Man It’s Baking In Here!

I know I know! We don’t want to count the days to Christmas either, but seriously – if you want a good pud, then you best get baking because our hardened Christmas baking fans have already got theirs out of the oven and curing in a muslin cloth. That bit of foresight makes all the difference!

If any of you have thus far missed out on the pleasure of seeing the looks on the faces of friends and family as they tuck into a freshly baked anything from your oven, then this Christmas is time to turn that all around, for your chance to become the beaming father/mother of a literal bun from the baking oven. Contraray to popular belief, the Christmas cake is not an ethereal product, baked only by those bestowed with “the Knowledge”. Whilst it does involve the bringing together of a long-ish list of christmassy fruits, its culmination is not alchemy – or at least it doesn’t have to be.

The Hopsack is a proud stockist of all the ingredients required to bake the perfect Chritsmas Cake – a one stop shop for novices and an Alladin’s Cave for those more experienced bakers, hunting down the elusive Muscatel raisin, or whole organic citron peel. Below is a recipe, tried and trusted that came into being sometime in the early eighties and has survived transfer from scrawled shred of paper to printed flyer (pick one up in The Hopsack if you prefer to keep your monitor out of reach of your tackey cook’s fingers)

A Christmas Cake that you can easily make

You will need…

• 150g organic cold-pressed rapeseed oil
• 150g sweetener (mix of grated carrot, apple juice and apple puree)
• 200g organic wholewheat flour
• 25g almond paste
• 4 large organic eggs
• 300g organic currants
• 25g organic sultanas
• 100g chopped organic mixed peel
• 50g dried organic apricots
• 25g organic almonds, halved
• 1tsp mixed spice
• pinch sea salt
• 1 tsp rum

Method

1. Line and grease an 8″ cake tin
2. Beat the eggs, sweetener, almond paste and oil
3. Mix in the spice, salt and rum whilst still warm
4. Fold in flour
5. Add fruit and nuts
6. Bake at gas mark 3/ 160 degrees C for 2 – 2 1/2 hrs or until a skewer pushed into the centre of the cake comes out nearly clean.
7. Stand back for all the oooohs and aaaahs from your family and friends, then either learn some exotic icing skills or stick on the kettle and cut yourself a slice to “test the quality”.