for 6 weeks, before being baked last week into two layers of a rich, boozy fruit cake.

We've got a guest list of 60 for the wedding so needed enough cake for everyone to have a slice. Working out how much cake we needed was a bit of a nightmare for me, but thanks to twitter and google I got there and made two layers: a 12 inch layer and an 8 inch.

My sister has kindly offered to make 2 Victoria sandwich cakes - one with raspberries and cream and one with lemon curd and mascarpone. We'll be using both cakes as pudding at the reception so thought it was only fair to offer an alternative to those of us who don't enjoy fruit cake.

This should give us plenty of cake (hopefully more than we need) which means that even though my Brownies and Guides are not be able to come to the wedding they will be able to have some cake - which, when you're 7 is a very important part of your Snowy Owl getting married.

I split the measurements into 2 sets, one for the big cake, one for the smaller one - M had to help me with quantities as I was certain I needed to halve the quantities of the original recipe again for the 12 inch cake when in actual fact I needed to double it. Which is worth being aware of if you're doing your own.

 

Meal planning Monday

Back and planning again - life here is altogether more hectic than we'd like; between work, decorating the new house, Guiding, and spending time together - I'm not sure where the time to eat or sleep has gone. All of that combined with an untimely dose of Labrynthitis have meant that meal planning has gone a bit awry. I'm actually sat down this morning having a bit of a rest in advance of a baking marathon and a bit of spray painting of the radiator.

We've been lucky enough to have some much needed and appreciated help with the decorating this weekend - and baking seems to be payment enough for Mark's colleagues, so we have Welsh cakes on the menu this week.

Breakfasts are porridge and fruit for me. I don't know about you, but I struggle much more with my 5 a day in the wintertime so adding dried or fresh fruit to my morning porridge is a great way to sneak an extra couple of portions in.

Lunches this week are some of the rice I froze from my fridge bottom bonanza the other week. Wonderfully spicy to blow those wintery cobwebs right away.

Dinners: tonight I have dibs on the telly in order to watch the new Doctor Who as well as Strictly and am accompanying that with a sausage and spaghetti squash bake. The spaghetti squash is a new endeavour for me, so I think I'll try with plenty of time, just in case it's troublesome.

Sunday: Leftovers from Saturday night

Monday -   I'm going to pop a chicken, butternut squash and barley casserole in the slow cooker.

Tuesday - Leftovers (can you see a pattern?)

Wednesday - last week's risotto leftovers from the freezer

Thursday - Baked potatoes with beans and cheese. These are ideal for Thursday nights as I can pop them in the oven before Brownies and they're ready to go afterwards.

Friday - Friday always feels such a long way away at this point, but we'll either be at home and I think if so it's be baked salmon and samphire for me, with chicken and veg for the non fish eater.

Next weekend we're at M's parents for their birthday celebrations (and a break from decorating) so no cooking on the agenda for me.

Baking this week is finally festive - It's stir up Sunday tomorrow so pudding is on the agenda, but I'm going to make the Christmas cake this afternoon. A lovely festive smelling house is on the agenda - which for me marks the gateway to the Christmas season and celebrations.

Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet: Christmas cake

The part of writing and being Penelope's Pantry that I love the most is being able to give people cake, I suppose for me it's a bit like giving people a part of myself. An edible version of love if you will. Like the little boy in the John Lewis ad it's giving presents that I love the most, presents that have something of me in them.

This year I've made three Christmas cakes, one for Mark and myself (and anyone who pops in over Christmas) one potentially for the Guides Winter Weekend, and one for my Mum. I posted here about Ruth's boozy fruit that I adapted to my own tastes (cherries, lots of glace cherries) and put in a cupboard dutifully stirring for 6 weeks. Naturally, come baking time my hand was borked so Mark's mum helped me to bake the cakes. The bee in the bonnet in this post's title comes from a comment from Laura of Hungry and Frozen which was exactly how I felt about making these. I HAD to do them and then when I read her comment the song was stuck in my head *sings* Say you're a little birdhouse in my soul.
I carried on with Ruth's recipe, lining the tins with greaseproof and double thickness of newspaper (thanks Lush for the Lush Times I could put to new use). Mark's mum also gave me a hint to put the cake tins on newspaper in the oven as a way to protect the cake from burning. It's just worth bearing in mind with this for the recipe, in Mark's the cakes took 4 hours, and in mine the last one took 3. I think Louise's took a similar amount of time - had it been just mine, I would have put it down to my dodgy oven, but lots of people were saying that the cake had taken longer to bake than expected so I'm just putting it down to one of those things. I will say this for it, there is nothing quite like the smell of Christmas cake baking, and this smelled amazing. A bit like the real beginning of Christmas.

This is Ruth's recipe, I actually stayed almost true to it (using all soft brown sugar), although I had already adapted the boozy fruit to suit myself

Ingredients:
225g butter, softened
225g soft brown sugar
2 tbsps treacle
2 tsps sweet mixed spice
285g plain flour
5 large eggs, beaten

2 pints of  Boozy Fruit already prepared.

150ml brandy for feeding.

This recipe will make an 8″ round Christmas Cake

Preheat oven to a low 150c Fan/170c/Gas Mark 3.
Double line your tin
Cream together butter and sugar
Add the treacle and beat until combined
Add the beaten eggs a little at a time, adding a spoonful of flour after each addition (This actually prompted an interesting discussion between Mark's mum and myself, didn't your cake curdling seem to be the worst thing EVER, Home Ec teachers would threaten our cake mixes with the bin if it even looked like it was going to curdle. Yet now we just don't seem to worry so much... why the change we wondered? Possibly  because it's purely aesthetic?)
Sift in the flour and spice and fold that in
Remove the cinammon stick from your fruit - or all 3 in my case and then add your fruit to the bowl. As I had three quantities of fruit, I measured out roughly 2 pints for each cake
Put in your prepared cake tin, double lined and wrapped in newspaper and bake until a skewer comes out clean

Then pierce the top of your cake with another skewer and feed over the next weeks with brandy - keep it stored in an airtight tin and wrapped in baking parchment and foil
Then you're ready to marzipan and ice - I'll do a full post about decorating, as this is the first year I've really worked at prettifying, normally I just leave them covered in white fondant and let other people do the fancy stuff.

I've finished my first cake which is up for a raffle in aid of Janie's School, here it is wrapped and ready to go. I've used some of the pins from my bridesmaid's bouquet to secure the ribbon for luck.

Christmas is coming, the fruit is getting drunk

*ducks and hides*

I know Christmas isn't everyone's cup of tea, truth be told for the last few years it's not been mine. But this year I've decided to put on my big girl pants, and get involved. Clearly the hottest weekend of the year was the ideal time to start my prep (sense the tone).

Having my broadband back has meant I'm doing a lot more blog reading, and as always being late to the party means I've recently started following Ruth at The Pink Whisk and a couple of weeks back she posted here about putting her fruit into soak for her Christmas cake. This prompted me to get my posterior into gear and my friend Louise and I got organised.

I'm making three cakes - one for me, one for Mum and one for the Division Christmas do, Louise is making one. Clearly this called for one thing. Spreadsheet! Duly organised off we pottered. Lou was substituting figs for brazil nuts and almonds and we both added extra glace cherries in.

We're roughly following Ruth's quantities, although I did the brandy by eye and added in the juice of the oranges and extra spices, nutmeg, cloves and sweet mixed spice.

Ingredients:
Fruit
200g raisins
200g sultanas
175g dried figs, chopped
100g dates, chopped
55g glace cherries

Soak
55g caster sugar
55ml water
170ml brandy
Zest and juice of 1 orange
1 cinnamon stick
Half a nutmeg, grated
1 tsp sweet mixed spice
5 cloves

I have to say a year ago I wouldn't have attempted this, owing to the need to make a sugar syrup - and I'm really proud of the fact that this didn't phase me at all on Saturday, I just got on with it, making a sugar syrup and then cooling it slightly before adding it to the brandy, orange juice and spices.

It's living in the cupboard with my kilners of sloe gin that's nearly ready to strain into pretty bottles. I've stirred it every day this week and will soon start forgetting but it smells amazing already - really Christmassy and I get a little smile every time I haul it (it's heavy) out to stir.

We're planning on doing baked bean tin Christmas cakes with the Guides, so the week before half term will be doing this en masse and without alcohol! Wish us luck, I'll be sure to put some pictures up, and document our progress as we bake, marzipan and decorate.

Baked Bean Christmas cakes

Not literally, but we could have been. Thanks must go to Jules of The Butcher. The Baker (no longer a Domestic Goddess in Training we note!) who donated a sizeable portion of the ingredients, and several baked bean tins as well.


I should probably get the baked bean tin thing out of the way first. We wanted to make individual cakes, that the girls could make up in Patrols and I could cook for them (my oven's just that bit more reliable than the one at the Guide hut), and then after a period of resting and feeding with brandy, the girls could then marzipan and ice themselves. Research led me to the half sized baked bean tins as the perfect vehicle for such escapades and so across the country consumption of the delicacy increased considerably (perhaps I should ask Heinz for commission!) So, these are affectionately known as Baked Bean Christmas Cakes. Hopefully all is becoming clear.


I used a recipe from Imaginative Icing (thanks for that tip go to Libby of Caking Agent - seriously, how many bloggers can I namecheck in one post?!) as the site provided a variation depending on the size cake you were baking. As the baked bean tins were about 3 inches in diameter, I halved their smallest recipe to provide the ingredients per girl, and then multiplied it up for the number of Guides in each Patrol. This way each Patrol (we have Daffodils, Roses and Shamrocks) got to make up the quantity of cake mix they needed and then share it out into their tins (points go to Sharpie for making markers that stay on when baked at 180 degrees or I'd have had no hope at working out who's was whose!)


I have lovely spreadsheets, that are colour coded for each patrol showing quantities, but I'll just add a rough estimate of the ingredients for one patrol (roughly 6 girls) needed here.


Baked Bean Christmas Cake - Daffodil Patrol

450g currants
150g sultanas
150g raisins
120g chopped glace cherries
75g chopped mixed peel
75g chopped blanched almonds
1 lemon - rind only, grated
270g plain flour
1.5 tsp cinammon
3/4 tsp ground mixed spice
225g butter
225g light brown soft sugar
4.5 eggs (I used 4 extra large)
3tsp Black Treacle

Some action shots to go with the method


The girls creamed the butter, treacle and sugar (by hand - I tried to pretend this was to make authentic cakes, it was actually because I had forgotten my beaters)



We then added the eggs (with a tablespoon of flour for each egg to stop the mixture curdling) beating each in well



The flour and spices were seived in and mixed in thoroughly

All the fruit was then added and stirred in well (by this time the mixture is a little too stiff for small arms)

Everyone then has to have 1 stir and make a wish before spooning out the mixture into their greased and lined baked bean tins.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the next step was clearly marzipanning - there was a break of a month between these stages. In that period I baked the cakes (an hour and a half was slightly too long I found) and fed them with brandy fairly regularly. When I say fairly regularly I mean whenever I opened the cupboard, saw the brandy and thought "Oh I haven't fed the cakes lately!"

We then marzipanned the cakes, each girl rolling out her marzipan and smoothing it over the cake. It was at this point that I realised we should have turned them upside down so that they were beautiful and flat as my levelling efforts were, shall we say... efforts?

We finished, in true Guiding style, at the last possible moment, by icing them on our last meeting. I decided to keep the decoration simple, being primarily constrained by time, but also constrained by lack of skill in icing. Each cake was iced in white royal icing and had a ribbon pinned around it's base. We made homemade cake boards and each girl took her cake home, proud of her achievements. I still have the big one on my sideboard, waiting to be taken into work.

All in, a successful (if lengthy) project, maybe next year we'll do stained glass biscuits and tree decorations!

December 24th, 9pm, Eastern Standard time

From here on in I shoot (well, write really) without a script... see if anything comes of it

Well, that's when I started this post (give or take a few hours anyways) and I've only just got around to finishing it. Sincere apologies. My bad and all that. The lack of posts has once again been down to my shocking ill health, and a new meds regime that have left me sans appetite once again. However, the festive period has forced me to get back into eating (as even I can't ignore a Christmas dinner) so I wanted to celebrate that with a post and also send the few readers that haven't abandoned me in these post-less 8 weeks best wishes for a happy, healthy and foodie 2009.

I do have some posts lined up to go over the next few days, but in the meantime, do amuse yourselves with pictures of my little sister's Christmas cake. In contrast to my attempt at classy white on white last year, she went for the infinitely cuter skiing penguins (inspired by an issue of the Sainsbury's magazine I believe)