Christmas Cranberry and Orange Cake

This cake is an absolute showstopper - perfect for the centre of your Christmas dinner table for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's a lighter option than the traditional Christmas pudding, but has all the familiar tastes of the season. Lighter options seem to be popular this year, I keep reading about them everywhere, so I thought I'd join the party. Secondly, this cake looks spectacular (if I do say so myself). And all you need to do to it is pop it on a cake stand and you're ready to go. It absolutely doesn't need setting on fire, and you still have plenty of time to whip it up before Christmas - it doesn't need time to develop. Really, it's an incredibly low maintenance cake. 

Have I convinced you to give it a go yet? 

It's very easy, and though it looks like there's a lot of steps it really doesn't take much time. It's worth bothering to heat the cranberries for the topping in sugar and water, it takes some of their tartness away, and makes them contrast just nicely with the rest of the cake. You could replace all of the cranberries with dried cranberries easily, but I think the fresh look much nicer.

Christmas Cranberry and Orange Cake

Cake

250g Unsalted Butter

250g Caster Sugar

3 Large Eggs
Zest of 2 Large Oranges
270g Self Raising Flour
120ml Fresh Orange Juice (those oranges you zested will come in handy here!)
100g Fresh Cranberries, cut in half

Icing
150g Icing Sugar
Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice

Frosted Cranberries
3tbsp Caster Sugar
Water
Fresh cranberries
100g Granulated Sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease your cake tin. I used an angel food cake tin, but a bundt cake tin or a loaf tin would work equally well.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until really light and fluffy
3. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by most of the orange zest (save a little bit for the top).
4. Fold in the flour, and then slowly add the orange juice.
5. Chop the cranberries in half and coat in flour. Fold carefully into the mixture.
6. Bake in the oven for around 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. The time might vary a bit if you use a different type of tin. Particularly, I find loaf tins take a while, and after about half an hour I usually cover the tin with foil, so the top of the cake doesn't burn.
7. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely.
8. Whilst the cake is cooling, put fresh cranberries (however many you want on top of you cake) in a saucepan and just cover with water.
9. Add around 3tbsp caster sugar and heat. Once it's bubbling, remove from the heat and drain the cranberries. You mustn't let them pop when they're heating, so watch for cracks in the skin. If you see them, whip them off the heat then.
10. Coat the cranberries in the granulated sugar and leave to cool.
11. Sieve the icing sugar and add the orange juice - how much is up to you. I didn't use very much, because I wanted defined white stripes of icing, but if you want more of a glaze add more orange juice. The best approach is to add juice very slowly until you get the consistency you want. If you're using freshly squeezed you'll want to sieve it, so there's no juicy bits in the icing.
12. Put the icing in a piping bag, chop the tip of and decorate however you fancy.
13. Top the icing with the frosted cranberries.
14. Sprinkle over the remaining orange zest.

Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits

Now that it's FINALLY the 1st of December, it's definitely time to get the Christmas baking in full swing. I saw these beautiful stained glass window biscuits on Pinterest, and they really couldn't be easier to make. You can hang them in your window or on your tree, and add some homespun beauty to your decorations. Don't do what I did, which is realise you have nothing to hang them off and then spend an hour browsing trees online, when you really could have been doing other things!

Using Christmas shaped cookie cutters, you put a seasonal hole in the middle of your average biscuit. You then fill the hole with crushed up boiled sweets and bake. It only takes 8-10 minutes in the oven for the cookies to be cooked and the sweets to melt. Better yet, you can keep the inside cut outs and bake them too! They're perfect bite size biscuits, and you can keep them in a tin to serve with coffee over the festive period.

Christmas Stained Glass Window Biscuits
150g Butter
100g Light Brown Sugar
1 Egg
250g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tbsp Mixed Spice
1tsp Vanilla
Boiled Sweets

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and line your baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg.
3. Mix in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and vanilla until a dough forms.
4. Dust a clean work surface with flour and then roll out the dough until it's about 1cm thick.
5. Cut out the full cookie shape, and then the smaller one. (I used pre made cutters I got for Christmas last year, but you could easily make your own, or cut out shapes freehand if you're artistically inclined!)
6. Separate boiled sweets by colour, put them in a sandwich bag and crush with a rolling pin (this is harder than you'd think, and also I managed to break the sandwich bag and get little shards of boiled sweets all over my kitchen. Don't do that guys. Maybe put some kitchen roll over the bag before you smash).
7. Fill the gaps in the middle of the biscuit with the boiled sweets and then bake for 8-10 minutes.
8. Baking the cut out centres will only take 5-7 minutes because they're so tiny.

Christmas Day

Did you all had a lovely, peaceful, Christmas day, filled with the people you love, food and general merry making? I had a wonderful day with my family, and thought I'd share a few snaps. Above are pictures of my final iced Christmas cake. I know I talked about the lovely snowflakes on sticks, but when I arrived home there was so much tempting greenery and I couldn't resist a real holly wreath. 

 

 
I have to admit I photographed the starter, a creamy fish mousse, but was too excited to tuck into the main to remember the photo. It was the traditional turkey dinner.

The pudding pictured is a cranberry and orange trifle, recipe to follow in a few days. We had it for Christmas day, but you could easily have it for New Year instead. It's mouth wateringly delicious - I may have to go and grab a leftover bowl now!

Did everyone else love this years John Lewis advert as much as I did? Receiving a cuddly version of the hare from Ben made me a very happy bunny indeed.

I really hope you all had as lovely a day as I did. Stay tuned later in the week for a few more festive posts.

Up-cycle an Advent Calender

I love advent calendars. When I was younger I had a lovely one that my parents filled themselves. This year they kept it simple and bought me a Hotel Chocolat one when they were up visiting. It was absolutely delicious, a treat everyday, but it did have a lot of packaging! Excess packaging upsets me - Easter eggs kill me. I love them, but there's so much plastic and cardboard and it's such a waste! As I ate the last couple of chocolates before I travelled home I had a brilliant idea that meant the plastic would be kept and reused for the foreseeable future. Who fancies Christmas shaped chocolates after lunch? I think this would be a great Christmas eve activity to keep little ones entertained until the big day. Here's how I did it:





1. Pull the plastic bits out of your advent calendar and pull all of the tin foil off
2. Melt your chosen chocolate and pour into the moulds
3. Leave to set in a cool place for a few hours
4. Pop out and enjoy!

Edinburgh Christmas Market

I'm jumping on the bandwagon here. But that's okay, it's a beautiful Christmassy bandwagon with twinkling lights and tasty treats. It's a post about my trip to a Christmas Market - the Edinburgh Market. I've read so many posts with such jealousy, and we'd had this trip planned for such a long time. I've gone for a photo edit - sometimes pictures say so much more than words.