Christmas Baking: The Cake (Part 2)

And so armed with my Merchant Gourmet chestnut puree I was ready to make the cake. As I said before it is from Feast and is the "Easy-Action Christmas Cake". Not your serious-soak-the-fruit-overnight-"real" Christmas cake but your easy-throw-everything-in-together Christmas cake. My kind of cake!
There is some soaking of the fruit, you put all the fruit, butter, sugar, chestnut puree, rum and orange juice and zests in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer it for 10 minutes and then leave it for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes I can cope with, otherwise you have to think ahead and prepare! Very bad when you think I'm trying to be all traditional and make my cake in advance but you know it works just as well this way so why tinker.
Once the soaking has finished you then add all the rest of the ingredients (eggs, flour and spices) mix well and pour into you prepared tin. The prepared tin means a double layer of greaseproof paper and then another double layer on the outside of the tin (double the height of the tin) to protect the cake during the long bake. Then it's into the oven (150 C) for one and three quarter hours to two hours. I managed to stop myself from opening the oven door the whole time and after and hour and three quarters it was done, risen and cracked on the surface all rich and fruity and smelling of Christmas.
The final thing to do was to douse it in more Rum! Then leave it in the tin until it is completely cooled, wrap and store. I just had a quick look at it now (really to take a photo for you guys) and it looks great and smells yum. I also took the opportunity to give it a little more Rum, well it is Christmas after all!

Christmas Baking Continues: The Cake (part 1)

It was puddings a couple of weeks ago and last week it was time for the cake. In fact it was supposed to have been the previous week but Tesco (again) conspired against me. The recipe I used is from Feast by Nigella, I used it last year to great success and so decided that it would be the one this year too. It calls for pureed chestnut, seems reasonable doesn't it? Not beyond the ken of man? So you would think.
Armed with my ingredients list we went to Tesco Extra (note the Extra, promising me, well extra) at Surrey Quays again. I should have known better after my last trip but I'm an optimist at heart and the boyfriend needed to go there so... I didn't need to get much so we grabbed a basket and, dodging the multitudes who were all out again, we picked up the various ingredients. Then it came to the pureed chestnut and we went to all the aisles that it could/should have been in but no luck so I asked someone. It so happened that another woman had asked about the same thing (I did wonder if she was making Nigella's cake too, but didn't ask) and the gentleman had searched the spices aisle with no luck and sent us to the Christmas aisle. Off we went to be confronted with all manner of Christmas food, cakes, puddings, santas and other chocolate shaped Christmas objet. As you will have guessed, no pureed chestnut. One more turn of the likely aisles and we gave up. As I wanted to do the cake that day the boyfriend offered to take me to Sainsbury's in New Cross Gate (my local) and after checking that he really meant it (well, you have to show willing!) off we went. And, guess what? Loads of the stuff, tins of it, down be the head with it we were. Yes they had it. Not sure what this means about the difference between Sainsbury's shoppers and Tesco shoppers but I'll not be looking for anything out of the ordinary at Tesco for a while.
By this time I had lost my Christmas cake baking will so decided to leave it until the next week and so we get to last Saturday.

Pumpkin Pie a la Gayle Hunnicutt

As it was bonfire night last night (and I was having friends over) I decided to continue my Halloween baking theme and make a Pumpkin Pie. I know this is American and usually made for Thanksgiving but what the hey.
A friend mentioned that she had a recipe that her and her mother had been using for years so I decided that it was best to use something that was tried and tested. When I got the recipe it turned out to be Gayle Hunnicutt's Pumpkin Pie. The name was familiar so I checked her out online and it turns out she was an American actress who had a brief Hollywood career then married David Hemmings and moved to London. Not sure what her qualification are for making Pumpkin Pie! But I digress.
The recipe calls for a 12inch pastry tin and a pastry case to go in it. So I made some shortcrust pastry (from Gary Rhodes) and blind baked it in readiness.

Ingredients:
1 medium Pumpkin (I used my Libbys pureed Pumpkin rather than roasting and pureeing the Pumpkin as the recipe calls for, much easier. I used a 425g tin)
4oz caster sugar
2oz light soft brown sugar
half tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
half tsp ginger
quarter tsp nutmeg or allspice (I used nutmeg)
zest of an orange and a lemon
one eight tsp ground cloves (seems a bit pointless so I left it out)
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp Molasses (I had treacle so used that)
300g soured cream (it really said 2x5oz cartons of soured cream but I converted it to make it easier)
2 and a half oz cream cheese
Basically this is a "put everything in a bowl and mix recipe", very easy. So I did just that and put the mixture in the pastry case and put in the oven (170C) and started to clear up. As I did this I noticed the two eggs that were supposed to in the mixture! As it had only been in the oven for a few minutes I whipped it out and scraped the mixture back into the bowl and added the eggs. Disaster averted. Back in the oven it went for about 40 minutes (it's ready when a knife comes out clean).
Sometimes I'm just a bit of a klutz, I think I'm reading the recipe thoroughly but then I miss something, it happens a bit too often! But it never seems to make much difference, the cakes seem to turn out (most of the time). And now, writing up the recipe here I've discovered that I forgot to add the caster sugar! You see, klutz.
I served it with cream and pretty much all the plates were cleared, no one said "you know what this is missing? caster sugar". I have to say it wasn't my favourite dessert in the world, not sure I will make it again but not sure that the missing caster sugar was the culprit. It might have made it a bit sweeter but it wasn't the sweetness I didn't like, not sure I can put my finger on it. So, note to self, read the recipe through a few times and maybe check off the ingredients as you go along!