Lighter Christmas Cake

Many people dislike traditional Christmas cake.  It can be stodgy, contains sultanas (which I know at least one boy who hates) and involves marzipan and royal icing, each of which can be problematic in mixed company.  However, Christmas in my father's house would not be Christmas without a cake, and if it is a winter-stodge-cup-of-tea-type cake (which it should be), that means dried fruit.

The following makes a nice tasty round for the main holiday season, and won't burden you until February.  It's light enough to be a 'normal' cake, with enough fruit to satisfy the ardent traditionalists.

Lighter Christmas Cake with Apricot Frangipane

You Will Need: One 24cm cake tin, greaseproof paper and scissors; chopping board and knife; large bowl, wooden spoon; small bowl, cup, teaspoon; saucepan; medium bowl, measuring jug, sieve; food processor or blender, zester/grater, cooling rack, serving plate.

3oz dried apricots (and apricots to decorate)
2oz ground almonds
6oz light brown soft sugar
9oz butter
3oz honey
2oz sultanas
2oz dates (and dates to decorate)
100ml Stones Ginger Wine
4 large eggs
7 1/2 oz self raising flour
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 or 2 oranges

1) Preheat the oven to 180degrees C.  Grease and line the tin with a circle of well-buttered baking parchment.
2) Chop the dates into little pieces.  Soak the sultanas and date pieces in the Stones Ginger Wine.  At this stage, if your apricots are very dry, soak them in water separately.
3) Chop the apricots finely, and mash them in the food processor.  Add 2oz of ground almonds, 2oz of brown sugar, and 2oz of butter.  Mush until combined.  Scoop into a small bowl, and add the yolk of one egg (save the white in a cup for another project).  Mix well and put by.
4) Melt the remaining 4oz sugar and 7oz of butter with the honey in the saucepan.
5) Beat the eggs in the large bowl; add the melted sugary mix in a slow stream, stirring constantly.
6) Strain the ginger wine back into the measuring jug, and put the fruit in the cakemix.  Save the wine, mix the fruit.  Gradually add the flour to the cakemix, along with the spices, and the zest of one of your oranges.
7) Now the fiddly bit.  Slice your orange into 1cm rounds, and turn these 'inside out', peeling off the rind, separating the segments along their sides and joining the ends of the chain to make a 'cog'.  Set these cogs inside each other on the bottom of the tin.  Fill the gaps between the teeth with slivers of date and apricot.

ProTip: Navel oranges will not be as good for this.  Remember that the finished cake will show the underside of the 'cogs' as you see them, so lay dates skin-side down and segments big-side down.  Peel off any excess pith or teeny segments from the middle.  Baby cogs can be made with a few segments; more than one orange is listed in the ingredients so that you can use the best slices from two.

8) Gently spoon over half of the cakemix, followed by the frangipane, then finish with the last of the cakemix.
9) Bake for approximately 1 hour, until a skewer comes clean.  If it starts to brown too much halfway through, give him a tinfoil hat.  Leave to cool in the tin for a good while before turning out.
10) Finish the cake by drizzling with the reserved ginger wine.

A Simple Christmas

It's really getting festive round here.  At the house where I live, (where Christmas is very savoury-food-centric), the fridge is beginning to fill with ham, sausagemeat, red cabbage and turkey liver for paté.  I'm sure that at my father's flat the big red wooden reindeer full of drawers is doing his Advent duty.  Only yesterday I spent a very happy morning decorating the window of the shop where I work.  The air is nippy; the frost is on the ground; Oxford Street is heaving.

It's really high time we all started getting sorted, so to help out, I'm posting a list of all the festive advice and recipes I've given on this blog in one place.  You'll notice that there are some conspicuous absences from this list - nativity scenes, Christmas pudding, turkey or goose recipes, mince pies, and so on.  At some point I will post my recipe mincemeat mince pies made with real minced meat - not mincemeat, minced meat - or meatmince, if you will.  But I have to get them perfectly squidgy and flavoursome first.  As for the rest - I can only blog so much a year!

Decorations:
Needle felted
Leather

Christmas (fruit) cakes:
Figgy Upside-Down
Marzipan Painted Fruitcake
Orange Upside-Down Layer Cake

European Christmas Biscuits:
Pepparkakor recipe
Gingerbread house template
Gingerbread stave church
Basler Brunsli 

Traditions:
Die Hard and Biscuits
Advent

Flower arranging:
Christmas Greenery

League Of Legends Nexus Cake

'What flavour of birthday cake do you want, darling?' I ask The Man.
'Big.'
'Big what?'
'Muh, dunno.  Chocolate.'

'Chocolate' wasn't good enough for me, so I made a 28cm-diameter chocolate-and cherry cake,

and a 28cm white chocolate-and-ginger cake, cut them into regular hexagons,

iced them with ginger syrup buttercream and chocolate ganache,

and covered them in ready-roll fondant,

and scored the fondant into 'stone walls,' and added more vanilla cake covered in more chocolate and fondant,

hexagons of blue fondant, and made marzipan 'statues' of wizards with blue birthday candles for staffs and cocktail sticks holding their heads on, with fondant cloaks, and six piped triangles and one piped hexagon of macaroon/meringue

assembled into a regular 6-sided pyramid filled with small round macaroon and whipped cream, covered in more blue fondant. 

And added green coconut buttercream 'moss' and candided angelica 'weeds'.

Until it looked something like this:

This was not a Simple Thing to do.  Do not try this at home, kids.

Or do, but be aware that the Faff Index occasionally goes up to 11.

The final thing needed a total of 16 eggs, a kilogram of butter and half a kilo of chocolate.  I think that counts as 'Big.'

Fig Upside-Down Cake

I made this cake on the fly as a thank-you present for lots of people.  It needed to be rich and square so that everyone could take a small piece which would satisfy them and not spoil the shape of the cake.  I think it would make a lovely low-key Christmas cake for those who are not big on the traditional version.

Fig Upside-Down Cake
You Will Need: 20cm square cake tin, scissors and greaseproof paper, scales, large bowl, small bowl, teaspoon, kettle, chopping board and knife, sieve, wooden spoon, dinner knife, lemon zester or grater, rolling pin, cooling rack, serving dish.

4 ripe figs
40g hazelnuts
8oz soft butter
6 1/2 oz caster sugar
3tsp honey
12 fresh dates
2 large handfuls of sultanas
2 Lady Grey teabags
4 eggs
zest one orange
8oz self-raising flour
100g golden marzipan

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Grease the bottom of your tin. Cut two long slices of greaseproof paper, and cross them in the bottom of the tin.
2) Cut the stalks off your figs.  Slice them into 3mm slices.  Use to line the bottom of your tin in a symmetrical pattern.  Scatter hazelnuts into the gaps between the fig slices.
3) Chop the dates, removing the stones.  Put them in a bowl with the sultanas and teabags; add just enough boiling water to cover them.  Allow to steep.
4) Cream the butter, honey and sugar in the large bowl.  Add one egg at a time, beating in well, followed by some of the flour, then the next egg.  Beat to a smooth mixture.  Zest the orange and stir in the zest.
5) Drain the fruits in the sieve and add the dry fruits to the mixture.  Mix gently.  Spoon half of this mixture into the tin, being careful not to spoil the fig pattern.
6) Roll out the block of marzipan into a square, about 2mm thick and smaller than your tin.  Place on top of the mix in the tin, then pour the rest of the mix on top.  Level the mixture.
7) Bake for about 40+ minutes, if necessary with a tinfoil hat on to prevent browning.
8) Cool for a long time in the tin before turning out, first to the cooling rack and then sliding onto the final plate.

Decadent Pear and Chocolate Birthday Cake

A little while ago I mentioned this cake, and this one which I made in response.  My good friend made a beautiful-looking pear and dark chocolate version, although much like me she struggled with unripe fruit and getting the curd to set.  I was sorry I didn't get to taste it, as it has really inspired my second try.

I really wanted to get this right.  It is high time I had a proper show-stopping torte on my resumé which I can whip out for other people's birthdays as well as my own.  This time I made sure to buy my pears a week in advance, so that they would be juicy and flavoursome by the time it came to making the cake.  Thankfully, it is by far the best cake I have ever made!

This is an expensive confection as it involves buying hazelnuts (peeled nuts are a luxury in this country for shame) and a bottle of decent sweet wine.  Thankfully fruit and chocolate are both cheap!  It is also a multi-stage bastard.  As I have said, usually I avoid multi-stage anything like the plague, being of the 'screw it we'll have stew' school of culinary excellence, but for one's birthday as a known baker one has to go the extra mile.

One benefit of these sorts of cakes is that almost any of the stages stands alone.  The praline is a great peanut brittle substitute, the cake is obviously pleasant, the poached pears are a great pudding in and of themselves and the ganache could be used to make truffles.  If you've been paying attention, you'll realise that I made all of these things one at a time over the past few days, to avoid a nine-hour baking binge on the night of the party.

For shopping lists: Total chocolate used overall 500g, total cream used overall 300ml, total hazelnuts 400g

Spiced Pear and Chocolate Cake with Indulgent Pears and Hazelnut Praline

You Will Need:
Hazelnut Praline, one batch - three decorative pieces, the rest powdered
Chocolate Ganache, one batch
Pears Poached in Sweet Wine, - 4 pears' worth including three pear fans to decorate
100g hazelnuts, to decorate

Spiced Pear And Chocolate Cakes
You Will Need: scales, 2 tins, greaseproof paper, wooden spoon, large bowl, chopping board and knife, (small grater),potato peeler, teaspoon, whisk, 2 medium bowls, cup, small saucepan, cooling rack

100g chocolate
200g butter
200g sugar
5 eggs
2 small pears
1/2tsp nutmeg, or 1/2 a nutmeg grated
1/2tsp cinnamon
100g hazelnuts
200g self-raising flour

1) Preheat the oven to 180degC.  Line and grease your tins.

2) Peel, core and chop the pears into small pieces.
3) Separate your eggs, with the whites going into one medium bowl and the yolks a cup.  Cut the butter into small pieces, and break up the chocolate.  Set the second medium bowl over a pan of boiling water, and melt the chocolate, sugar and butter together.  When the mixture is all mixed with no lumps, transfer to the large bowl and whisk in the egg yolks gradually.
4) Grind the hazelnuts, and mix with the flour and spices on the scales.  Wash the whisk; whisk the egg whites to soft-peak stage; fold spoonfuls into the mixture alternately with flour, whisking the whites back up to peaks again between spoonfuls.
5) Pour equally into the tins and bake 30-35 minutes, until risen and clean-skewer.
6) Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for 10 minutes.  Remove from the tins and allow to cool on a rack.

Assembly
You Will Need: Serving dish, breadboard, breadknife, spoon, medium bowl, small bowl, small saucepan, teaspoons, dinner knife

200ml thick cream
200g dark chocolate

1) Allow your ganache to come back to room temperature so that you can work with it.

2) Cut your cakes.  Very gently turn out the first cake onto the serving dish.  Now cut it in two carefully, and shuffle the top half onto the breadboard. 
3) Spread a thick ring of ganache all the way around the edge of the cake on the serving dish, using your teaspoons and dinnerknife to manipulate it.
4) Mix the hazelnut praline powder powder gently with the thick cream only until mixed.  Spoon a round of this mixture inside the ganache ring.  Top with the next round of cake.
5) Turn out the second cake onto the breadboard and cut it in two.
5) For the central filling layer, arrange the poached pear slices in an overlapping layer.  Top with a third round of cake.
6) Use the remaining ganache and hazelnut cream to fill the third round, as before.  Top with the final cake.

7) Melt the last chocolate in the small bowl over the small pan.  Pour this melted chocolate all over the cake, first spreading a layer to catch all the crumbs, then allowing it to dribble over the sides organically.  Allow to cool slightly.  Fan out the poached pear halves in a trio; wedge the chunks of praline in between the pears.  Place hazelnuts evenly around the edge to mark portion sizes.

Fin! Serve to no fewer than a dozen people at once!

Toffee Banana Crackle Trifles

Crap!  Dinner party in half an hour, haven't bought ingredients yet!  Smooth organising there E!
-Buy bananas, pasta stuff, peas (for soup).
-Make soup.  Cook half the pasta things, get pan of hot water going.  Toast porridge oats (bear with me).
-eat soup.  Finish my soup first, leave others chatting, finish pasta things.
-Eat pasta.  Finish my pasta first, start making pudding.

This is a super-easy, foolproof (if you time it right) good-looking pudding with minimum Faff Index (I would say a Faff of 4/10, because other than watching a grill (bear with me) it has absolutely no difficult steps) - which is perfect for small or large dinner gatherings.  They went down a storm, with only one complaint/suggestion from the Man which I have incorporated here.  This was lucky as I spent some of the evening going OMG why did I agree to make nice food at 5 minutes notice per course I am an idiot, and having a successful, bloggable pudding makes me feel worthy and nice again :)

Toffee Banana Crackle Triflets (Serves 4 +)
You Will Need: serving bowls; chopping board and sharp knife; baking tray; two teaspoons; small saucepan.

Number of bananas equal to number of people who deserve them
Extra thick double cream OR vanilla / nutty icecream
porridge oats
walnuts
caster sugar
butter

1) Scatter the porridge oats on the baking tray, and toast them under the grill until branflake coloured and fragrant, about 4 minutes.  Allow the tray to cool.
2) Cut the bananas into narrow diagonal pieces and arrange the pieces in the bowls, one nana per person.
3) Dollop cream or icecream on the nanas.
4) Scatter porridge oats on the cream to give a good scatty coating.  Chop the walnuts not too finely and scatter these too.
5) In the small pan, heat about a heaped dessertspoonful of caster sugar per person and a *tiny* slither of butter over a high heat, until the sugar has completely melted and is a rich dark brown.
6) Using your clean teaspoon, drizzle the toffee crackling over the puddings.  Listen to the crackly noise!  Try to avoid getting the crackle on the sides of the bowls as it will dry on and be harder to get off.

ProTip: When washing up toffee apparatus, boil a kettle and use to rinse / soften baked on sugar, and scrape at it with wooden implements.  Don't try to pick at it with your fingernails or other apparatus it will just break things and you.

No-Scales Easy Chocolate And Banana Cake

Leftover bananas.  There are always some, at least one little black bastard sitting there getting smelly and ripening all your other fruit.  What to do with them?  My mother used to make milkshakes with vanilla icecream; the mother-out-law makes smoothies (which I can't stand); I make cake.  I do have a 'banana bread' recipe somewhere, but this stodgy wonder is a good'un for pudding.  It's also mostly banana, which is kind of the point.

I usually despise Americans for measuring things by volume, but in this case it's just too easy.

Easy Banana and Chocolate Cake

You Will Need: Chopping board and knife; dessertspoon; large bowl; wooden spoon; small bowl; fork; 8 inch circular tin
3 bananas
1/2 bar dark chocolate
large handful walnuts
1 egg
4 dessertspoonfuls walnut/groundnut/vegetable oil
3 rounded dessertspoonfuls brown sugar
3 heaped dessertspoonfuls self-raising flour

1) Preheat the oven and grease the tin.  Chop the bananas, chocolate and walnuts into small chunks, and mix in the large bowl.
2) Add the sugar.  Beat the egg and add to the bowl; add the oil.  Mix well until gloopy.
3) Heap out desserspoonfuls of flour one at a time, mixing as you go.  Add a little more if the mix looks too runny; you should be able to pull a clean track through the mix with your spoon and it should look pretty sticky.
4) Pour into the tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and the top is golden brown.  Look out for skewering choccy chunks as they will give a false negative.  Cool, turn out and cool some more.

5) Om nom nom!

White Chocolate Nectarine Cake

I don't usually make cakes like this.  I usually despair of the faff of multiple-stage, gooey, sugar-heating concoctions with complicated fillings.  They go against all my principles.  They are (I believe) really no tastier than simple ones.  And yet, when a friend approached me with this recipe, and I said 'i'm not making this, see above also I hate mango,' she was able to persuade me to do an Elisabeth-friendly version.  It uses proper British measures by weight (not those blasted 'cups'), nectarines (one of my favourite fruits) and white chocolate.  It went down a storm at the girly baking day yesterday, and I'm already thinking up ways to improve it and riff on it to use as a birthday cake in a few weeks' time. You will notice that much of the equipment for this cake overlaps in the different stages, so don't be afraid to wash up as you go along.

Stupidly Complex Squidgy Ginger, White Chocolate And Nectarine Toffee Cake

Nectarine Curd

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small saucepan, blender, sieve, cup, two small bowls, wooden spoon
11oz ripe nectarines, stoned (about three; also you will need one or so for decorating later)
2 egg yolks
6 oz sugar
2 oz butter
1) De-stone the nectarines by cutting all the way around them and twisting gently on each half.  Chop them into small pieces.  Put them in the saucepan with a splash of water, and simmer until disintegrating.  Blend the mixture to a smooth puree, and keep aside in a small bowl or the blender compartment.

2) In a clean saucepan, heat a little water and set another small bowl above it.  Melt the butter in the bowl.  Separate each egg with the whites going into a cup and the yolks into the butter.  Add the sugar to the butter and eggs, and mix well over a gentle heat.  Add the puree.
3) Cook for about half an hour or until the mixture coats the back of the spoon.  If too runny, add another egg yolk.  Strain the mixture through the sieve, forcing it through with the spoon, into a bowl.  Discard any fruity bits which can't go through the sieve, and set the curd in the fridge to cool fully.

Cake
You Will Need: Tin 23cm across, baking paper, scissors, scales, large bowl, wooden spoon, small bowl, strong whisk, spatula, skewer, cooling rack, two plates, breadknife

3 eggs
8oz butter (Kerry Gold)
6oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
4tsp ground ginger
1) Preheat the oven to 180degrees C.  Line and grease the tin.
2) In the large bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Separate the eggs, with the yolks going into the big bowl and the whites a small one.  Mix in the egg yolks; add the flour and ginger a little at a time.
3) Whisk the eggwhites to soft peaks in the small bowl, and carefully fold them into the cake mix until it is runny enough to use the whisk.  Whisk the mixture together, and pour into the tin.  Smooth down the surface of the mixture, leaving a dent in the middle to encourage a flat cake.
4) Bake approximately 45 minutes, or to clean-skewer.  Remove when done to a cooling rack, and turn out.
5) Leave to cool for a good while.  Turn right-side up and trim off the domed top of the cake.  Eat this later.  Put the remaining cake on a plate; carefully saw through it to make two layers with the  breadknife and shuffle the top half onto the second plate.  Leave to cool completely (I had to set a 15-minute timer and use peer pressure to stop me fiddling with it.)

Candied nectarines

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small pan, tray, greaseproof paper, small plate, wooden skewers, wooden spoon, kettle
1 1/2 nectarines
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons chunky brown sugar
1) Slice the nectarines.  Line the tray with greaseproof paper.
2) Heat the caster sugar in a clean, dry, small saucepan until melted and golden-brown.  Meanwhile put the chunky-grained brown sugar on the small plate.
3) Coat each slice in toffee, then turn it out first into the chunky sugar, and then onto the tray.  Leave to cool.
4) Boil the kettle and pour into the toffee pan to get the crusted sugar off easily.  Then wash up as normal.

Ganache
You Will Need: chopping board; sharp knife; bowl; small pan; measuring jug, spoon
400g white chocolate
200ml cream
1) Measure out 200ml of cream, and heat it very gently in the pan without boiling it.
2) Chop the white chocolate into very small pieces, and put in a bowl.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the ganache is smooth.  If the cream cools too quickly to get rid of all the lumps, heat the ganache over a pan of hot water on the hob, stirring all the time until smooth.

Assembly
You Will Need: Small plastic sandwich bag, scissors, spoon, knife, cake components
1) Gather everything you need.  Spread the sandwich bag securely open, and spoon some of the white chocolate ganache into it.  Squeeze all of the mixture into one corner of the bag, and cut a little corner off with the scissors.  Pipe a wide spiral of ganache all around the lower half of the cake.

2) Fill the gaps around the spiral with the nectarine curd.  Any left over will keep in a jar in the fridge for 3 weeks.
3) Lift the top cake onto the bottom cake.  Spread the remaining ganache over the cake, letting it drip down the sides.  Decorate with the candy slices.  (n.b. version pictured used half as much ganache, but I doubled it in the blog recipe so that your crusts would be covered.)

4) Eat, eat, enjoy!

How To Make Cake And Influence People

Stock photo women networking

Any of my friends networking

Nothing brings people together quite like food.  It's a common theme in recipe books, cookery shows, anthropological documentaries (you know, the ones where they get the Oxford-educated young grey-haired lad in practical khakis to drink blood straight out of the cow and have a Revealing Meaningful Experience Of Tribal Life).  And no food, to my mind, brings women together quite so well as cake.

Eating  tons of cake at a sitting nowadays is so fraught with taboos and so frowned upon by Society (as handed down to us in the glossies) that it is akin to visiting a fetish club.  Both of these activities make for excellent female bonding rituals for exactly this reason.  Much like going on a hunt, or competing in a stupidly dangerous sport, cake-eating and getting naked in public form a common pool of perilous experience which draws people together in a throb of adrenaline and oxycytocin.  We shouldn't,  we think.  It's so dangerous for my waistline/social standing/skeletal integrity.  But it looks so GOOD.  And, 'I'll just have a slither,' we say. 'Ooh, just a slither.'

Once consumed, the remains of a gigantic cake act as a further injunction to its destroyers to keep together.  We can't tell anyone else that we did this.  We'll look greedy and silly.  But we all know how tasty it was, our own reasons for doing it.  So we forgive each other, and get a bit closer... and set a date to do it again...

I could be wrong.  I could be over-egging the pop-psychology pudding (although I don't think it is physically possible to over-egg any pudding).  All the same, when I get the Girls round for a massive baking session on Sunday, I know we'll come out of it closer - not because we spent time together sitting in my kitchen and drinking wine, although that helps.  No, it's the food.

Victoria and Albert Sponge (and edible flags)

what a pavlova (oh, pun!) Note pink lemonade to right, very appropriate

I love rice paper.  You don't seem to get it in the supermarkets anymore, so I ordered a huge amount off the internet.  Once I'd got out an A4 sheet it seemed a shame not to use it all, so I went on a bit of an edible flag binge this month.  Still - the Queen is only the Queen for the 60th year running once...

The 'Albert' in this otherwise typical sponge comes from the German-themed grated apple and cinnamon in the mixture.  This does cause it to densen dramatically but I got no complaints as to taste.  Next time perhaps more sophisticated fruit-layering could be arranged.

Victoria and Albert Sponge
You Will Need: 23cm cake tin, greaseproof paper, scissors, large bowl, wooden spoon, small bowl, teaspoon, scales, whisk, cheesegrater, veg peeler, chopping board and sharp knife, spoon, baking tray, breadknife, serving plate, plate, dinner knife (skewers / cocktail sticks, cotton bud or clean paintbrush)

6 eggs
self-raising flour
butter
sugar
2 Bramley apples
3 tsp cinnamon
red berry jam
1 punnet strawberries
250ml double cream
(rice paper, food colouring)

1) Preheat the oven to 180 C.  Line your tin with a circle of greaseproof paper and smear the sides with butter.
2) Weigh 4 of your eggs (reserve the other 2).  Weigh out and beat together 4 eggsworth of butter and sugar.  Beat the 4 eggs together in a small bowl; gradually add and mix them with the butter.
3) Peel the Bramleys and grate them into the mixture.  Mix.  Weigh out 4 eggsworth of flour, add the cinnamon, and gradually fold it into the mixture a little at a time.
4) Pour the mix into the caketin, and make a dent in the centre - then when the centre inevitably rises, your cake will be flatter overall.  Protip.  Bake approximately 45mins - 1 hour, with a tinfoil hat for the last 15 minutes if need be, to clean-skewer stage.
5) When your cake is done, take it out of the oven and whack the oven up to 200 C.  Hardcore.  Allow the cake to cool.  Clean your large bowl.  Separate your remaining two eggs, getting the whites into the large bowl.  Whisk your eggwhites until they are at stiff-peak stage - when you lift the whisk, the points that form should be rigid.  Beat in approximately 6 tablespoons of sugar one spoon at a time, until stiff and glossy.
6) Cut another circle of greaseproof paper the same size as your cake, and lay on a baking tray.  Spoon the meringue out over this circle to almost cover it, forming a 'nest'.  Bake at 200 C for 10 minutes, then turn the oven off.
7) Wait at least 2 hours.  Watch a film, play a game, make lunch, whatever.
8) De-tin your cake.  Place it on the serving plate.  Carefully saw the cake in half, and shift the top half onto a second plate.  De-oven your meringue nest.  Carefully transfer the meringue from the baking tray to the top cake-half, peeling off the greaseproof paper.  It will be quite soft and sticky.
9) Chop 2/3 of a punnet of strawberries, and whip all the cream to soft-peak stage (when the peaks wilt).  Spread jam on the lower half of the cake; follow with half the cream, and strawbs to cover.  Lift the top cake on.  Fill the nest with the rest of the cream, and decorate with the remaining strawbs, leaving small ones whole and un-hulled.
10) If flags desired: Tear a sheet of ricepaper into rectangles.  Make a shallow fold at one of the short ends; wet the edge of this fold and fold across a stick.  Press firmly to glue the paper together around the stick.  Paint designs on with food colouring.

Protip: Rice paper is edible, but not very tasty.  This fact was rediscovered multiple times, often by the same people twice.

Afternoon Tea Cakes

The other weekend, for the Jubilee, I hosted an afternoon tea party.  Some cakes were classic recipes I followed almost to the letter, and suggest you do the same; with others, I got a bit more creative.  When you're baking all day it's best not to strain the brain too hard.

Classic scones - I turned to the BBC's recipe here, for simplicity.  Breads and I have never really clicked, so I wanted firm guidance from Auntie.  Make scones on the day for freshness and warmth that will impress.

Palatial shortbread  - Millionaire's shortbread is fast becoming a family favourite, and you can find versions of it in hip coffee chains all over the country nowadays.  My version is slightly more decadent even than the Beeb's.  Following their recipe mostly, I added 2 teaspoons of ground cardamom to the shortbread mix (a combo I picked up from here years ago).
I did accidentally turn my back on the caramel resulting in a delicious fudge.  I left the butter out of the dark chocolate mixture, for depth of flavour, and instead of white chocolate decorated the tops when still tacky with silver balls.

Rhubarb tartlets - all my own work
You Will Need: fairycake tin with twelve holes, large bowl, scales, dinner knife, clingfilm, rolling pin, pastry cutter/glass, small pan, small bowl, cup, chopping board and sharp knife, wooden spoon, fork, teaspoon, baking tray

2oz cold butter
1oz ground almonds
1 tsp ground ginger
3oz plain flour
1-2 stems ripe red rhubarb
butter
2 eggs
double cream
caster sugar
jar of crystallised ginger

1) Make the pastry.  Cut the butter into little cubes.  Knead with the dry ingredients with your hands, first to breadcrumb stage and then squidging into a single ball.  Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for half an hour.
2) When the pastry is cold, preheat the oven to 180 C.  Roll the pastry out on a floury surface until 3-4mm thick.  Be aware that this pastry is very 'short' or flaky.  It will not like you!  Do not despair.  Cut circles out of the pastry and press them into the tin, squidging any cracks together with your fingers.  You should be able to make at least 6. I got 7.
3) Poke two sets of holes into the bottom of each pastry case with your fork, to allow any air bubbles trapped underneath to escape and not bugger them up.  Bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes.
4) Allow the cases to cool completely before touching them again.  If tempted, make more cake while waiting.
5) When the cases are cool, trim the ends off your rhubarb and pull out any stringy ribs from the square edges.  Chop it into 2-3cm pieces, and if they are fat, halve them lengthways.  Put 2-3 pieces of rhubarb per pastry case into a small pan with a knob of butter and a splash of water.  Fry/poach the rhubarb, adding a little more water as it evaporates, until the rhubarb is pink and tender and strings are coming off it.
6) Lift the pastry cases onto a sturdy baking tray and fill them with rhubarb.
7) Separate the eggs, with the yolks going into a small bowl and the whites a cup (save whites for meringue in the fridge).  Add a small pile of sugar.  Beat this together with a fork.  Gently heat enough double cream to cover the bottom of your small pan.  Add the eggmix and stir quickly to blend.  When blended, take off the heat and carefully spoon into the pastries, around the rhubarb.
8) Put back in the oven (hey I didn't say to turn it off) for another 7 minutes, to bake the custard and roast the tips of the rhubarb.  When out of the oven, drizzle some of the sugar syrup from a jar of crystallised ginger over the top of each one.  This makes all the difference.

Mini battenberg
This is a lovely recipe from the Hariy Bikers.  I only made one egg's worth of sponge, dividing my tin with their greaseproof paper trick into 3 - half for battenbergs, and one for my shortbread.  I also added lemon zest and a splash of juice to the 'yellow' Berg, and used 3 tsp of raspberry jam to colour the pink Berg as I couldn't find the mother-out-law's cochineal.

Afternoon Tea Sandwiches

Afternoon tea is a Great British Institution.  It is a Posh Thing.  It is something 'the Set' might have done 'properly' in the 17 and 1800s.  Messing it up is not done.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to mess up afternoon tea.  There are only a few boxes to tick, and there are multiple acceptable ways to experiment with the content, theme and context of the event (cupcakes!  Steampunk! Picnics!  Booze!)  Here is what I reckon constitutes a 'proper' tea:

• Teas, plural, available - preferably some to be served with milk (e.g. Assam) and some without (Lady Grey).
• Scones, with real clotted cream, and at least two kinds of jam - a red/purple one and an orange one, minimum.
• Cake - either individual chunks, such as Lamingtons, brownies, or other traybakes; or a single large and creamy edifice.
• Finger Sandwiches.
• Sandwiches must be able to be eaten in two bites or less.
• They must have the crusts cut off, or it's not posh.
• The shape of the eventual sandwich (triangle or rectangle) is immaterial.
• Fillings may include spreads, but these must be savoury (not peanut butter).  
• Faffless but uber-kitzch adornments such as cress should be rampant.

Of all the boxes, it is the sandwiches which are most often overlooked.  They do not make as photogenic an arrangement on the three-tiered stand as the cakes; it is the scones which are seen to be the true essentials, and 'tea and sandwiches' doesn't have the same ring.  Nevertheless afternoon tea is a Meal, a small meal but a Meal all the same, and all posh meals have multiple courses.  

The Approved Sandwich-Making Method (appropriated from Douglas Adams)
The chief among knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife. It must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist onto the beautifuly proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder.  With just four more dexerous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished.

Suggested Flavours For Afternoon Tea Finger-Sandwiches

Meats
Roast beef / steak and mustard.
CurryNation Chicken: to make simple sauce, finely chop half an onion, fry in butter with 2tsp of cumin, coriander and a sprinkle of turmeric, and add coconut cream until spreadable.  Coat diced fried chicken in the mixture and assemble the sandwiches as above.
Fish
Smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill
Mackerel and horseradish
Veggie
Cucumber.  N.B. I could write a whole post on the Correct way to make cucumber sandwiches; the key thing is to peel the cucumber, slice thinly and drain the slices before assembly in a colander, scattered with salt.  This stops them going soggy.  Dress with salad dressing to increase flavour.
Cheese and chutney.

Raspberry Lamingtons

A posh twist on an old Aussie favourite, these were created for the father and stepmother to enjoy after a rich Sunday lunch.  Little and light, they're a moreish teatime thing.  There aren't many ingredients, but there are two stages of creation; if you're too bored to bother individually coating little cubes, then melt some jam over the whole cake when cool and scatter with coconut for a twinkly icing substitute.

Raspberry Lamingtons
You Will Need:  Large bowl, wooden spoon, scales, fork, small dish, small shallow rectangular baking tray, greaseproof paper, cooling rack, knife, chopping board, saucepan, teaspoon, small plate, serving plate

2 eggs
4 1/2 oz butter
4 1/2 oz sugar
4 1/2 oz self-raising flour
150g fresh raspberries
half a jar of raspberry jam
75g dessicated coconut

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Cream the butter and sugar in the large bowl; beat the eggs in the small bowl with the fork and incorporate very slowly.
2) Fold in the flour a little at a time.  Line the tin with a wide strip of greaseproof paper, greasing the sides if not non-stick with a little butter.  Pour the cakemix into the tin and spread to the edges.
3) Stud the cake with raspberries, 1/2 cm apart.  Reserve any remaining fruits for making a 'serving suggestion' style flourish.
4) Bake for 15-20 minutes to clean skewer stage.  Turn out onto a cooling rack.  When cool, cut the cake into small cubular pieces.
5) Melt 1-2 teaspoons of jam at a time in the small saucepan until runny and steaming; pour into a small dish.  Scatter coconut on a small plate.  Dip each lamington in jam on all sides and then roll them in the coconut to cover.  Pile on the serving plate.  If your jam gets too jammy for dipping, pour it back into the pan to re-heat.
Serve scattered with any remaining raspberries and a big mug of tea each.

Simnel Cake

To the left, iced tea made with 3 bags Lady Grey, 4 sprigs mint and 1 lemon to 1 litre boiling water

Christians really seem to like their fruitcakes for special holidays.  At least English Christians do, and I love fruitcake, so I am happy to go along.  Both Christmas Cake and Simnel Cake (Easter cake) contain dried fruit, and use marzipan as part of the icing.  The difference is that Simnel Cake is superior, as it is both a lighter cake (no treacle) and is divided into two or three layers by marzipan circles.  This means that it is impossible for all of the fruit to sink to the bottom.
This large and imposing article formed the pudding for a Moroccan Easter dinner, which was to have involved roast figs.  Unfortunately Waitrose (Christ's own supermarket) didn't have any fresh figs (Jesus does like them, but decrees that they should be unavailable).  You could very much use dates and dried figs in this recipe if you like, but for lightness I prefer pears and apricots.

Simnel Cake

6 eggs (13oz)
13oz butter
6oz light brown soft sugar
3 oz caster sugar
1.5 tblsp clear runny honey
10oz dried fruit - dried pears, cranberries, apricots, vine fruits (use minimum amounts of raisins).
zest 1 lemon
zest 3 clementines
chopped flesh 1 clementine
2 Lady Grey teabags
300ml boiling water
13oz self-raising flour
1tsp ground cardamom (or 1/2 tsp nutmeg)
2tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
packet marzipan - 200g ish
jam
11 chocolate Mini Eggs

 You Will Need: 24cm cake tin, large bowl, small bowl, scales, kettle, measuirng jug, sieve, saucepan, chopping board and sharp knife, zester/cheese grater, wooden spoon, whisk, teaspoon, tablespoon, rolling pin, serving plate

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Boil a kettle.
2) Put the two Lady Grey teabags in the measuring jug and make 300ml of tea with the boiling water.  Leave to steep while you do Step3.
3) Chop any larger pieces of dried fruit into raisin-sized pieces.  Put the dried fruits into the small bowl with the citrus zest.  When it is ready, pour over the tea to cover and leave to soak.
4) Weigh 6 eggs (mine came to 13oz more or less; one normal egg is about 2oz).  Weigh out the same amount of butter, and melt in the pan with the sugars and honey.  Don't get too niggly about the amount of honey which sticks to the spoon, if you use the measuring spoon to stir the mix it will all come out in the wash.
5) While the butter and sugar is melting, quickly beat the eggs together in the large bowl.  Go back and stir the butter/sugar until all the butter has melted and the mixture is caramel brown.  Now very carefully pour the melted mix onto the eggs, whisking to mix as you go in a steady stream.  This is by far a superior technique for speed than creaming things.
6) Strain the fruits out of the tea.  Add the fruits to the eggmix; chop the clementine into raisin-sized pieces and stir in.  Add 100ml of the tea.  When mixed well, weigh out flour to match your eggs and butter.  Stir in the spices.  Fold the flour and spices into the fruitmix a quarter at a time, until smooth.
7) Put the finished cakemix aside.  Divide your packet of marzipan into 4 equal pieces.  Scatter caster sugar over your worksurface, and roll out circles the size of your caketin using 2 quarters.  Pour 1/3 of your cakemix into the tin; cover with a marzipan circle; pour in another 1/3, another circle; finish with the last 1/3.
8) Bake for approximately 1 hour 30mins, or until a skewer in the very middle comes out clean.  If it looks to be browning too much at the edges, put a piece of tinfoil over the tin to protect the top of the cake from burning.
9) Allow the cake to cool completely, and turn out onto its eventual serving plate.  Spread the top with a fine layer of jam.  Roll out one last circle of marzipan and cover the top of the cake with it, trimming any loose edges.  Using the last quarter of the marzipan, make 11 balls to decorate the top.  These represent the faithful Apostles e.g. everyone except Judas.  I have made marziflower-nests for 11 mini eggs because I am a hopeless pagan.