I'm about to start baking for our annual family Boxing Day gathering here at Struan Farm. Over 40 coming this year, hooray! I've ordered a huge ham on the bone and put in a special request to brother-in-law Carrick to make his special bread rolls (Mil's recipe, world famous in Piopio). I'll order a few salmon fillets and come up with side salads shortly. The dessert table is where I tend to spread my wings, both in terms of offering and presentation. And I'll get on to that shortly.
But this past week I found a Christmas cake recipe in the current issue of Dish magazine that I decided to make for Christmas Day. John and I usually have a very low key Christmas dinner given the family extravaganza the following day. We're preoccupied with lawns, gardens, archery equipment, food, tables, etc. etc. Christmas for us is a major work day! But John loves Christmas cake and Christmas puddings, so I'm attempting to make the former this year for our Christmas dinner dessert. John's eyebrows raised a wee bit when I explained that it's not exactly a traditional recipe, rather a more modern take on the classic, but we'll get past that I'm sure.
"Rich Whiskey and Spiced Fruit Christmas Cake" is made with a bit of cocoa and lots of fragrant spices. The cooked fruit (figs, dates, apricots, prunes, apple) is processed to give the cake a non-traditional finish. It is whiskey infused, and gets fed every seven-ten days with a bit more whiskey to season it further. (When the cake is still hot from the oven it is pricked with a skewer or toothpick and infused, rather like the technique for making syrup cakes.)
So far, so good. The cake is now wrapped in fresh baking paper and a tea towel, stored in an air tight container. Next weekend it gets another feed of whisky and so on until Christmas. Before serving it will get iced and decorated with a ribbon around the side and festive toppings of some sort. The recipe calls for chocolate ganache, which I won't do given John isn't exactly a chocoholic. In fact, chocolate often makes him sneeze. He's already concerned it looks a bit chocolate-y due to the cocoa and dark spices, so I'm working to minimise those concerns. I'll come up with an alternative on the icing for the top. But I have edible gold stars and will get other bits and pieces (chocolate and non) to make it sufficiently festive and over the top.
My next holiday challenge with be Christmas pudding, subject to acquiring one of those special pots to cook it (steam it?). Next year, perhaps. There's the Boxing Day baking to do.
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