Celebrating 7 Years of Apple & Spice with Apple & Hazelnut Upside Down Double Layer Cake

Today my blog turns 7. I can’t quite believe it. Each year I like to celebrate the occasion by making an apple themed bake. This year I was inspired by a cake combination of apple and hazelnuts.

My apple themed bakes from previous years are:

1st year – Spiced Apple Cake

2nd year – Individual Apple & Oat Crumbles

3rd year – Overnight Spiced Apple Stack

4th year – Fruity Tea Loaf

5^th year – Roasted Apple & Custard Pots

6^th year – Apple, Caramel & Almond Tart withPeanut Praline

My apple and hazelnut cake consists of light layers of nutty cake made by replacing some of the flour with ground hazelnuts. This was baked in tins that had chunks of sautéed spiced apple placed in the base first. When the cakes are turned out the apple bases become the topping for each cake layer. This creates layers of hazelnut cake topped with apple which when stacked means one apple topping acts like a fruity filling along with some creamy ricotta, and the other cake creates an appley topping as decoration. A double layer upside down cake.

I chose to shell, roast, de-skin and grind my own hazelnuts as we had lots of hazelnuts in their shells leftover from Christmas. I’ve never roasted and ground my own hazelnuts before and the intense nutty aroma this process produced was intoxicating. I’d really recommend roasting and grinding your own if you can, the flavour was far superior to the pre-ground variety, so nutty and fresh tasting.

The apple for the base/topping was made with tangy Cox apples that I first softened slightly in a mix of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. This created little chunks of sweet and spicy appley goodness that were delicious when baked into the hazelnut cake.

I debated using slices of apple rather than chunks, to create a more decorative topping when the cakes were turned out, but decided this would make the cake harder to cut neatly. I think I made the right decision in the end and I liked the chunks of apple, I think they added more flavour and texture than a thin slice would have done.

To fill my cake layers I used fresh ricotta that I lightly beat with a little maple syrup to sweeten it. This worked really well and kept the cake feeling light and delicate, as ricotta is no where near as rich as double cream. As it was lightly beaten it became smoother and creamier and many of my tasters didn’t realise it wasn’t cream until I told them. You couldn’t really taste the maple syrup, it just sweetened the ricotta slightly while still letting the hazelnuts and apple shine through.

My family loved the cake and it was devoured within a day. The combination of roasted hazelnuts, succulent apple and milky creamy ricotta was a delicious combination and kept the layers moist. It was the kind of cake you could eat for afternoon tea or as a dessert. (Sorry for the quality of the photos it was a very dark day).

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog or who writes blogs of their own. You are a great source of inspiration and new ideas. I’m sure most bloggers would agree with me that there are occasions were finding time to bake and blog can feel like a chore, but most of the time I delight in freedom of food creativity it allows me to explore.

Apple & Hazelnut Upside Down Double Layer Cake

Hazelnut Cake

60g hazelnuts, skin on

120g caster sugar

120g butter

80g gluten free plain flour

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

Sautéed Apples

4 x Cox apples (350g peeled, chopped weight)

15g butter

3 tsp light soft brown sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

Filling

150g ricotta

1½ tbsp maple syrup

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Place the hazelnuts on a baking tray and roast in the oven for 8-9 minutes until the skins are tinged and they smell very nutty.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Then rub the hazelnuts in a clean tea towel or sheets of kitchen paper to remove the skins. If sufficiently roasted, they should just flake off easily.

Grind the hazelnuts in a coffee grinder or small food processor and set aside.

To make the apple, peel, core and dice the apples into 1-2cm pieces.

Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the apples. Allow to cook for 8-10 minutes until just starting to soften. Sprinkle over the sugar and cinnamon and cook for a further 1 minute until the sugar has dissolved to form a light caramel with the juices from the apple. Set aside.

Line the base of 2 x 6inch cake tins with greaseproof paper. If not still on, heat the oven to 180C. Divide the sautéed apple between the bases of each cake tin.

To make the cake, make sure your butter is soft and then beat it together with the sugar until it is pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in well. Scatter the flour, baking powder and hazelnuts over the top of the cake and mix until combined.

Divide the cake batter into the tins, spreading it carefully over the top of the apple chunks. It’s easiest to do this by blobbing on small spoonfuls and spread it out gently. It may look like there isn’t enough sponge mix, but it puffs up in the oven.

Bake the cakes for 20-25 minutes until risen and gently springy to the touch.

Leave to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge and turning out. Leave the cakes to cool upside down, with the apple facing up.

To assemble, use a spatula to beat the ricotta with the maple syrup until it becomes smoother and creamy. (It will still look slightly granular, this is fine)

Place one cake layer on a serving plate, apple side up. Spread over the ricotta and top with the second cake layer, also apple side up.

Allow to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes before dusting lightly with icing sugar and serving.

Store any leftovers in the fridge and due to the moistness from the apple and ricotta, its best to eat within 2 days.

Makes 1 x 6inch cake.

Navel Orange ‘Marmalade’ Curd

While doing my weekly shop I spotted bags of Navel and Seville oranges amongst the usual simply named ‘oranges.’ This made me realise that it must be marmalade making season already! Each year in January, when these special marmalade oranges are available, my mother and grandmother make colossal batches of homemade marmalade. I love the smell and process of boiling the oranges, cutting them, stirring in the sugar, boiling and jarring. Nothing beats the flavour of my mum’s homemade marmalade, shop bought just doesn’t compare and is never allowed to enter my parents/my house.

 

Marmalade making is a traditional I would love to continue myself, only I don’t eat a lot of marmalade, and one jar (provided my mum) will last me for several months. Now I’m not living at home, seeing the Navel and Seville oranges in the shops made me nostalgic for home, and the fabulous zesty aroma of a pan of warm simmering marmalade.

  

I bought a bag of Navel oranges and decided to make orange curd rather than marmalade with them. This way I still got the wonderful sweet orange aroma wafting through the kitchen without the need to make jars and jars of jam, as curd can be made in small batches quite easily.

 

Stirring the slowly thickening bowl of orange curd was quite relaxing and made me feel very nostalgic. Once jarred and cooled and I ate my first spoonful on toast, as a nod to marmalade. It was fresh and zesty, with a bitter-sweet intense orange flavour. Noticeably different to marmalade, being creamier and richer, but the lingering flavour was definitely reminiscent of marmalade. I think it would be brilliant paired with a dark chocolate cake.

Do you like marmalade? Do you ever make your own?

Navel Orange ‘Marmalade’ Curd

Ingredients

Zest & juice of 2 large Navel or Seville oranges

170g caster sugar

55g unsalted butter

2 eggs

Method

Place two small clean glass jars and their lids on a baking tray and place into the oven. Heat to 130C and leave while you make the curd.

Finely zest the oranges into a large glass bowl. Squeeze the juice form the oranges and add to the zest in the bowl along with the sugar.

Place the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water and whisk constantly until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has turned from cloudy to clear. (You can sieve the zest out at this stage if you don’t want it in the finished curd, but it adds a lot of extra flavour).

Cut the butter into small cubes and gently stir into the zesty syrup with a spatula until melted and combined.

Lightly beat the eggs and then pour into the orange mixture through a sieve to remove any oogly bits, mixing all the time to prevent the egg curdling into scrambled eggs.

Keep mixing gently for 15-20 minutes until the mixture starts to thicken. Do not be melted to walk away or turn the heat up to speed up the process, it will scramble the eggs.

Once the mixture starts to thicken, keep stirring until the mixture is thick enough to coat the spatula. You should be able to run your finger down the spatula, leaving a mark without the curd flowing back over it.

Remove your jars from the oven and immediately fill to the rim with the hot curd. Screw the lids on the jars tightly, using rubber gloves to prevent burning your hands.

Leave to jars to cool on the side – the lids will suddenly ‘pop’ as the vacuum is created, ensuring a sealed and sterile jar.

Store in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

Makes 1½ - 2 jars of curd

Apple & Spice Baked Breakfast Porridge

Breakfast is my absolute favourite meal of the day. I love it and all kinds of breakfast related foods. It is my comfort food and I could quite happily eat breakfast foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week and not get bored. Porridge is actually one of my favourites, I find it so comforting, warm, milky with a little bite to the oats. My treat is to sprinkle on a few dark chocolate chips and wait for them to melt before tucking in!

Considering my love of porridge and breakfasty things, it is amazing that until yesterday I had never tried baked porridge. This is more commonly know as baked oatmeal, but as it’s made with chunky oats rather than ground (oatmeal), I think porridge is a better name for it. You bake it as you would a baked rice pudding, stir your oats together with lots of milk, bake it in the oven and hey presto – a delicious flapjack style porridge is yours to enjoy!

As the porridge bakes the oats swell and become plump and compact, meaning its spoonable or even sliceable once removed from the oven. One of the best parts for me was the way the top became golden brown and lightly toasted during baking, creating a thin chewy, slightly crisp top layer with the soft and milky swollen oats beneath.

I decided to jazz up my porridge by adding sultanas, dried apricots, fresh apple, pumpkin seeds and spices. This added a wonderful array of textures and flavours. As the recipe contains no added sugar the fruit adds a lovely natural sweetness, the seeds a pleasant crunch and the spices a delicious warming flavour. The apple created little pockets of soft moistness with a slight tang, while the dried fruit added a lovely chew and intense sweetness. I absolutely loved it!

Eating a slice of baked breakfast porridge on its own felt quite indulgent, but to make it even more decadent I drizzled my slice with a little brandy sauce that I had leftover from Christmas. In my defense it needed using up and I actually ate this for lunch rather than breakfast so I didn’t feel too guilty. The fact I went on to devour nearly half the tray, now that I did feel a little bad about, but I just couldn’t resist it.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to try baked porridge – it’s a breakfast revelation! I can’t wait to try out some other variants. Imagine pear with dark chocolate chips or fresh blueberries with vanilla; served with lemon curd and fresh yogurt mmmmmm.

Porridge – how do you eat yours?

Apple & Spiced Baked Breakfast Porridge

Ingredients

150g gluten free oats

40g sultanas

30g dried apricots

10g pumpkin seeds

1 eating apple (I used golden delicious)

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

500ml milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Place the oats, sultanas, pumpkin seeds and spices into a 15 x 20cm baking dish. Chop the apricots into pieces roughly the same size as the sultanas and add to the mix.

Chop the apple into small cubes 5-10mm in size. Place into a small dish and microwave on high for 1 minute until slightly softened, alternatively do this in a small pan with 1 tbsp water.

Add the apple to the oaty mixture and stir everything together until all the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Pour over the milk (it will look like a lot but don’t worry).

Bake for 35-45 minutes until the liquid has been absorbed by the oats and the top feels firm to the touch and is golden brown.

Serve in large wedges while still hot, with a little extra milk, cream, yoghurt, fresh fruit or syrup as desired.

Any leftovers can be kept in the fridge and eaten cold or reheated the next day.

Feeds 2-4 people depending on appetite

Starry Mince Pies with Zesty Orange Pastry (& Choc Shot Giveaway Winner)

I can’t believe Christmas is mere days away; it’s probably close enough to start counting down in hours! I have been so busy recently that I am quite behind on my festive baking. Last weekend I realised with shock that I hadn’t yet eaten a mince pie this Christmas! Being coeliac means it’s not so easy to come across gluten free mince pies at social gatherings or in bakers shops and I hadn’t got round to baking my own. I decided this would definitely not do and set about rectifying this immediately.

 

To give my mince pies a bit of an extra festive touch I flavoured the gluten free pastry with some orange zest. This gave the pastry a nice golden hue and a little extra zesty freshness. I liked how I could see the orange strands speckled throughout the pastry too. I love the combination of fresh orange with the heady spices used in the sweet boozy mincemeat.

I also topped the pies with pastry stars rather than round lids, as I like to see the mincemeat poking out between the stars points. Once baked they were given a light dusting of icing sugar and they were good to enjoy – or should that be scoffed considering I ate three in one afternoon? Oh well, they say pastry is best eaten on the day of baking, and I needed to make up for lost time.

 

I used the leftover scraps of pastry to make some festive pastry shapes, which I baked and devoured while still warm straight out the oven. This is a little treat that my mum always used to allow us to do whenever she made anything with pastry. It always makes me feel nostalgic and there’s no point letting it go to waste.

 

How many mince pies have you eaten this year? Do you even like mince pies? If not, what’s your festive go to treat?

 

In case I don’t blog again before Christmas I hope you all have a wonderful fun, friend, family and food filled festive day!

Starry Mince Pies with Zesty Orange Pastry

Ingredients

200g gluten free plain flour blend

90g butter

1 egg

40g icing sugar

Zest of 1 orange

½ tsp xanthan gum

1-2 tbsp water

½ jar gluten free mincemeat (most is GF but always best to check)

2 tsp milk for brushing

2 tbsp extra icing sugar for decoration

Method

Preheat your oven to 180C and have a 12 holed muffin tin to hand.

Mix the flour, 40g icing sugar, orange zest and xanthan gum together in a bowl.
Cut the butter into cubes, add to the flour and rub together using the tips fo your fingers, lifting the flour and butter up above the bowl and letting it fall back in as you squish the two together. Continue until the butter is broken down and coated in flour, it should look like chunky breadcrumbs.

Beat the egg, add to the bowl along with 1 tbsp water. Mix in using the tip of a round bladed butter knife. Once mostly incorporated using your hands to bring the mixture together to form a dough. Add a tiny bit more water if it seems too dry, but you don’t want a wet dough.

Knead the dough gently for 1 minute to ensure everything is well combined.
Roll out the pastry between two large sheets of clingfilm until 3-4mm thick.

Use a fluted cutter to cut out rounds to fit the wells of your muffin or tart tin. Gather up the off-cuts and re-roll them before cutting out 12 stars to act as pasty lids.

Fill the pastry shells with 1 heaped teaspoon of mincemeat and top each with a pastry star. Brush the tops with a little milk.

Bake in the oven for 18-22 minutes until lightly golden and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before lifting out and transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Dust with icing sugar and enjoy while still warm.

Makes 12 mince pies

 

Note: Re-roll any leftover pastry scraps and cut out some festive shapes. Place on a baking tray and bake for 12-18 minutes (depending on size). Once baked, dust with icing sugar and enjoy while still hot.

Choc Shot Giveaway Winner

I’m also delighted to announce that the winner of the Choc Shot giveaway is… comment Number 5 – The Caked Crusader!

Her comment was picked by a random number generator. Congratulations Caked Crusader. I’ll be contacting you shortly for your address.

Christmas Pudding for Stir Up Sunday!

Today is Stir Up Sunday – the official day to stir together a delicious mix of dried fruits and spices to make your Christmas pudding. Every year the last Sunday in November, the last Sunday before the start of advent, is the official day to make your xmas pud. It is a tradition that has been going on for decades, possibly centuries, and one I hope continues for many more to come. I love the thought that today people all over the country are today making a pudding for their friends and relatives to eat and enjoy on Christmas day. It’s the kind of unity and homely food based tradition that I love.

Christmas pudding is not too dissimilar to Christmas cake. Your soak your fruits in alcohol before using them, like a Christmas cake, but then combine this mix into a spiced breadcrumb and suet batter. I always made my own breadcrumbs from crumbling up some gluten free bread and use frozen grated butter in place of the suet (which is usually coated in wheat flour). This fruity, spicy mixture is placed into a pudding basin and part boiled, part steamed for several hours to create a densely fruited, rich, spicy and incredibly moist fruit pudding. It has all the flavours of Christmas cake only in a squishier, softer and more intense form. The pudding mix doesn’t look all that appetising before it’s steamed, but it transforms into a lovely dark and sticky pudding after its steaming session. You get the added bonus of it filling the house with a fabulous rich and spicy Christmas scent as it happily simmers away.

 

Like Christmas Cake, the pudding is kept for several weeks to allow the flavour to mature and develop. Then on Christmas day the pudding is heated, doused in Brandy and set alight! The lights are quickly turned down and people ‘ohhh’ and ‘arrrrh’ as wispy blue flames dance around the pudding creating a spectacular end to the Christmas meal. There can’t be many foods that people look forward to intentionally setting on fire! The only other one I can think of is Baked Alaska and that’s more of a gentle torching rather than dousing it in a flammable liquid and setting it alight! However, the actual flames last mere seconds, so no harm comes to the pudding itself, its too moist to get scorched or burnt.

The pudding requires 5 hours of boiling/steaming, but don’t let that put you off. As long as you check the water level a couple of times during cooking, it can be left to its own devises. It’s quite relaxing pottering around the house and listening to it gently simmering, filling the kitchen with the warm spicy note of Christmas. I always like to line the base of the pan I steam it in with some paper. This protects the pudding from the direct base heat of the pan and stops it making too much noise from the pudding basin hitting the side of the pan as it simmers. It’s a great way to make use of some of the tedious junk mail and unwanted catalogues that always get pushed through the letterbox at this time of year.

 

This year I decided to place a thin slice of orange at the base of my pudding, which I hope will give a pretty top when turn out. I’d only got the one orange and when I came to slice it I found it was rather a unique orange in that the inner segments formed more of a random mosaic pattern than the usual triangular segments! While not quite the effect I was after, I think it will certainly look pretty on the pudding so I used it anyway. I’ll let you know how it turns out! Right now it’s wrapped up tight and awaiting its final steam on Christmas day.

Gluten Free Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

230g raisins
125g sultanas
50g glace cherries (check they are GF)
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
100ml Brandy (I used Amaretto)
20g chopped pecans
50g grated frozen butter
30g gluten free brown breadcrumbs (crumbled from 1 slice of GF bread)
50g gluten free plain flour
90g dark soft brown sugar
½ tsp mixed spice
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground star anise (or clove)
½ tsp salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Method
The day before (or up to 3 days before), chop the cherries in half and place into a bowl along with the rest of the dried fruits. Grate the orange and lemon zest over the top and pour in the Brandy. Give everything a good stir, cover the bowl with clingfilm and set aside for 24 hours (or up to 3 days) to allow the fruits to plump up and absorb some of the Brandy.
The next day, place all the remaining ingredients into a large bowl. Add the soaked fruits, scraping in any leftover juices. Mix together lightly with a wooden spoon or spatula until everything is evenly combined.
Place a small disc of parchment paper in the base of a 1½ pint pudding basin. Place a thinly sliced disc of orange in the base (optional).

Fill the basin with the pudding mix, pressing down lightly. Place another disc of parchment on top and cover the top of the basin with a sheet of foil that you have folded a pleat into the middle of, to allow the pudding to rise during steaming.
Tie a long strip of string around the top rim of the pudding and then secure it over the top of the basin from one side to the other to form a string handle. (This will help you retrieve the pudding from the pan later without burning yourself).
Lay sheets of newspaper (or junk mail) in the base of a large saucepan. (This protects the base of the pudding from the direct heat from the stove and stops it rattling around inside your pan.) Place the pudding on the papers before filling the pan with boiling water from the kettle, until it reaches halfway up the side of the pudding basin.
Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to the merest of simmers, cover with the lid and leave to simmer gently for 5 hours. It should be barely bubbling.
Every 2 hours lift the lid of the pan to check the water level. Add more boiling water if it’s looking low.
Once the 5 hours is up, lift the pudding out of the pan with the help of the string handle. Place on a cooling rack, remove the foil and leave until cool. Leave it in the basin and with the parchment disc still on top. Once cooled, wrap the whole pudding, basin and all, tightly in clingfilm and store in a cool dark place until required, the longer the better.
On Christmas Day, steam the pudding again for 2 hours to heat through thoroughly. Turn out onto a serving plate that has a rim. Carefully warm a ladleful of Brandy, then set light to it with a match or lighter and quickly pour it over the pudding to flambé. Serve with Brandy butter, Brandy cream or custard once the flames have extinguished.
Makes 1 pudding, to serve 6 – 10 people

Banoffee but not as you know it! Banana & Coffee Bundt Cake

Did you know that 15^th November is National Bundt Cake day? One of my fellow bloggers Mary of The Food Librarian is posting a different Bundt cake recipe every day in the run up to 15^th. It’s an amazing (not to mention delicious) feat to undertake and she has done similarevents in previous years. Seeing so many Bundt’s got me wanting to bake my own and join in the baking fun and so I give you my Banoffee Bundt Cake!

 

Banoffee is instantly associated with banana and toffee, but I have often wondered ‘why does it have to be toffee?’ Banana and coffee combined would also be Banoffee, although I admit slightly less conventional. Some people may not like the sound of banana and coffee together, but let me assure you it works. Bananas are naturally very sweet and although often associated with other sweet toffees and caramels, they go equally well with darker, more bitter flavours – who doesn’t love bananas and dark bitter chocolate together? Well coffee works just the same!

 

This recipe is jam-packed full of banana, 4 whole large bananas in fact. It also contains no butter but instead relies on a little oil and Greek yoghurt, not to mention all that banana, for moistness. This also means it would be very easy to make this cake dairy free if needed, by simply using a non dairy yoghurt (check your dark chocolate is dairy free too, most good ones are).

 

The cake has quite a close texture, dense but not stodgy or heavy, more like a pound cake. It’s moist and tender from all the banana and not overly sweet, as there is not too much added sugar, the main sweetness coming from the bananas themselves. I wanted the banana flavour to really shine and so resisted my urge to pile in the spices and instead used only a little vanilla and some dark chocolate chips, which I always adore in banana cake.

The coffee element is present as a coffee glaze, which adds both sweetness and then a slight smoky bitter coffee note which works surprisingly well with the sweet banana and gooey dark chocolate chips. It makes it just that little bit more sophisticated and adds a note of interest.

 

There is something homely and comforting about banana cake, I ate one slice and promptly went and cut myself another. As this recipe quite low in fat I didn’t feel too guilty. Feed it to your friends and see if they can work out what the Banoffee twist is! I plan to submit this post to Mary for her Bundt cake round-up. Will you be baking a Bundt cake for National Bundt Cake day? What would be your chosen flavour?

(Banoffee) Banana & Coffee Bundt Cake

Ingredients

400g (3-4 large) overripe bananas, peeled weight
2 eggs
70ml vegetable oil
125g soft brown sugar
80g dark chocolate chips
90g thick Greek yoghurt

1 tsp vanilla

240g white rice flour

40g potato starch

20g tapioca starch
1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Coffee Glaze

1 tsp instant coffee

1-2 tbsp water

150g icing sugar

Banana chips to decorate

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Oil a 9-10inch wide Bundt tin and set aside.

Mash the bananas with a fork until very soft and mushy.
In a clean bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil and sugar until combined and starting to go slightly paler and bubbly, about 1 minute.
Stir in the banana mush, yoghurt, vanilla and chocolate chips.

Sift the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, rice, potato and tapioca flour over the batter and fold together using a spatula until a sloppy but thick cake mix is formed.

Pour the cake mixture into the tin and bake for 45-50 minutes until well-risen, golden brown and cracked along the top. Test the middle is cooked using a skewer, but be careful not to hit a chocolate chip.
Leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Coffee Glaze

Dissolve the instant coffee in 1 tbsp water. Add the icing sugar and mix together well until a thick, yet pourable icing is created. Add a few more drops of water if necessary to create the desired consistency. It should be spreadable without being runny.

Drizzle the icing over the top of the inverted, cooled cake, letting it slowly drizzle down the sides of the cake.

Decorate with a few crushed banana chips if desired.

Eat and enjoy.

Gluten Free Ginger Christmas Fruit Cake

It’s that time of year again, time to bake the Christmas cake!! I’ve always baked my own Christmas cake, even in my pre-coeliac days. There is something magical and special about preparing the fruits, soaking them in booze and then baking them into a dark spicy cake that is so traditional and ritualistic that I always look forward to it. Plus as the cake bakes you get the most divine aroma of warm fruits, black treacle and spices wafting through the kitchen that it instantly makes me feel all warm and cozy. Knowing that you are preparing food for your family to share and enjoy, and the love and time that goes into making it make it all the more special.

Each year I try and give the cake a bit of a different twist. Last year I replaced the brandy with rum and use some ground cardamom in the spices, this year I decided to give it a warming twist of ginger. I stirred a generous amount of crystallised ginger into the fruit mix and upped the ground ginger in the cakes spice mix. I also used satsuma zest and juice in place of my standard orange and replaced sultanas with dates. Ginger itself adds a peppery warming heat, which I felt would work well in a Christmas cake. I can’t wait to taste it on Christmas day and find out if it comes through.

I left my fruits soaking for a whole week, preparing them one weekend and baking the cake the next. During this time they soaked up the booze and fruit juice and became wonderfully plump and glossy. The zest, fruits and brandy created quite a heady aroma that I was half tempted to forgo the cake and eat spoonfuls of the fruit mix on its own but I managed to resist.

My cake is now snugly tucked away and awaiting its first feed of brandy in a few days time. Nearer Christmas I have the fun challenge of decorating it. I was stuck for ideas this year, but my grandmother has suggested a penguin which I think it a lovely idea. I’ve not planned a design yet, you’ll have to wait until nearer the time to find out if I managed it.

Do you bake your own Christmas cake? Are there any special family traditions you MUST do around this time of year to get into the festive feeling?

Gluten Free Ginger Christmas Fruit Cake

Ingredients – Soaking Mix

170g raisins

100g dates

65g dried apricots

50g crystallised ginger

50g dried cranberries

Zest of 1 lemon

Zest of 1 satsuma (or ½ orange)

50ml brandy

40ml satsuma or orange juice

Ingredients – Cake Mix

140g gluten free plain flour

15g tapioca starch

20g ground almonds

120g dark soft brown sugar

120g unsalted butter

1½ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

40g black treacle

2 eggs

(pre soaked fruit mix – above)

Feeding

30ml brandy once baked & additional for feeding

Soak the Fruit

Place the raisins and cranberries into a bowl. Chop the dates and apricots into pieces the same size as the cranberries and slice the crystallised ginger into small cubes.

Grate over the zest of the lemon and Satsuma. Squeeze the juice from the satsuma and add to the brandy. Pour the liquid over the fruits and stir to coat.

Cover the bowl with cling film and leave the fruit to soak for at least 24hours and up to 1 week, in a cool place to allow the fruit to plump up and absorb the brandy and fruit juice. I left mine for 5 days and stirred it twice in this time.

Bake the Cake

Lightly grease a 6.5inch/15-16cm deep round spring form tin. Line the base and sides with greaseproof paper, letting the paper rise about 1 inch above the rim of the tin. Preheat the oven to 140C or 120C fan.

Weigh all the cake ingredients, expect the pre soaked fruit, into a bowl and mix with a hand mixer until well combined.

Add the pre soaked fruit, including any remaining juices and fold together using a spatula.

Spread the mix into the tin, pressing down gently. Create a small dip in the middle of the cake to allow the mixture to rise into a flat, level surface on baking.

Bake in the oven for 2hours 10minutes until browned and quite firm to the touch. Allow to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before pricking the surface of the cake and drizzling over 30ml more brandy. Cover the cake and leave to cool in the tin before unmolding. Leave the greaseproof paper round the cake and wrap it tightly in clingfilm. The longer the cake has to mature the more developed in flavour it will be.

Every 1-2 weeks carefully remove the clingfilm from the cake and drizzle over a little more brandy. This is known as ‘feeding the cake’ and will ensure a richer and moister flavour and texture to the cake. (This is non essential though)

Makes 1 x 6.5ch cake

When Ready to Decorate

Ingredients - Decoration

500g fondant icing

250g marzipan

2 tsp brandy

Food dye to decorate

Ribbon

Trimming and Decorating the Cake

When ready to decorate, peel away the greaseproof paper and carefully level the surface of a cake using a bread knife. Fill in any tiny holes with fruit taken from the off cuts of cake.

Place the cake on a 7-8inch cake board that has a few dobs of royal icing on it, to keep the cake in place.

Roll out the marzipan and use the base of the tin to cut out a large circle. Brush the top of the cake with a little brandy and smooth the marzipan over the top of the cake.

Roll out the fondant icing so that it is 2 inches bigger in diameter than the base of the cake. Brush the cake with brandy before covering with the fondant. Smooth the edges and top with your hands or cake smoother if you have one. Cut off the excess fondant from around the base.

Gather up the off cuts of fondant and dye as appropriate for decorations. Decorate the cake as desired and secure a ribbon around the bottom edge of the cake.

(I don’t have any photos of my finished cake yet, as its still in the ‘feeding’ stage)