Monday, December 2, 2019

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!