Christmas Chutney

One of my staple gifts to people is to make a mini home made hamper full of goodies. The process for this starts in the summer when we go blackberrying and I make a batch of blackberry jam. This year they'll also contain (look away now if you're related to me or teach my son ;-)):

Christmas chutney
Chilli jam
Orange and peppermint cremes
Blackberry jam
Chocolate truffles
Fudge or peanut brittle (haven't decided yet and it depends on storage/ease to make!)
Christmas biscuits
Mincemeat

The chutney recipe I made was maybe in hindsight not the best as it looks very much like mincemest. But it tastes lovely so it can't be all that bad...

Yet again it's a tweaked Delia recipe. It should have contained prunes but stupid me got stone in prunes that were a royal pain in the backside to prepare for the pudding so I ditched the rest of the packed. After a rummage through the cupboard for some other dried fruits I found a packed of dried nectarines. Excited by this discovery I thought they would make a good substitute for the prunes. Until I opened them and found them a bit past their best. Not suprising really given that they were sell by August 2008. Oops. A packet of dried pears went similar and I finally settled on the following combination...

You need
300g ready-to-eat dried apricots
350g dried cranberries
250 pitted dates
450g onions, peeled
570 ml cider vinegar
50g salt
2 tablespoons grated fresh root ginger
1/4 grated nutmeg
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/2 tsp ground cloves
450g demerara sugar

Lob the fruit and onions into a food processor and blitz till mushy (you don't have to do this with the cranberries if you prefer lumps in your chutney). Meanwhile heat the vinegar, ginger and salt in a preserving pan till boiling. Add the mushed fruit and onion mix and the spices and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook for about an hour. You can tell when it's ready as there will be a clean line left in the pan when you scrape a wooden spoon through it. Bottle into sterilised jars and leave to mature for at least a month. Excellent served with cheese and cold (fake) meats.

Christmas Cake

I like a traditional, light Christmas cake. Full of fruit, yes, but not too dark and sticky. A lot of my friends rave about Nigella's black cake, and I admit I like the way she soaks her fruit for ages before hand. But I am not a fan of prunes or treacle or dark muscavado sugar all mixed together. I find the combination too heavy. My staple recipe recipe for Christmas cake is usually a last minute Sainsbury's one as I can't be faffed with feeding a cake either. But this year I have decided to try a variation of Delia's classic cake. I'm soaking the fruit for a week or so as per Nigella and using light brown sugar and golden syrup rather than the suggested treacle. The soaking fruit smells divine at the moment ;-)

250g sultanas
250g raisins
300g currants
100g glacé cherries cut in half
50g mixed candied peel
1/8 cup each of brandy, whisky and rum
225g plain flour
½ level teaspoon salt
¼ level teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ level teaspoon ground mixed spice
225g butter
225g soft light brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 level dessertspoon golden syrup
grated zest 1 lemon grated zest 1 orange

Put the fruit and booze into a clean plastic tub, mix thoroughly and leave to soak for at least 24 hours, ideally a week or so. Stir every so often to ensure all the fruit soaks up the booze.

Soften the butter and then cream with the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, then the golden syrup, then the flour, spices, zest and finally the soaked fruit. Mix well and pour into a prepared 7" square tin (or 8" round one) and bake at 140 degrees for 4-5 hours. Make sure you place a double layer of baking paper on the top of the cake, with a small hole cut in the top to allow the steam to escape.

Once the cake is cooled, wrap in baking parchment, then foil and store in a cool dark place till you want to ice it. You can feed it if you want but I won't be bothering.

Countdown to Christmas

Well, it's begun. The cooking for the festivities kicked off with a vengeance with the start of the annual Christmas cake making preparations.

For a change this year I am also making the pudding and mincemeat. I have never made a pudding before, and have always been put off by the steaming process. But I thought what the heck seeing as we're hosting Christmas this year...

The mincemeat recipe I am using is a tweaked St Delia's one. I've never really made mincemeat before either and don't particularly like mince pies it has to be said, but Christmas isn't Christmas without them, and I do sort of like them warmed up and slathered in brandy butter and cointreau cream...

Mincemeat
450g Bramley apples, cored and chopped very small
225g vegetarian suet
800g mixed dried fruit - I used a mixture of Waitrose luxury mixed vine fruits, raisins, sultanas and currants
225g candied peel
350g soft dark brown sugar
grated zest and juice 2 oranges
grated zest and juice 2 lemons
50g glace cherries, cut into quarters
4 level teaspoons mixed ground spice
½ level teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 whole grated nutmeg
1/8 cup each of brandy, whisky and rum (add another 1/8 cup each once the mincemeat has been cooked)

Lob everything into a large, clean plastic tub and mix well. Leave to steep for at least 24 hours, up to a week in a cool place. Stir a couple of times a day to mix and plump up the fruit.

When it's finished steeping, transfer to an oven proof dish and heat through at 120 degrees for 3 hours. This melts the suet to ensure the mincemeat doesn't fermet in the jars. Transfer to sterilised jars and leave somewhere cool and dark for at least a month.