Sometimes your holiday baking doesn't quite work out as planned.
I came across a recipe in the Christmas Co-op magazine that I wanted to try out. It was called 'Christmas Pudding Surprise Cake', the surprise being that while it is shaped like Christmas pudding, it isn't one. I've never been a fan of traditional Christmas pudding, and it's full of things I can't eat anyway (allergic to grapes, so raisins and sultanas are out, as is the brandy it's soaked in, never mind the fibre in all of the dried fruit). I know that some people really like it, but after 9 Christmases in England, my general observation is that it is made because it is a tradition, not necessarily because anyone at the table really likes it.
Anyway, I was genuinely intrigued by this one upon reading the ingredients. I says to cook it in a 1l oven proof bowl, so I had to go hunting for a new kitchen item (oh darn!). I greased that up as directed and pre-heated the oven to 180C/350F.
The ingredients call for the following -
175g softened unsalted butter (I used Stork margarine instead)
50g glace cherries
40g 70% cocoa dark chocolate
125g self-raising flour (I used 120g plain flour and added TSP of baking powder and 1/2 TSP of salt)
1 1/2 TSP ground cinnamon (you could also use mixed spice)
15g cocoa powder
35g ground almonds
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
Zest of one orange
2 Tbsp of orange juice
50g chopped nuts (I left these out).
I chopped the cherries as directed.
Then I melted half of the chocolate and chopped the other half into chunks.
In a big bowl, I shifted the flour, cinnamon and cocoa. I then added the ground almonds, butter and sugar. It seemed a bit backward to blend the butter and sugar into the flour rather than the other way around, but I followed the recipe as it was written.
I then mixed in the eggs, which made for a much easier batter.
As much as I am not a fan of orange chocolate, I stuck with the recipe and added the orange zest.
Then I added the orange juice and mixed that, then folded in the cherries and chopped chocolate. Then I spooned it into the prepared oven proof bowl.
Once that was done, I popped it in the oven.
It came out looking like this and the house smelt great.
After letting the bowl cool for 5 or 10 minutes, I turned it out onto a wire rack.
It's Christmas Eve and I needed this for Christmas Day, so I needed to do something to rescue this. So after carefully removing the remaining ring of cake left in the bowl and having some discussion with my trusty assistant, it was decided that there was only one solution to this problem, and it is called chocolate.
Once the cake cooled, I melted some dark baker's chocolate until almost melted, then removed it from the heat, stirring until fully melted. I added a tiny bit of sunflower oil to get a slightly more spreadable consistency. Then the spreading and gluing started.
This was a two person job and quickly got messy thanks to sticky melted chocolate and dropped utensils.
After quite a bit of work, we seemed to have it cobbled back into something vaguely resembling the shape the cake was meant to be. I left it for a bit to let the chocolate harden.
After that, it was decided that the whole thing needed to be smoothed out, so the answer to this was of course, more chocolate. The cake was very delicately moved to a plate. I melted about 100g of plain baking chocolate again and added a bit of sunflower oil to make it smoother, and poured that all over the cake. It was then moved to the fridge to let it harden.
The actual recipe calls for a white chocolate ganache to be spread over the cake to look like the traditional marzipan or brandy butter that goes on Christmas pudding. Not wanting to use double cream with lactose intolerant people at dinner (the white chocolate is bad enough), I had planned to just pour melted white chocolate over it instead. So doing as I did earlier, I melted white chocolate with a tiny bit of sunflower oil to make it smoother and poured this over the cake, adding a few extra cherries on top to decorate. This went in the fridge overnight to harden.
So now I have a cake with chocolate chunks inside, chocolate holding it together and two layers of chocolate holding it together. I can think of worse things. However, this also meant that the shell on that cake was rock hard, so it needed a rather sharp knife to cut it. But it could be done, and this was the result-
It was sooooo good! I had a lot of compliments on it and no one complained about the amount of extra chocolate. Some baking disasters can turn into very tasty surprises!
I came across a recipe in the Christmas Co-op magazine that I wanted to try out. It was called 'Christmas Pudding Surprise Cake', the surprise being that while it is shaped like Christmas pudding, it isn't one. I've never been a fan of traditional Christmas pudding, and it's full of things I can't eat anyway (allergic to grapes, so raisins and sultanas are out, as is the brandy it's soaked in, never mind the fibre in all of the dried fruit). I know that some people really like it, but after 9 Christmases in England, my general observation is that it is made because it is a tradition, not necessarily because anyone at the table really likes it.
Anyway, I was genuinely intrigued by this one upon reading the ingredients. I says to cook it in a 1l oven proof bowl, so I had to go hunting for a new kitchen item (oh darn!). I greased that up as directed and pre-heated the oven to 180C/350F.
The ingredients call for the following -
175g softened unsalted butter (I used Stork margarine instead)
50g glace cherries
40g 70% cocoa dark chocolate
125g self-raising flour (I used 120g plain flour and added TSP of baking powder and 1/2 TSP of salt)
1 1/2 TSP ground cinnamon (you could also use mixed spice)
15g cocoa powder
35g ground almonds
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
Zest of one orange
2 Tbsp of orange juice
50g chopped nuts (I left these out).
I chopped the cherries as directed.
Then I melted half of the chocolate and chopped the other half into chunks.
In a big bowl, I shifted the flour, cinnamon and cocoa. I then added the ground almonds, butter and sugar. It seemed a bit backward to blend the butter and sugar into the flour rather than the other way around, but I followed the recipe as it was written.
I then mixed in the eggs, which made for a much easier batter.
As much as I am not a fan of orange chocolate, I stuck with the recipe and added the orange zest.
Then I added the orange juice and mixed that, then folded in the cherries and chopped chocolate. Then I spooned it into the prepared oven proof bowl.
Once that was done, I popped it in the oven.
It came out looking like this and the house smelt great.
After letting the bowl cool for 5 or 10 minutes, I turned it out onto a wire rack.
Oh dear .....
It's Christmas Eve and I needed this for Christmas Day, so I needed to do something to rescue this. So after carefully removing the remaining ring of cake left in the bowl and having some discussion with my trusty assistant, it was decided that there was only one solution to this problem, and it is called chocolate.
Once the cake cooled, I melted some dark baker's chocolate until almost melted, then removed it from the heat, stirring until fully melted. I added a tiny bit of sunflower oil to get a slightly more spreadable consistency. Then the spreading and gluing started.
This was a two person job and quickly got messy thanks to sticky melted chocolate and dropped utensils.
After quite a bit of work, we seemed to have it cobbled back into something vaguely resembling the shape the cake was meant to be. I left it for a bit to let the chocolate harden.
After that, it was decided that the whole thing needed to be smoothed out, so the answer to this was of course, more chocolate. The cake was very delicately moved to a plate. I melted about 100g of plain baking chocolate again and added a bit of sunflower oil to make it smoother, and poured that all over the cake. It was then moved to the fridge to let it harden.
The actual recipe calls for a white chocolate ganache to be spread over the cake to look like the traditional marzipan or brandy butter that goes on Christmas pudding. Not wanting to use double cream with lactose intolerant people at dinner (the white chocolate is bad enough), I had planned to just pour melted white chocolate over it instead. So doing as I did earlier, I melted white chocolate with a tiny bit of sunflower oil to make it smoother and poured this over the cake, adding a few extra cherries on top to decorate. This went in the fridge overnight to harden.
So now I have a cake with chocolate chunks inside, chocolate holding it together and two layers of chocolate holding it together. I can think of worse things. However, this also meant that the shell on that cake was rock hard, so it needed a rather sharp knife to cut it. But it could be done, and this was the result-
It was sooooo good! I had a lot of compliments on it and no one complained about the amount of extra chocolate. Some baking disasters can turn into very tasty surprises!
