Tag: christmas baking

Christmas: 12 favourite festive cakes and bakes

I was chatting about baking to a mum in the playground yesterday, we discovered a shared love of fairly unusual continental recipes, the kind Paul and Pru would give to Bake Off contestants to try and baffle them into submission. It got me thinking about some of my favourite things I’ve baked and blogged, so I thought I’d choose 12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes and give them another airing.

I promise you they’re all easy, I lack the patience, time and skill to do anything too fancy and time consuming; but they’re all delicious.

Mincemeat Flapjack

One of the most enduring and classic flavours of Christmas is mincemeat. Mince pies are an undeniable Christmas classic, but I’ve been throwing mincemeat into cakes and vol au vents for a few years now. It’s too good an ingredient just to use in little pies. So I baked a hearty batch of mincemeat flapjack and they all but disappeared in an afternoon. They’re simple, they’re filling and most of all, they’re delicious.

12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes

Lebkuchen Cake 

Traditionally a moreish soft biscuit, I decided to attempt a German Lebkuchen Cake with considerable success. The recipe is easier than it looks to make and the results are truly scrumptious. It’s one of our favourite festive cakes!

12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes

Danish Butter Cookies

Because to me, and other children of the 80’s, Danish Butter Cookies are forever linked to Christmas, it’s at this time of year I tend to make them the most. A batch of cookies neatly wrapped in brown paper, or in a decorative bag or box make a lovely little edible gift for someone.

Christmas Recipe: Danish Butter Biscuits

Joulutorttu

Traditionally Joulutorttu are made with puff pastry and a special Finnish prune jam. However I made mine with a Christmas preserve, but it does need a good firm set jam. Try plum or prune conserve for authenticity. They look a bit tricky to make, but it’s ready-roll puff pastry and jam and  a bit of arty twisting of the pastry.

Joulutorttu

Chocolate Dipped Candied Orange Slices

I like to make a big batch of these chocolate dipped candied orange slices at Christmas and give little bags of them as presents for people. They’re also a really nice treat to take away on holiday to nibble with a nice glass of good red wine in the evening.

Recipe: Chocolate Dipped Candied Orange Slices

Mincemeat Filo Rolls

I do love mince pies, but sadly the pastry doesn’t love me. Instead of the usual shortcrust pastry pies, I make these alternative mince pies, with filo pastry and in the style of a spring roll. These Mincemeat Filo Rolls were really, really lovely.

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Filo Rolls

Mulled Cider Jellies

Sometimes, and this is not very often, I mull too much cider and I’ll have some left. Sure, I could heat it up again later, but I fancied making something different with it. I thought I’d make some Mulled Cider Jellies. It turns out they make a really interesting, different and delicious festive dessert. You could make them just as well with apple juice if you’re serving them to children or people who don’t drink alcohol. It’s a very pretty dessert and just a bit different.

Christmas Recipe: Mulled Cider Jellies

Christmas Pudding Ice Cream

This is an incredibly easy dessert, imagine a rich vanilla ice cream topped with Courvoisier soaked festive fruits. It’s utterly delicious, you can whip it up the night before, or make it up to a month ahead of the big day. It is delicious, incredibly simple and uses only four ingredients. I think we’ve found a winner!

12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes

Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

I love a bit of ginger cake and at this time of year it’s a lovely warming bake to make for the family. It’s sticky and spicy and you can dress it up for Christmas, or dress it down for every day cake eating if you prefer. This sticky ginger sponge cake with cinnamon frosting is special enough to serve for an occasion, or you could glitz it up a bit more and serve it as an alternative Christmas cake. It’s about as easy as can be.

Easy Recipe: Sticky Ginger Sponge Cake with Cinnamon Frosting

Cranberry and Pomegranate Jelly

Puddings at Christmas time can be a bit on the heavy side. All that booze soaked fruit and extra thick cream can get a bit much; plus if you’re feeding the whole family, Christmas pudding is not a universally popular choice. What is always, always popular is jelly. This is a jelly that everyone in the family can enjoy – cranberry and pomegranate jelly!

Recipe: Cranberry and Pomegranate Jelly

Peppermint Bark Buttons

Homemade treats make for really lovely gifts at Christmas. These Peppermint Bark Buttons are really fun to make and they’re delicious too.

Homemade Gifts: Peppermint Bark Buttons

Cinnamon & Raisin Shortbread

I originally created this shortbread recipe in 2013 in celebration of the Great British Bake Off; it’s been a favourite ever since. Cinnamon and raisin are a great combination and this lovely crumbly shortbread is a great bake all year round.

Recipe: Cinnamon & Raisin Shortbread

So that’s my little round up of my 12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes. What are your favourite favourite festive cakes, bakes or makes?

12 of our favourite festive cakes, bakes and makes

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Flapjack

One of the most enduring and classic flavours of Christmas is mincemeat. Mince pies are an undeniable Christmas classic, but I’ve been throwing mincemeat into cakes and vol au vents for a few years now. It’s too good an ingredient just to use in little pies. This week I baked a hearty batch of mincemeat flapjack and they all but disappeared in an afternoon. They’re simple, they’re filling and most of all, they’re delicious.

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Flapjack

I confess, this idea is not my own. We went for a family walk at Tatton Park in Cheshire, whilst warming up with a cup of tea, we all had a piece of cake. I chose the mincemeat flapjack and was inspired enough to try to recreate it when I got home. If anything I think my version is slightly better, with more mincemeat and a less soggy, slightly firmer texture.

You could try adapting your own favourite flapjack recipe by adding some mincemeat, or you could try my recipe below. It’s delicious, a real crowd-pleaser and would be a lovely addition to a lunch box in the run up to Christmas! This recipe makes about 12 squares of flapjack.

Mincemeat Flapjack

Ingredients:

175g of light brown sugar
150g butter or margarine
3 tablespoons of golden syrup
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
200g of porridge oats
200g plain flour
150g mincemeat

How to make your mincemeat flapjack:

Pre-heat your oven to 180° and line a high sided baking tin with baking parchment. I use a roasting tin, because that’s all I have.

In a pan melt your butter, sugar, golden syrup and bicarbonate of soda. Make sure you stir occasionally until it’s all melted together. Once it’s all melted, add your mincemeat and stir through.

Put your flour and oats in a large bowl and pour over the contents of the pan, mix and mix until everything is well combined. Pour into your lined baking dish and put it in the oven for 20-30 minutes until it’s firm and golden.

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Flapjack

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for as long as you can stand it. Slice the flapjack into squares and enjoy with a nice cup of tea.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try –

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Flapjack

Foodie Round Up: Vegetarian Christmas Dinner Ideas

I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 13 and one of the questions I’m asked the most is what do you have for your vegetarian Christmas dinner? The easy answer is, pretty much the same as everyone else, but without the turkey and with veggie gravy. We always do 800 different kinds of vegetables anyway, so I’ve never felt left out, and as the lone veggie at the table I never felt like it was worth the bother.

In 2001 my lovely sister in law came along. She was a veggie and when the percentage of vegetarians around the table had increased, we thought it was worth making a bit more of a culinary effort on Christmas Day. Over the years we’ve experimented with various vegetarian alternatives, but hand on heart my favourite has turned out to be the nut roast. I know it’s a terrible cliché, but I just love it.

I’ve picked out six delicious vegetarian Christmas dinner options (or maybe just for Sunday lunch), so if you’re catering for vegetarians this Christmas, there’s no need for them to feel left out.

galette

Go for my goats cheese and caramelised onion galette, it’s incredibly simple but utterly delicious. It’s a real family favourite. You could add a seasonal twist by swapping out the onions for stuffing and adding a dollop of cranberry sauce!

My good friend and fellow vegetarian, Jen from My Mummy’s Pennies has shared her recipe for Festive Stuffed Mushrooms. These hearty shrooms are filled with festive flavours, they’d be easy to put together on Christmas Eve and pop in the oven on the day. Easy peasy.

vegetarian Christmas dinner

Christmas isn’t Christmas without something chock full of chestnuts gracing the table, this Leek, Artichoke, Mushroom and Chestnut Pie from Inside the Wendy House certainly fits the bill. I imagine this would also be great cold on Boxing Day with some bubble and squeak.

vegetarian Christmas dinner

I love the look of this Vegetarian Beef Wellington from Jenny at The Brick Castle. It looks hearty enough to satisfy any rogue carnivores around the table, but quick and easy enough to be thrown together in a busy Christmas kitchen.

If you’ve got a vegan coming for Christmas, Inside the Wendy House has come up with this delicious sounding Sweet Potato, Chickpea and Nut Roast Pie. It looks super-simple but really. Wendy says it’s good served cold too – I bet it is!

vegetarian Christmas dinner

If you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy a good stuffing at Christmas. I tend to favour fresh stuffings on Christmas Day, they just taste a bit more luxurious than the dried packets of stuffing. For a really simple vegetarian Christmas dinner option, Mr Crumb have a range of fresh microwavable gourmet stuffings to choose from. I think the apple and apricot is cracking and would be excellent in one of Jen’s stuffed mushrooms with some softly melting goats cheese on the top.

vegetarian Christmas dinner

I think there are lots of great ideas in this round up of vegetarian Christmas dinner ideas – I think most of them could easily be adapted to be vegan too. I do love a nut roast on Christmas Day, but if you don’t, there are plenty of other options available to you.

What will you be serving up on Christmas Day?

Six Sensational Vegetarian Christmas Dinner Ideas

Easy Christmas Recipe: Mincemeat Vol au Vents

It’s not often I have a guest post to share with you, but when Bobble Bardsley tweeted a picture of his Mincemeat Vol au Vents I knew it was a stroke of genius that needed to be shared. I dislike pastry so I struggle with mince pies, but the idea of a Mincemeat Vol au Vent is fantastic. They have all the traditional mince pie taste but with considerably less of the claggy pastry. I am definitely going to try these out! Over to you Bob….

These delicious morsels were an accident – we ran out of fillings for our vol au vents one Christmas (in the 2010s, not the 1980s!) so the mincemeat came out of the cupboard and we filled the last few pastry cases with that.

It was a revelation. If you find homemade mince pies a bit too chewy, or your pastry always goes ‘caramelised’ (AKA burnt) these are a great alternative, and can be made from scratch within about 15 minutes.

Mincemeat Vol au Vents

If you find homemade mince pies a bit too chewy, or your pastry always gets burnt these are a great alternative, and can be made from scratch within about 15 minutes.

Ingredients
Frozen vol au vent cases
Milk/egg wash
Mincemeat
Icing sugar (for decoration)

Instructions
Remove the vol au vent cases from their packaging, wash with milk or egg so they go golden brown when baked, and arrange on a baking tray with a small gap between them.

Bake according to the packaging instructions – I used Jus-Rol vol au vents, and the instructions were 220C for about 13-15 minutes.

With a few minutes spare, remove the vol au vents from the oven. They should already be golden, and very nearly cooked.

Push down their ‘hats’ to create a hollow, and add a teaspoon of mincemeat to each one. A dozen vol au vents will take anywhere around 150-200g depending on how much you fill them.

Return to the hot oven for a few minutes until the suet has melted and the mincemeat has ‘relaxed’ into the bottom of its pastry nest.

Remove and allow to cool. At this stage I used a flour sifter to dust them with icing sugar. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, the mincemeat and pastry alone are delicious together.

Notes –

  • I prefer to glaze with milk rather than egg. Be generous, so your pastry is quite ‘wet’ when it goes into the oven.
  • Have a palette knife or sharp-edged silicone spatula ready to prise the pastry cases off of the baking tray once they’re done. Alternatively use non-stick baking parchment if you have any.
  • Be quite frugal with the mincemeat. They might not look very full, but you’ll be glad of that when you take a bite, and the flaky vol au vent pastry starts to collapse. It’s much easier to just shove the whole thing in at once and then reach for another.

Don’t let ANYONE tell you vol au vents are old-fashioned. They’ll soon change their tune once they taste one of these. Mincemeat vol au vents are the future!

Mincemeat Vol au Vents

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try these mincemeat flapjacks.

Christmas Recipe: Lebkuchen Cake

When Duerr’s asked me to try their new Chunky Ginger Preserve, my first thought was lebkuchen. I’ve never made them before but I thought it might be nice to try. If you like ginger, you’ll like the Duerr’s Chunky Ginger Preserve, it is sweet and spicy, full of chunks of fiery ginger, and great for cooking with, especially for my Lebkuchen cake.

One of my favourite things to eat around Christmastime is lebkuchen. Lebkuchen are a German cakey-biscuit, usually a soft spiced gingerbread covered in icing or chocolate, sometimes filled with jam, sometimes not. I find them irresistibly moreish and any bags which find their way into our house have to be kept from me and a small ration allocated daily. 

You can find the recipe  for my Lebkuchen Cake below, don’t be put off by the large-ish list of ingredients, it is literally stick them in a bowl and give them a good stir. It is probably the best cake I’ve ever made and a great alternative to the traditional Christmas cake if you don’t like all that fruit!

Lebkuchen Cake

Recipe: Lebkuchen Cake

Serves 10
A delicious cake version of the traditional German Christmas treat – easier than it looks to make and truly scrumptious!

Ingredients
125g of butter, softened
150g sugar
1 egg yolk
3 eggs
200g of runny honey
3 heaped tablespoons of sour cream
300g self-raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
5 teaspoons of ground ginger
A pinch of salt
2 tablespoons of Duerr’s Chunky Ginger Preserve
For the chocolate glaze
150 g dark chocolate
180 ml double cream

Instructions
In a large bowl beat the butter and sugar until well combined. One at a time add the following ingredients and mix – one egg yolk, honey and sour cream.

In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients – self-raising flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, pinch of salt and ginger together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and gently mix.
Mix the eggs and add to the cake mixture and stir.

Pour the cake mix into a lined cake tin. I used a large loaf tin. Bake in a preheated oven at 180ºc. for about 50 minutes until it is cooked through. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, preferably overnight.

When cool cut the cake in two lengthways and spread the Duerr’s Chunky Ginger Preserve on the bottom layer, then sandwich back together.

To make the chocolate glaze, put the double cream in a saucepan and bring it to the boil and remove from the heat. Add the crushed chocolate and stir until dissolved, keep stirring until it has cooled a little, but is still liquid.

Pour the hot chocolate glaze on the top and sides of the Lebkuchen cake and leave it for a few hours to cool and set.

Notes
Five teaspoons of ground ginger does sound like a lot, but once it is cooked the fiery ginger tones down a little.
This does make a large cake, so you could split it into two cake tins and make two smaller cakes if you’d like.
If you don’t like dark chocolate you could use milk chocolate instead.

To taste test the lebkuchen cake properly we bought some proper lebkuchen from the Christmas Markets and I’m pleased that the two were comparable. Despite the long list of ingredients it was so easy to make and I will be making it again, probably several times before Christmas for various occasions.

lebkuchen cake

With my Christmas recipe repertoire now including Finnish Joulutorttu and German Lebkuchen cake, we are in for a truly continental Christmas – and it’s all the better for it!

Christmas Recipe: Lebkuchen Cake

Christmas Recipe: Easy Joulutorttu (Finnish Jam Tarts)

For about 11 months of the year I don’t really do much baking; then December starts and I’m elbow deep in flour. I actually love it, I make the usual mince pies and shortbread, hubs makes the cakes and because we’re a bit rubbish we always buy a Christmas pudding. I’m always on the look out for really, really easy, but fairly impressive looking and tasting things to add to my festive baking repertoire. This year I’m firmly sold on Joulutorttu, a sort of festive Finnish jam tart.

Traditionally the Joulutorttu is made with puff pastry and a special Finnish prune jam. We don’t tend to have prune jam in the cupboard; but I had a jar of Mackays Christmas Preserve. I thought this would make a good substitute. Of course if you have prune jam at hand you could use that, but this delicious Christmas preserve is packed with berries, made with mulled wine and lends a particularly merry feel to the Christmassy tarts.

Joulutorttu

Easy Joulutorttu (Finnish Jam Tarts)

You will need:
One packet of ready made puff pastry (or make your own if you’re clever)
One jar of Mackays Christmas Preserve with Mulled Wine
A splash of milk for brushing
Butter for buttering your baking tray

To make:
Butter your baking tray.
Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees.
Unroll your sheet of puff pastry, cut it into squares approx 3 inches square (my sheet cut into 15 squares).
Take a square and put a teaspoon of jam in the middle. Cut each corner to the middle and fold one corner of each triangle into the middle to make a windmill shape (trust me, this is much easier than it sounds, the picture probably explains it better).
With a pastry brush, brush the windmills with milk and pop into a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes until the Joulutorttu are golden and puffy.
Once cooked, leave to cool, this is very important as the jam will be super heated. To serve, dust with icing sugar, they would be especially excellent with a good cup of coffee and best enjoyed whilst wearing a Scandinavian style jumper.

Joulutorttu

These Joulutorttu are pretty much as easy as baking gets. They’re a great store cupboard treat to whip up with no notice when festive visitors just happen to pop in. They’re crunchy, sweet and full of star-shaped Christmas joy.

Recipe: Easy Joulutorttu (Finnish Jam Tarts)

You can find more of my recipes here.