Basic home cooking

So it’s Christmas and you’re thinking wine, food, gingerbread, guests, presents, carols, and before you even start thinking about cooking it’s the 24^th of December. Do not stress! If you’re after a quick Christmas treat to share round or something a little more impressive like the makings of a perfect Christmas hamper, you’ve come to the right place. 

Mini Christmas puddings
Makes 12

This recipe is a really simple and effective way of making individual serve Christmas puddings for hampers or a delicate traditional dessert. You will need to invest in some metal dariole. They are often used for desserts such as crème caramel, mousses or puddings. Alternatively you could use a muffin tray. Just make sure you grease the tins extremely well and evenly with butter.

¾ cup raisins chopped
¾ cup sultanas
¾ cup dates
½ cup glace cherries
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
1 teaspoon orange rind
2 tablespoons juice from a lemon
2 tablespoons juice from an orange
3 tablespoons good apricot jam
3 tablespoons brandy
250g butter
2 cups brown sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 1/4 cup plain flour
3 ½ cups breadcrumbs

Combine all the dried fruit, glace cherries, rind and juice from both the lemon and orange, apricot jam and brandy into a medium bowl, cover with gladwrap and store away overnight.

Preheat your oven to 180˚C. Take a roasting tray and fill 2/3 full with water. If you are using a muffin tray make sure the water will come ¾ of the way up the tin. Place in the oven as its warming up.

Cream butter and sugar together til light and fluffy. Beat in one egg at a time. Because of the amount of eggs, your mixture will probably curdle a bit. Don’t worry if this happens, just add it to the fruit mixture and fold in. Fold in flour, cinnamon, mixed spice and breadcrumbs til all the ingredients are well combined.  

Fill well-greased tins with the mixture leaving a couple of millimetres at the top, as the puddings will rise very slightly and you don’t want them to overflow. Place the tins (or muffin tray) into the roasting tray, making sure the water level is ¾ up the sides of the tins. Place in the oven for 1 hour. When the puddings are ready remove them from the water and place the tins on a cooling rack. Leave for a couple of minutes, and then turn out onto the cooling rack. This recipe does make 12, but I think it’s a good idea to cut open one to see if you’re happy with the consistency. Then if you think that you might like your puddings cooked a little more then you can just pop them in for another 10 minutes or so. Keep the water level up between in batch. Depending on how many dariole moulds you have, you should be able to do the whole lot in two batches.

Before serving these puddings, pour a little brandy over each one and heat in the oven for 10-15 minutes on 180˚C. Serve with ice-cream, brandy cream or just as it is.

 

Mince pies

It’s impossible to have a really successful Christmas without a good supply of mince pies in your pantry. Mince pies are not hard to make. The fruit mince can even be bought from your local supermarket. But really, in the end it is SO EASY to create your own blend, and of course much more satisfying. So please look at this recipe as a guideline. Think about what Christmas reminds you of;
brandy, sweet spices, comfort food.

1 red delicious apple chopped finely
1 cup sultanas
1 cup chopped raisins
1 cup chopped dates
½ cup glace cherries
100g (about 15 fresh cherries) chopped and deseeded
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
2 tablespoon juice from an orange
50ml give or take of Chambord (or any raspberry liquor)
1 tablespoon apricot jam
30ml brandy
2 ½ tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
 40g butter
a handful of flaked almonds

Combine all ingredients (except the fresh cherries) thoroughly in a heavy based saucepan on low heat for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat, add in the cherries and stir til combined.

While you are waiting for your fruit mince to sort itself out, you can focus on the pastry. You will need a reliable pastry recipe and I absolutely swear by this one. It comes from a fantastic little afternoon tea book, brought out by ‘frankie’ magazine. I have doubled this recipe to accommodate the fruit mince quantity.
(Details: Author: Frankie magazine. Publisher- Morrison Media. Date Published: 15/11/2007.)

180g butter (cubed)
2 cups plain flour
½ cup self raising flour
½ cup cornflour
½ cup icing sugar
2 eggs (whisked)

Sift all the flours into a medium sized bowl and rub in the butter, til it’s the consistency of bread crumbs. Sift in icing sugar and add the egg. Combine together to form a soft dough. Cover the pastry in gladwrap and refrigerate til needed.

Preheat the oven to 180˚C.

Egg wash

1 egg
4 tablespoons milk
Whisk together.

Roll out your pastry to a 3mm thickness and cut out circles that will accommodate the size of your tins. I used a 5cm cupcake tray. Of course you can use any size. Make sure you grease your tins really well. Ease the pastry into the tins, fill well with fruit mince. Cut out a lid with the same sized cutter, brush with the egg wash and press lightly onto your mince pie. I used a fork to press down the lids. If you want your pies to show the fruit mince (see photo), use a smaller cutter to cut a hole out of the lid.

White Christmas squares (no baking required)

This really is such a quick and easy slice to prepare if your limited with time, which we all are at Christmas. Its seriously yummy!

400g pfeffernusse biscuits

These lightly iced soft gingerbread biscuits are traditionally from Germany, but are quite common and should be available from your local supermarket. If you can’t get your hands on any, you can use half hard ginger biscuits and half sponge fingers.

 125g soft butter
½ cup castor sugar
½ cup brown sugar
100g condensed milk
2 tablespoon sifted cocoa powder
125g white chocolate

Put biscuits into a food processor and pulse til they are roughly like breadcrumbs. Cream together butter and sugars in a medium bowl. Pour in biscuits, sifted cocoa powder, and condensed milk. Combine together thoroughly. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan. Pour half the chocolate into the mixture and mix til combined. Grease and line a slice tin. Press the mixture into the tin and smooth over using a spatula. Pour remaining chocolate over slice and even out with a pallet knife. Sift over icing sugar.

Grab out a chopping board. Take the slice out of the tin (see photos), by pulling the baking paper. Place on the chopping board and remove baking paper from underneath. Chop into 3cm squares.  

So remember, just because it’s Christmas, it doesn’t have to be the most stressful time of the year. Organise a shopping list, (double check it!) prioritise and organise your time.  Often the best things are the simplest to prepare. Here are some more quick ideas, get creative!:

 If you end up with some left over fruit mince, (1-2 cups), add 1 egg, 75g butter, 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup self raising flour and some milk if the mixture is too tough. Cook in a moderate oven for 15-20 minutes.

Gingerbread is always a great component of christmas baking. I did half gingerbread men and half hearts. I dipped the hearts into melted white chocolate. 

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