Snowy rocky road

Now for something that requires no baking and very little prep, this was one of the stand-out hits of my Christmas goodies!  This is the perfect treat for having on standby in the fridge whenever a cup of tea needs a little bit of something tasty to accompany it.

You could reinvent this and change the ingredients, for example switching sultanas for the cranberries, or almonds for the pistachio, but the combination set out below really worked well – whatever you do, make sure you keep the mix of chewy and crunchy.

The pistachio and cranberry also looked festive sitting in the white chocolate.  I struggled to get good photos as it must have been one of the greyest, wettest, darkest Christmases ever...and, of course, I only remembered to photograph it when I was sitting with my cup of tea waiting to eat a square.  Impatience and greed does not make for good photos!

Happy New Year everyone – here’s to a year of wonderful bakes and may you never have a soggy bottom!

Ingredients

400g white chocolate, chopped
25g mini marshmallows
50g desiccated coconut, plus extra for sprinkling
50g dried sweetened cranberries
40g pistachios, roughly chopped
50g ginger nut biscuits, broken into small chunks but not crumbs

To decorate: sprinkles of your choice

Method

Line a tin approximately 15cm x 20cm with clingfilm.

Melt the chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl above a saucepan of steaming water (making sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water).  Be gentle and don’t rush as white chocolate is more sensitive than other chocolate.

Stir in all the ingredients and spoon into the prepared tin, leveling the surface.

Sprinkle over the additional coconut and decoration of your choice; I used bronze sugar pieces.

Refrigerate until set and then remove from the tin and cut into squares.

Keep in the fridge until wanted – it keeps for days.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Pistachio and almond cake with cranberries

So, you need a last minute Christmas cake?  You want something that will keep for days in a tin so it’s available when anyone decides they have digested a suitable amount of sausagemeat stuffing to have space for a slither of cake? You don’t have any time to decorate or beautify your baking?  Here’s your recipe!

It’s hard to imagine how a cake could look any more naturally Christmassy than this one – the cranberry and pistachio topping is a feast of festive colour and the sponge, made predominantly with ground nuts rather than flour, means it gets better and better with age. And it tastes delicious – I should mention that too!

Now, I can’t promise this because I haven’t tried it, but the recipe only uses 50g of flour – I suspect you could replace that with 50g more of ground almonds and make it gluten free.  Happy to hear any thoughts or comments on that idea.

This cake looks like a lot of work has gone into it, but it takes only about 10 minutes to get it oven-ready.  When I put the cranberries on top I thought it looked like an awful lot of berries but they bake down so don’t panic!

I served the cake at room temperature with some thick cream, but it would also be lovely served warm as dessert with cream, custard or ice cream.  So many options!  It might have come late in the year but this would easily make my top 3 cakes of the year – it is that good!

Wishing all my lovely readers a wonderful Christmas – eat, drink and be merry...but most of all eat cake!

Ingredients

For the cake:

125g shelled pistachios – must be unsalted!
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
100g ground almonds
50g plain flour

For the topping:

200g cranberries – I used fresh, but if you use frozen make sure they are fully defrosted
3 tablespoons caster sugar
25g shelled pistachios (unsalted), roughly chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/ Gas mark 5.

Line a 20cm round springform cake tin with baking paper.

Blitz the pistachios in a processor until they are finely ground (and look like a green version of the ground almonds!).  Put to one side.

Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Don’t skimp on this stage as it’s the only opportunity to get air into the cake.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Fold in the ground pistachios, almonds and flour.

Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Toss the cranberries in the sugar and scatter over the top of the cake.  It will look like a lot of sugar but don’t worry – the berries will remain a little tart.

Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

As soon as the cake comes out the oven, scatter the roughly chopped pistachios over the top and very gently press into the cake.  (If you put the pistachios on before baking they will lose their lovely greenness.) Don't worry if the nuts don't press in, as the cake cools and releases the nutty oils it will naturally becomes a bit sticky and hold them in place.

Leave to cool for 30 minutes before removing the tin and leaving the cake to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container and it will keep for several days – the high nut content means it will stay lovely and moist.

Serve with a cup of tea or warm for dessert.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Blueberry, cherry, cranberry and pecan oaties

 

Fruity oat biscuits and just in time for the first hint of summer!  Somehow using blueberries, cherries and cranberries rather than the more usual dried fruit fare makes these tasty, fresh and new – a refreshing change for your palette.

These are classic fruity oat biscuits but with an almost hidden secret: pecans.  In all honesty, I’m not sure you’d know the biscuits contained pecans (I chopped mine quite small) but you’d know there was something extra as there is a rich roundness to the flavour that is an unusual, but most welcome, addition to an oat biscuit.

The texture is like a crisp flapjack.  I must warn you that the dough is sticky in its raw state.  Don’t fret when you’re shaping the dough into a fat sausage for chilling – it really firms up in the fridge and is easy to work with.  A good sharp long bladed knife makes the cutting easier – I experimented with a serrated knife and it rather butchered the dough!

A very popular bake this one – the CCB (Caked Crusader’s Brother) commented that they had everything he loved about a biscuit.  When asked what this was, his first (and only) response was that they were, “big”.

Save yourself time and double the quantities for a 24 biscuit batch; they keep well for days and are very pleasing to have in the biscuit tin for emergencies.....such as needing a biscuit urgently.

Ingredients

175g plain flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
85g porridge oats
175g golden caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
140g unsalted butter – straight from the fridge
90g dried fruit – I used blueberries, cherries and cranberries but raisins or sultanas would also work
50g pecans – chopped
1 egg

Method

Place the flour, baking powder, porridge oats, golden caster sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl and mix together.

Add the butter and rub the mixture through your fingertips until the butter is completely incorporated.

Stir in the dried fruit, nuts and the egg.  At this point the mixture will be wet and clumpy but not quite coming together.

Use your hand to bring the dough together then tip out onto a large sheet of clingfilm.

Roll the dough into a fat sausage and flatten the ends.  You’re aiming for a diameter of about 6cm.

Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for about an hour or until the dough has firmed up.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.

Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Remove the biscuit log from the fridge and unwrap the clingfilm.

Cut the log into 12 fat discs and place on the baking sheets.  Don’t worry if the biscuit log crumbles a bit while you cut it – it will squidge back together.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes or until golden.  Mine took a bit longer – approx 20 minutes.

Leave, on the tray, to cool and firm up.

Store in an airtight container.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

White chocolate, cranberry and oatmeal biscuits

Last night I had a strong hankering for a soft oaty biscuit. So much so, that my final act, before turning off the light to go to sleep, was to write, “oats, dried cranberries/raisins?” on a post-it note and leave it by my bedside. When I read it this morning I understood what needed to be done (I always obey notes I leave myself, particularly when they involve food)...so, braving the rain I ventured out to purchase porridge oats and dried cranberries.

Luckily (hah! As if luck had anything to do with it!) I had a bar of white chocolate in the fridge and thought its mild creaminess would work very well with the cranberries; even though the cranberries I bought were sweetened, they still had a degree of tartness to them.

These biscuits are the work of minutes to make and are incredibly moreish. Normally I prefer a crisp biscuit but there is something comforting about the soft chewiness of these – they’re like a cake/biscuit/flapjack hybrid and probably even a bit healthy because of the oats and cranberries.

They stay soft and lovely for days after baking too...I am slowly working my way through them (obviously, I let Mr CC have some!)

Ingredients

150g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
150g dried cranberries (I used sweetened)
100g white chocolate, cut into small chunks
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
120g porridge oats
200g plain flour

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/gas mark 5.

Line three baking sheets with baking paper.

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and airy – as it’s brown sugar the mix will not whip as light as if caster sugar, but it will turn noticeably paler.

Beat in the eggs gradually.

Stir in the cranberries and white chocolate.

Stir in the bicarb, oats and flour.

Place rounded teaspoons of mix on the baking sheet leaving approximately 2-3cm between biscuits as they spread as they bake.

Bake for approximately 12 minutes or until the biscuits are golden. I checked them after 10 minutes and turned the tray for the remaining baking time.

Leave to cool on the baking sheets as they are very soft when warm.

When completely cool, store in an airtight container.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.

Cranberry and mincemeat streusel cake

One of the nicest things about baking is that all your friends, family and colleagues are aware of your passion (and very grateful to share the output from it!) and pass on recipes they’ve found either in publications or online. This recipe comes courtesy of the CCMIL (Caked Crusader’s Mother in Law) who found it in one of her weekly magazines.

My tastes can sometimes be strange and hard to justify; for example, I don’t like mincemeat when it’s in a mince pie but, spread out through a cake I do like it. If I was American, I believe I would have ended that statement with: Go figure.

What interested me about this recipe was that it used fresh cranberries. Up until now, my culinary involvement with cranberries was to open a jar and tip the sauce out into a dish! I think my problem with mincemeat is that it can be very sweet and very rich and the inclusion of fresh cranberries cut through this and balanced the flavours.

The first flavour this cake imparts is the sweet mincemeat, then the spices warm up only to be cut through with the fruity tartness of the cranberry, then the spice fights back. It’s a beautiful cake with so many flavours but all perfectly balanced and complementing each other.

The cake has another ingredient I’m premiering in my baking (pretentious? Moi?) – pine nuts. I adore pine nuts but have only used them in savoury recipes or sprinkled over a salad. Here they impart rich nuttiness and crunch.

For those of you interested in my holiday ramblings, they can be found here.

Over the upcoming festive period I may make more regular blog posts than usual with all my planned Christmas bakes. I hope you enjoy them as much as my nearest and dearest will!

Ingredients

For the cake:

150g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
100g ground almonds
4 tablespoons milk
200g mincemeat
200g fresh cranberries

For the streusel topping:

25g unsalted butter, cold
75g self raising flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
75g Demerara sugar
100g pine nuts (you could used flaked almonds if you prefer)

Optional: Icing sugar to dust

Method

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/fan oven 160˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4.

Line a 20cm round springform tin with baking paper ensuring that the paper comes up above the height of the tin.

Start by making the cake batter: beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Don’t skimp on this stage as this is where you get all the air into your mix.

Beat in the eggs on at a time, along with the vanilla.

Fold in the flour and almonds.

Fold in the milk.

Fold in the mincemeat and the cranberries.

Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Put to one side while you make the streusel topping: rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir in the cinnamon and sugar.

Stir in the pine nuts then add a couple of tablespoons of water and fork it in - just so the topping starts to clump a little. Add a tablespoon more of water if it's still very dry.

Scatter over the top of the cake.

Bake for 1 – 1 ¼ hours but test the cake after an hour – if a skewer comes out clean remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. If the skewer has batter on it give the cake a further 5 mins then test again. Mine took about 1 hour 25 minutes in total.

Leave to cool completely before turning out and storing in an airtight tin. You can, if you prefer, serve the cake warm for dessert with cream.

Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

Eat.