Christmas Cake Part Two - The Main Event

Okay, we've made our candied orange peel.  We've resisted snacking on more than two or three (or four... or five...) pieces.  We're ready to make some Christmas cake!

Ingredients

• About 750 grams (1.5 pounds) assorted dried fruits - I used candied orange peel (diced), sultana raisins, Thompson raisins, yellow raisins, currants, prunes, dried cranberries (sweetened with apple juice), dried cherries, dried apricots, apple chips (smashed into crumbs), diced dried mango, and dried pineapple
• 175g coconut oil
• 1/4 cup coconut sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice plus 1/2 cup pineapple juice (you can substitute water for either/both, but you'll lose a bit of flavour)
• 1 jar St Dalfour no-added-sugar orange marmalade (or 200g of other NSA marmalade)
• 2 cups almond flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 3 eggs

Instructions

1. Combine all the dried fruit, the coconut oil, coconut sugar, juice/water, and marmalade in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Bring up to a simmer and keep it there for about 10 minutes.  Set aside to cool for 30 minutes.
2. While that's cooling, preheat the oven to 300F and line your springform cake tin with parchment paper.
3. Once the fruit mixture has cooled, mix in the almond flour, cinnamon, and ginger.  Then beat in your eggs.
4. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 60 to 80 minutes.  Mine was done at 70 minutes.
5. Leave to cool completely in the cake tin.

FYI, it seems this cake slices easier when fridge-cold.  At room temperature it's pretty crumbly.  But still tasty.

Christmas Cake Part One - Candied Orange Peel

We already make the Christmas Cake Muffins on a regular basis, and I find them very tasty indeed.  But, with the holiday season fast approaching, I wanted more...  But first, to make it authentic, I needed candied orange peel.

Fortunately, the Internet delivered, with this recipe which I will repeat here with my own notes.

Ingredients

• A sauce pan of water
• Two navel oranges with thick skin (this also works well with lemon peel replacing part of the orange peel)
• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup water

Instructions

1. Carefully score and remove the peel from the oranges in sections, then cut it all into thin strips about 0.5cm (1/4") wide.
2. Boil all of the peel in the saucepan full of water for at least twenty minutes.
3. Drain the peel well in a colander.
4. In a saucepan, combine one cup honey and one cup water.
5. Bring the honey/water mixture to a boil, stirring frequently to make sure they're well-mixed.
6. Reduce heat and boil for ten minutes, continuing to stir frequently.  You're making a syrup here, trying to boil off some of the water.  Be VERY careful not to splash any of this on you.
7. Add all of the orange peel to the hot syrup in the pan, mix well, reduce heat to low.
8. Simmer for about 45 minutes.  Stir occasionally, but more frequently as you near the end of the cooking time.  Keep a VERY close eye on it as it nears the end of the 45 minutes, it's easy to scorch it.
9. Remove to parchment paper to cool for 10 minutes.  Try to get the strips teased out into individual pieces, rather than having one big clump.

Now you can eat them as-is, dip them in melted chocolate, or use them in cooking.  Stay tuned for the recipe I used these in!

Chocolate pie

Ever since I was young, chocolate pie has been one of my favourite desserts.  Kind of hard to achieve that in paleo, right?  Well, maybe not...

A while back, I'd found a six-pack of canned coconut cream at our local Costco.  It sat in the pantry for a bit while I tried to figure out what to do with it, until I found this recipe.  I've tweaked it just a bit, and I use this pie crust rather than the one in the chocolate pie recipe - Mrs. Caveman said the result was like eating "chocolate pudding on shortbread", I just called it delicious.  I'm out of coconut cream now, I guess I need to make another Costco run soon!

Ingredients

• 2 x 13 ounce cans coconut cream (not coconut milk)
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp chocolate stevia
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• dash of salt

Instructions

1. Prepare a pie crust, bake it, and allow it to cool completely.
2. Open both cans of coconut cream, drain off the clear fluid (and discard), and put the coconut cream into a mixing bowl.
3. Cream the coconut cream well with a whisk.
4. Sift in the cocoa powder.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients, whisking well.
6. Transfer into the cooled pie crust.
7. Put the whole thing into the fridge for a couple of hours.
8. Serve.

Three notes:

1. For a touch of class, top with grated chocolate.

2. This is a pretty rich pie.  That's not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

3.  Keep the leftovers in the fridge, covered with foil so it doesn't dry out.

An Amazing Deep-dish Pizza!

Okay, not really paleo if you're putting cheese on it, but I promise not to judge...  Anyway, this turns out pretty amazing for a paleo deep-dish pizza, and I really recommend it!  Original recipe was here, I've just tweaked the instructions to make them (hopefully) clearer.

Ingredients

• 2 cups tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp "Italian Seasoning Blend" dry herb mix
• 1 cup just-boiled water
• 1 Tbsp bacon grease or other high-smoke-point fat
• Whatever you want to put on your pizza...

Instructions

1. Place a 12-inch cast iron skillet in the oven on the middle rack.  Set the oven to preheat to 425F.  Once the oven has preheated, leave the skillet in the oven for at least 10 minutes.
2. While the oven is preheating, put a kettle on to boil (for the boiling water).
3. In a stand mixer or other suitable "implement of mass blending" (see note below) place the tapioca flour/starch, coconut flour, eggs, salt, "Italian Seasoning Blend", and olive oil.  Mix or blend until combined, then pour in the cup of just-boiled water while it continues to mix/blend.
4. Wait at least 10 minutes, basically until the oven is preheated and the skillet is good and hot.
5. Remove the skillet from the oven, add the tablespoon of fat, let it melt, and swirl it around in the pan to coat evenly.
6. Put the dough into the hot skillet (carefully!) - I use a spatula to spoon it in as "lumps" of dough, then smoosh/smooth them around until it's a fairly even layer coating the entire bottom of the pan, up to the side walls.
7. Place the skillet with the dough into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
8. Remove it from the oven, dress it, and bake for an additional 20-25 minutes.  (I sometimes switch the oven to "broil" for the last couple of minutes, if the cheese isn't quite browned enough for my liking.)
9. Let it sit for ten minutes (because, well, lava-cheese!).
10. Eat!!!

Note: the dough gets pretty thick, do NOT use a wimpy mini blender or small food processor unit.  Go big or go home!

And hey, how about a picture?