Make a Xmas cake

loopyloo_4

Hi,

I have promised my parents that I will make them a Christmas cake this year.

However, I am a useless cook, I dont have any recipes and have no idea when I should start making it. I recall an aunt saying she made hers in november???

Not sure why i said I would do this, maybe i was trying to prove that i am not useless. I dont even like Christmas cake.

Any help? Recipes?? When should i make it?? handy hints?

tislittleme

Hi, I have sent a message.
HTH
Little Me

jockettuk

if you live near a aldis i see in there leaflet they doing a christmas cake mix you can do now in readiness for christmas..

me i cant stand dried fruit so no good for me lol

loopyloo_4

Thanks for your replies.

I have a recipe which looks good now. I HATE Christmas cake. But i LOVE my dads xmas dinners so I really want it to be good for them.

Savvy_Sue

Good luck. Personally there's nothing I like better than a rich fruit cake, loaded with icing and marzipan but I know very few people share my taste!

A few tips:

Don't rush it. If you find it's taken you longer than you expected to mix everything, you can leave the mixture in the mixing bowl overnight, covered, without it coming to any harm and cook it the next day. Better than waiting up till 3 am while it finishes cooking. It may take longer to cook than you expect or the recipe predicts. In fact if you want to go to bed it will DEFINITELY take a long time to cook, following the Watched Kettle principle.

Don't stint on greasing and lining the tin. You are spending a fair bit on ingredients, a roll of non-stick baking parchment won't break the bank. And whatever the recipe says, use non-stick parchment, it knocks spots off greasing greaseproof paper.

Use the right size tin, especially make sure it's deep enough. A sponge tin 1/2" deep won't do!

If the cake requires a long cooking time - anything over an hour - make sure your lining of the sides sticks up well over the edge, and make it a double thickness of baking parchment. If the cake tin is 4" deep, make your lining walls 8" deep etc. This will protect the cake from drying out as it cooks and burning round the edges.

If you haven't got a cooking timer, either borrow one or use the one on your mobile phone or set an alarm clock or something! Don't rely on clock watching, not for something like this.

Know your oven. If it's a fan assisted oven, things will cook quicker than an old-fashioned recipe anticipates, so use a slightly lower temperature. If you don't know your oven well, cooking oven chips is one way of finding out whether it cooks faster, slower, or about the same as the people who write recipes expect. And it will also tell you whether it cooks evenly: if the chips at the back of the oven cook browner than the chips at the front, be prepared to check your cake 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the anticipated cooking time and swivel it round so it cooks evenly.

When you're doing that swivel check, also be ready to put a sheet of baking parchment above the cake to stop it browning too much on top.

If it starts to smell overcooked, cover it with a sheet of baking parchment. That way you can keep cooking it until a skewer comes out clean, as your recipe probably suggests, without it ending up black on top.

If the worst comes to the worst and it looks / smells burnt, don't despair. Your parents aren't to know what size cake you started cooking, you can always trim the top off - you may need to anyway to get a flat surface if you're icing it. You can trim the sides too. You would have to seriously overcook your cake, or start with a very small tin, to be left with nothing.

Let the cake cool completely before you wrap it up. If you don't, it will go mouldy. Wrap it in some more of that roll of baking parchment, and then if you haven't got a big enough tin wrap it completely in baking foil. Don't use foil directly: there will be a chemical reaction between the cake and foil if you do. And the cake must be cold before you ice it.

Some people poke skewer holes in the cooked cake and stuff it full of alcohol at regular intervals. You know your family's taste in alcohol laden cake better than we do, but don't overdo it or you'll get a soggy mess.

If you're using marzipan, you need apricot jam to stick it down. Making your own marzipan is a right pain and could safely be left to another year: buy some.

Ditto the icing. Note that Delia herself says a fluffy snow scene is quite enough for a Christmas cake: making that kind of icing isn't rocket science but it does have raw egg in it so buying a mix would avoid the risk of salmonella.

If you do make your own icing it will require at least twice as much icing sugar as the recipe says, in my experience! But if you're buying an icing mix make sure you get the right kind: you can't fluff up into snowy peaks the stuff you roll out! With the roll-out stuff you could roll out the shape you need for the top, stick a Father Christmas on top, and tie a big ribbon round the side.

I hope this doesn't make it sound too scary: they are just meant to be handy hints and Lessons I Have Learned Over The Years! Let us know how you get on!

loopyloo_4

Thankyou so much!!!

The tips are great and i wouldnt have known any of them :-[

I am off on holiday in a few weeks and am hoping to bake a cake the week after i get back. i will scan some pics on and get people at work to taste it ;D. I will let you know how i get on.

Lara

I always cook my cakes without alcohol.  When it comes out of the oven I then spray it with brandy, use one of the plant sprays - kept purely for this reason that is!   As the cake is still warm the brandy is sprayed evenly all over and seeps in well.  To keep it moist, once it is absolutely cold, wrap in cling film, then parchment and then foil.  However if you are going to store for many weeks check the cling film periodically as if it is not kept in a cool place it could make it sweat.  

I have used this method for the past eight years or so with great success.

Check out Sainsbury's for receipe also and ideas on decoration.  Good Luck.

PS!
If you are going to use Sugarpaste/Regalice then you will need "smoothers" to ensure the cake surface is smooth. You will also need to spray the marzipan with alcohol. This sterlizes it and also enables the sugar paste to stick to it. If you are not sure you could always pop into a local sugarcraft shop or alternatively look on Squires Kitchen site, www. squires-kitchen.co.uk (I think :-/).