Cranberry & Orange Cake

Is it too early to be thinking about Christmas baking and cooking? Well, the thing about this cake is that although it borrows from the flavours of Christmas, it is a great cake in its own right and is something delicious to make when fresh cranberries are in season; it doesn’t have to be confined to Christmas alone.

Cranberries can be somewhat sharp, so do need a little sweetening… but if you use too much sugar you risk drowning out their distinctive taste. I have paired cranberries with orange in this cake and really feel that the orange lends a natural fruity sweetness that balances out any sharpness perfectly.

 

The cake has a close crumb and is unusual in that cream cheese is used along with butter to add richness to the cake. Despite this, the cake is not heavy and although close textured has a lovely velvety feel in the mouth when eaten. The cream cheese adds a very subtle tangy note but this is barely discernible and in my opinion adds a depth of flavour and a certain complexity to the finished cake. The other great thing about using the cream cheese is that it adds substance to the cake batter, which prevents the cranberries from sinking as the cake cooks.

For those who don’t like rich fruit cakes, this is a lighter, although still indulgent, cake that is perfect for the festive season. I chose to bake the cake in a 28cm ring tin, but if you don’t have one, you could always bake the cake in a 23-25cm round cake tin. However, if you have a ring tin, do use it, because I think that it just makes the finished cake just look so Christmassy, especially when also decorated with the glacé icing and frosted cranberries. Unlike a traditional rich fruit cake which ideally should be made several weeks in advance of consuming to give the cake a chance to ‘mature’, this cake is made no more than a couple of days before eating. Of course, if you are anything like me, I’ll make a traditional Christmas cake AND also this one!

I sometimes make another version of this cake substituting lemon and blueberries for the orange and cranberries respectively. This is also a fab cake and one that has proved extremely popular with my nearest and dearest (and various others!!!).

 

Ingredients:

185g butter, softened
185g cream cheese
330g caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 2 oranges
3 large eggs, lightly beaten

165g self-raising flour

115g plain flour

125g fresh cranberries

Frosted cranberries:

25g cranberries

1 egg white, lightly beaten

Caster sugar for sprinkling

Icing:

175g icing sugar

Juice of ½ orange
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark. Using some butter, grease a 28cm ring/savarin tin and then dust with a little flour, shaking out any excess.
2. Place the butter, cream cheese in a large bowl and using a hand held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Add the grated orange zest and mix through. Gradually add the eggs beating well after each addition until they too are fully incorporated.
3. Sift the plain and self-raising flours together and fold into the cream cheese mixture making sure that there are no pockets of flour remaining. Finally add the cranberries and mix through so that they are well distributed.
4. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared tin and level the surface with a spatula or back of a metal spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-45 minutes until well risen and firm to the touch or when a thin metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
5. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Frosted cranberries:

6. Using a pastry brush, light coat the surface of each cranberry with a little egg white before tossing in some caster sugar. Set aside on a clean plate and allow the sugary surface of the cranberries dry out a little.

Icing:

7. Mix the icing sugar and enough freshly squeezed orange juice together to create an icing with a ‘coating’ consistency. Spoon over the top of the cake and allow to flow naturally down the sides of the cake.

8. Decorate the top of the cake with the frosted cranberries, by placing them on the glacé icing before it hardens.
 

Serves 10-12.
 

Curried Parsnip Soup with Smoked Haddock

I love the sweet earthiness of parsnips and truly feel that they are a much underused vegetable. When I was younger, my grandmother would sometimes serve them peeled and simply boiled as a vegetable accompaniment to her fabulous roast chicken. At Christmas, she would roast them, drizzled with a little honey in some hot oil and serve them alongside the turkey, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts… but in reality we didn’t have them too often. I love them, but to be honest they were always a divisive vegetable, with half of the family (ironically, all the women) loving them whilst the other half (all the men) hated them.  For me, to this day, Christmas dinner is not Christmas dinner without roasted parsnips. My children aren’t keen on them, but I still make a large serving-bowl full of them, in the hopes that I will be able to convince them that parsnips are a wondrous and totally delicious vegetable!

Of course there are so many other ways that parsnips can be used other than just boiling or roasting them… Then can be thinly sliced and deep fried to make parsnip crisps, puréed and because they have an inherent intense, natural sweetness, they can even be used in more innovative ways to make cakes, ice-creams and other desserts! Here I have used them a little more simply to make a beautiful creamy curried soup which I have topped with some flakes of smoked haddock. The sweetness of the parsnips is tempered by the spicy warmth of the curry and the smokiness of the fish to create a beautifully balanced and very moreish soup – it was yum!

This was quite a substantial and filling soup, given the addition of the smoked haddock, but on a cold, wintry day it makes a delicious lunch. You could also serve it in smaller portions as a tasty starter at Christmas… It’s hugely adaptable. The great thing about it is that even people who aren’t fans of parsnips seem to love this soup… my three fussy eaters at home all loved it and I think that I achieved something worthwhile in creating a soup that they liked a lot despite the fact that it contained a vegetable that they had previously claimed to dislike!

Ingredients:

25g butter
1 medium sized onion, peeled and chopped
2 sticks of celery, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1tsp medium curry powder

800g parsnips, peeled and chopped into 2cm chunks

1 medium potato, peeled and chopped

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped

1 litre of vegetable stock

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

100ml cream

To finish:

250g smoked haddock

Enough milk to just cover the smoked haddock

2 bay leaves

Method:

1. Heat the butter in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion, celery and garlic over a moderate heat for approximately 5 minutes until softened but not coloured. Add the curry powder and stir through, coating the onions, celery and garlic and cook for a further minute.

2. Add the parsnips, potatoes and apple and stir again. Cover the saucepan and allow the vegetables to sweat and soften a little without colouring. Add the stock, increase the heat and bring up to the boil. Reduce the heat, until everything is just simmering. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover the saucepan and cook for about 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
3. Spoon the contents of the saucepan into a liquidiser or blender (doing it in batches if necessary) and purée until smooth. Pour into a clean saucepan and keep warm over a gentle heat until ready to serve.
To finish:
4. Place the smoked haddock in a small saucepan and pour in enough milk so that the fish is just covered. Add the bay leaves and place saucepan over a moderate heat and bring up to the boil. Allow to cook for approximately 5 minutes and then remove from the milk. Remove the skin from the smoked haddock and break into small flakes.
5. Add the cream to the soup and stir through. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. Serve the soup in bowls with the flaked fish on top.
 

Serves 6.

Chicken in Cider with Carrots & Peas

This is a delicious winter-time dish, but it is also one that suits almost any season. The original recipe was included in a book called Your Favourite Recipes by Theodora Fitzgibbon - one of my all-time favourite food-writers.

Theodora used to write a weekly column for the Irish Times and in addition to giving recipes, she would also write about the stories behind the dishes; hers were recipes you wanted to cook and taste. Most importantly, Theodora’s recipes always worked. The Christmas cake and pudding that I make every year are based on recipes that she provided, and even though I have tweaked them over the years, I still consider them to be Theodora’s.

 

I was so enamoured and influenced by Theodora that I even wanted to name my second daughter after her, but my husband was having none of it. In fairness, he has had to put up with the clutter of hundreds of cookbooks and all the gadgets and equipment that comes with my love of cookery, but I think he finally reached his tipping point when I wanted to start naming my children after my favourite food writers!

 

When you read the ingredients list for this recipe, they seem slightly strange – chicken in a cider, honey, soy sauce and cream sauce with carrots and peas just sounds a bit wrong, but trust me… it works. The cider and honey accentuate the natural sweetness of the carrots whilst the soy sauce adds a salty savoury element to proceedings.

 

Other than initially frying off the chicken, this dish cooks away quite happily by itself in the oven. You can easily double the quantities if you need to feed more people. This dish is wonderful served with some velvety soft mashed potatoes, but I also like it with crisp sautéed potatoes, as can be seen in the photographs accompanying this post.
 

Ingredients:

A splash of vegetable oil
35g butter
1 chicken cut into 4 or 4 chicken portions, skin on

2 medium onions, finely chopped

A sprig of thyme

25g flour

600ml dry cider

2tblsp honey

5-6 medium carrots, sliced into discs

2-3tblsp soy sauce

Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

To finish:

100g frozen peas

50ml cream
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/ Fan Oven 160C/Gas mark 4.

2. Heat the vegetable oil in an oven proof casserole dish on the hob, over a moderate heat. Add the onion and fry gently until softened but not coloured. Increase the heat season and then fry the chicken pieces for 3-4 minutes on each side until they are a rich golden colour.

3. Sprinkle the flour over the browned chicken and continue to cook for a further minute until the flour has cooked out. Pour over the cider, scraping the bottom of the dish with a wooden spoon to loosen any caramelised bits and give them a chance to incorporate into the sauce as the dish cooks in oven.

4. Add the thyme, honey, soy sauce and sliced carrots. Cover the casserole dish and place into the preheated oven for 45-55 minutes.

5. Five minutes before the cooking time has finished, add the peas and cream and stir through. When the cooking time has elapsed, remove from oven, taste, adjust seasoning as necessary and serve.
 

Serves 4.
 

 

Sussex Pond Pudding

When the temperatures begin to plummet, there is nothing quite like a good old-fashioned pudding to warm you up and provide that comfort food factor. I love steamed puddings and whilst they are incredibly filling and often tend to be quite sweet, they don’t always have to be heavy and stodgy.

Although many traditional steamed puddings use suet pastry or sponges made with beef suet, there are also many others that are based on sponge cake batters. These tend to be lighter to eat but because they have been steamed they retain their moistness and never dry out.

Suet is the hard raw fat that is found around the kidneys in cattle and has, historically, long been used as a fat. It is not often used these days except in steamed puddings or in traditional Christmas mincemeat.  Most Christmas Puddings use suet, but actually the recipe that I have been using for years and which has seen much tweaking and perfecting uses butter and not suet. However, in this recipe for Sussex Pond Pudding suet is used to make the pastry which encases the filling. The filling is unusual in that whole lemons are used – I have used two here but depending on how large your lemons are, you may only need one. The lemons are pricked all over with a skewer or small sharp knife and are used whole, skin and all. For this reason, it is preferable to use unwaxed lemons, or if you are unable to source these make sure that you give the skins a good wash and light scrub in some water to remove any waxy residue.

This is a beautiful pudding; warming and rich and very sweet, but this is tempered somewhat by the sour lemon juices which ooze out and intermingle with the sugar and butter as the pudding is steaming. I just love it and try not to think of how many calories each spoonful contains… but I am absolutely convinced that a little comforting treat like this every now and again is good for the soul and psyche, if not the waistline!

 

It is unclear how the pudding got its name, but I am convinced it must have something to do with the way the sweet and buttery lemon sauces oozes into a puddle when you turn the pudding out. The pudding then sits in the middle of this puddle or ‘pond’ of sauce waiting to be doled out to salivating diners. This is not an elegant or beautiful looking pudding, but because it tastes so incredibly delicious, this is largely irrelevant.

 

The great thing about steamed puddings is that they steam away quite happily on their own and all you have to do every 40-50 minutes is top up the hot/boiling water to maintain optimum steam levels. Also, although this pudding requires over three and half hours steaming, it doesn’t particularly matter if you exceed this a bit.
 

Ingredients:

Suet pastry:
225g self-raising flour
110g shredded suet (I used Atora)

150ml milk - or as I use - 150ml of half milk half water

Filling:

200g butter, cubed

200g soft brown sugar

2 lemons, pricked all over with a small sharp knife
 

Method:

1. Generously grease a 1.5ltr pudding bowl with butter and set aside.

2. Place the flour and suet in a large bowl and mix together so that the suet is evenly distributed. Make a well in the centre and add enough of the milk/water mixture to create a slightly soft dough.

3. Using a well-floured roiling pin, roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface to make a large circle. Remove about ¼ of the dough by cutting out a wedge shaped piece and reserve this for the lid of the pudding. Place the rest of the dough in the pudding bowl, joining the cut edges together so that the inside of the bowl is completely lined. The pastry should be slightly higher than the top rim of the bowl.

4. Pack half the butter cubes and half the brown sugar into the pastry and sit the lemons on top of the butter and sugar in the pastry lined bowl. Pack the rest of the sugar and butter around the lemons.

5. Take the reserved pastry and roll out into a circle slightly larger than the top of the bowl. Place on top of the filling and press the edges together so that the filling is completely enclosed. Trim the edges with a sharp knife.

6. Place a piece of non-stick baking parchment  with a pleat  folded into it to allow for expansion over the pudding bowl  and then place a pleated sheet of tin foil over this. Tie the baking parchment and foil in place around the rim of the bowl using string, making sure that it is well secured.

7. Place the bowl in a large pan of simmering water so that the water comes half way up the outside of the bowl. Place the lid on top of the saucepan and simmer for 3 ½ hours, topping up the water levels every 30 minutes or so.  You can also use an electric steamer with a built in timer following the manufacturer steam in a dedicated steamer.

8. Remove from the saucepan/steamer and allow to sit for 10 minutes before removing the baking paper and foil and upturning onto a large serving plate. Serve immediately.

Serves 6-8.