Skip to main content

Christmas Cake




Decked out streets, lit up trees and loads of delicious food - there are plenty of reasons Christmas is my favourite time of the year. We don't really celebrate Christmas at our place but I've made it a tradition to bake a fruit cake every year. Some years, I soak my dried fruits in advance and there is a traditional cake. This year, though, I only got my act together yesterday and with just a day to go for Christmas, I went for the most logical fallback of Christmas cake procrastinators, the mincemeat cake.

Mincemeat, for the uninitiated, is a British concoction of raisins, apples and other dried fruits cooked down with sugar, butter and rum (or sherry or brandy - some booze basically). It's used to fill mince pies that most Londoners loathe but I love. And I love mincemeat so much I use it to make cookies and this year, cake. This is how I make mincemeat. The fruits I use vary each year and this year's batch was a mix of golden and black raisins, prunes and just because I had a bottle open, sweet white wine instead of rum.

Once you have a jar of mincemeat, the cake is simple. I picked a recipe by Delia Smith and this has to be the best cake I've ever baked, even if I say so myself. I know I'm posting this at the end of Christmas day but it's winter still and this will make an excellent snacking cake to have around the house. At the very least, bookmark this for the next Christmas.

Ingredients
(adapted to my 7 inch tin; Delia's original recipe is for an 8 inch deep tin)
For the day before
250 grams mincemeat
100 ml sweet white wine
150 grams raisins or mixed dried fruits
75 grams chopped dried figs

For the cake
100 grams butter
90 grams dark brown sugar
2 tbsp date syrup or molasses
2 eggs
150 grams plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
zest of 2 limes
50 grams almonds, chopped

The day before you are to make the cake, put all the presoaking ingredients in a bowl, stir to mix, cover and leave in the fridge.

The next day, make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. Set the oven to preheat at 170C and line the base of a 7 inch springform tin with parchment paper. Whisk butter, brown sugar and date syrup until they are mixed through. Add the eggs and whisk to combine. Mix the flour with baking powder and lime zest in a separate bowl, then add to the mixture alongwith pre-soaked mince and dried fruits. With a wooden or silicon spatula, mix everything together and pour into the prepared tin. Smooth the mixture as much as you can with the back of a spoon and sprinkle chopped almonds all over the top of the cake mixture.

Bake for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until the cake is cooked through and the centre springs back when lightly touched. Let cool in the tin for half an hour, then unmould and cool complete on a wire rack. Delia says the cake will keep 3-4 weeks in an airtight tin but with new year's eve around the corner, I won't blame you for polishing this off in the next week or so.
Labels:

Comments

Srivalli said…
Simran, I have been eying this since I saw this on my feed, what a lovely cake. I am reading about Mincemeat for the first time, so you know I am going to read all about it. And I am planning to make this eggless too..let's see how that works out..:)..
December 26, 2016 at 3:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kadhi Chawal

I just can't think of what to write today. That's what my absolute favorite meal does to me, I just want to stop talking and dig right in. So I won't ramble and go straight on the recipe for kadhi. First, make the pakoras that would go in the kadhi. Slice an onion lengthwise. Make a batter with 1/2 cup chickpea flour (besan), salt, red chilli powder and water. Dip onions in this batter and deep fry until crisp. Keep aside. Now blend 1 cup yogurt and 1/3 cup besan into a paste. Add 3-4 cups water to make a very thin blend. Heat a tbsp of oil in a pan. Add a tsp each of mustard seeds, cumin seeds, ajwain (carom seeds) and methre (fenugreek seeds). Let splutter for a few seconds. Now add a large onion, cut lengthwise into thin slices and cook until browned lightly. Pour in the yogurt/besan mix and add 1 tsp turmeric powder, 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp red chilli powder. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let simmer for at least half an hour. You have to stir this occasio...
17 comments
Read more

Potato Naan

I know what you see up there is a naan. But let's pretend for a moment we are making bread. For I had bookmarked this recipe for potato bread a zillion years ago. And that's what I set to make. Chopped and boiled 100 gms potatoes until they are soft. Mashed them along with 3/4 cup of water they were boiled in. While the potatoes were boiling, I added a tsp of sugar to 1/4 cup warm water, then sprinkled a tsp of yeast and let it proof for 10 minutes. To the potato/water mix, I added a cup each of whole wheat flour and plain flour, 1/2 tsp salt as well as the yeast. Once everything was mixed well, I put the dough on a flour-dusted surface and kneaded it for 10 minutes or so. It was a fairly wet dough, but got it to get smooth. Oiled a large bowl and put the dough in it to rise to double it's size. By the time the first rise ended after an hour or so, I didn't want the bread. I wanted a naan instead. And if someone deserves to throw a tantrum after days of sniv...
16 comments
Read more

Dukkah

Talk about myths busted. I went to Dubai planning to buy zat'ar, the fragrant herb and spice mix. And Dukkah, the interesting blend of nuts and spices. Not sumac, because I still have a pack left in my fridge. So zat'ar was easy - every Carrefour supermarket had that one. But no one had dukkah and I was like, how can they not have dukkah? It's a middle eastern thing, right! But well, they don't sell dukkah in Dubai, so I came back and armed with recipes from 10-odd blogs (all roughly the same), I set to make my own. The key to making dukkah is : line up all your ingredients, toast each of them separately in a heavy non-stick pan till they are fragrant and lightly roasted, then put everything in a blender and grind coarsely. This is your dukkah. Now dip your bread in olive oil, then dip it in dukkah and indulge. A final word of warning: this can be highly addictive. And finally, my list of ingredients: 1/4 cup almonds 2 tbsp coriander seeds 1 1/2 tbsp sesame...
14 comments
Read more