When I saw this traditional English Christmas cake in the Sep/Oct Jamie Magazine issue, I knew immediately that I would have definitely baked it for Christmas (yeah, I know, I love Christmas and I start thinking about it as soon as I put away my summer T-shirts and light dresses, I can’t help it).

As you already know how much I love the British side of life, you will easily understand how I desperately fell for this delicious fruit cake: rich, sumptuous, full of dried fruit and, above all, very English! It’s traditional to make this a few weeks before Christmas, so that you can feed it by pouring over booze of your choice, to further enrich the flavor of this extraordinary fruit cake.

The brandy aroma, combined with dried fruit and nuts, reminds me of season greetings, snowy Christmas carols, twinkling lights, rustling paper and satin ribbons… I can’t wait to finally bite into a thick slice of fruity Christmas cake, as until now I could only nibble something, while gradually adding some brandy to my creature!

Traditional Christmas Cake – from Jamie Magazine Sep/Oct 10

(Serves 16)

Ingredients:

• 600 g raisins
• 200 g currants
• 100 g dried sour or glacé cherries
• 250 g mixed dried fruits (try prunes, apricot, apples, pears) finely chopped
• 400 ml booze, plus extra to ‘feed’ the cake (brandy, sherry, Tia Maria, rum… all work well)
• 300 g butter, at room temperature
• 200 g dark brown sugar
• 1 lemon
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tbsp treacle (I used golden syrup)
• 300 g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• a pinch of ground cloves
• 150 g ground almonds
• 150 g walnuts, chopped

The night before.

Place the dried fruit in a saucepan with the booze and bring to a simmer. Pour into a bowl, cool, cover and leave to soften.

The following day

Preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2 and line the base and sides of a 23cm round tin or a 20cm square tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper. You’ll need the side lining to be a good 8cm higher than the tin.

If you’d like your cake to be particularly moist, blitz half the soaked fruit in a food processor to make a paste, and stir back into the rest of the fruit. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Grate in the zest of your lemon and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the treacle. Sift the flour and combine with the spices and ground almonds. Mix into the butter mixture, alternating with the soaked fruit. Finally, fold in the walnuts. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin and bake in the oven for about 3 hours. Check after 2½ hours and then every 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, brush with a little more booze. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then remove, placing it directly onto a large sheet of tin foil. Wrap it up twice to retain the heat for as long as possible. After a few hours, remove the foil and wrap the cake up again in a double sheet of greaseproof paper and a double sheet of tin foil, making sure you can access the cake from the top. Store in an airtight container for 2–12 weeks. During this time, feed the cake the alcohol of your choice by gently pouring it over the top and rewrapping.

Frosting

I decided to frost this traditional cake with a soft topping made by whipping together mascarpone cheese and cream with 2 tbsps of icing sugar. Spread evenly the frosting over the cake and decorate with some glacé cherries or Christmas decorations.

Tasting test. It isn’t a traditional Italian cake and you won’t find it within our family Christmas recipes… Well, until this year, I dare say. I’m sure that next year this will become an unmissable Christmas sweet treat, a new tradition to built year after year, sweet fruity crumble after sweet fruity crumble. It is a rich, full-bodied, fruity and flavorful cake, in which all the ingredients are perfectly balanced. It slightly resembles our typical panforte (a kind of gingerbread), but is less sweet, I do prefer the English version.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Jamie Oliver’s Christmas cake

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I think I have already told you zillions of time how much I love Jamie Oliver and his books, tv programs and, last but not least, his Jamie Magazine. Into the Christmas issue, next to the D.I.Y Cookie Jar,  the was this delicious Clementine Curd. It was love at first sight: the colour, the holiday feeling, the jolly character… I had to make it!

I suggest you Jamie Magazine, if you are not a subscriber yet, as it is as fresh, easy and immediate as Jamie is. Pictures are as amazing as ever: I love the simplicity, rustic and homely dishes and plates, spices and salt here and there… ah! I promise! He is not paying me to say that!

Ingredients:

• clementines, 6
• limons, 2
• caster sugar, 350 gr
• eggs, 4 beaten
• yolks, 2 beaten
• unsalted butter, 100 gr diced

[recipe as written into the magazine] Grate the fruit zest and squeeze the juice into a saucepan with the sugar, eggs and yolks, and mix to combine. Add the butter and place over a very low heat. Cook, constantly stirring – you don’t want your eggs to scrumble! – until the curd is thick and coats the back of the spoon. Pour into sterilised jars, seal and refrigerate. Use within two weeks.

It is delicious spread onto toasted slices of bread or a cheesecake, or even onto butter cookies… but remember that the best use od a curd is to lick your fingers after you have cleaned the jar!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Jamie Oliver’s Clementine Curd

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As regard me, it’s spring, I know, I know…. weather forecast has said tomorrow it will snow,the Twelfth Night as yet to come, our cupbord is still full of Christmas products, but, as regards me, it’s spring. I just want to let you know that this is the way I live my life! After the First day of the year, I start feeling that the days are getting longer, the air gains a new smell. Maybe it’s all in my mind, but a new adventure has just begun, made up of new calendars and brand new diaries, so, for me, it’s spring or, at least, spring is coming with giant leaps.

Obviously I can’t post asparagus, wild strawberries and fresh herbs recipes, but rember, in a small corner of my heart spring is blooming. So, let’s come back for a while to winter earth and let me show you this recipe of simple cookies, found on last issue of Jamie Magazine together with another recipe that I’ll explain you in next days.

You can giftwrap those cookies for your children, even if at the beginning they were thought for a D.I.Y. Cookie Jar (D.I.Y. that is Do It Yourself, for those who don’t know the meaning): a nice jar with all the ingredients ready to make those cookies… I don’t know how, but it has happened, and the oven was heated and an egg was already in my hands… in one hour I was nibbling at those scrumptious cookies so grateful in my heart for Jamie’s simple and fun recipes.

::::: ROLLED OATS AND RAISINS COOKIES :::::

Ingredients:

• plain flour, 115 gr
• baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon
• groung cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon
• salt, 1/4 teaspoon
• raisins, 150 gr
• rolled oats, 165 gr
• light brown sugar, 125 gr (I used Muscovado sugar, I love the intense and yummy flavour)
• vanilla pod, 1
• softened butter, 115 gr
• egg, 1

Beat softened butter with sugar and seeds scraped from the vanilla pod with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Mix in 1 egg. Combine the rest of the ingredients until smooth. Refrigerate the dough for half an hour, then make  small cookies with the help of a tablespoon and put them on a lined baking sheet, leaving room for them to spread. Flatten cookies with the tablespoon: they shoud not be regular and nice to see. They are so beautiful, so rough outside but sweet and intense inside.

Bake for 10 – 12 minutes, unitl golden at the edges but soft in the middle. Leave them to cool completely: when you remove them form the oven, they are still soft, but they will get firmer in a few minutes.

We really loved them, they are a surprise. Muscovado sugar has enriched the cookies with a strong and sweet aroma, but in the meantime raisins soften them with a fruity flavour. They are perfect for a yummy gift (either as cookies or D.I.Y. Jar) or to nibble at in front of the TV (one of my favourite activities during holidays!).

…and from tomorrow, back to routine and office…

This recipe takes part to the Monthly Challenge of Our Krazy Kitchen What did you bake today? OATMEAL!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Jamie Oliver’s oat and raisins cookies

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Some days ago I found by chance some sweet potatoes at supermarket, such an unusual thing in my small village! I baked a batch of sweet potato muffins, good but not extraordinary… a few foodblogger friends suggested me to bake them as normal potatoes and to eat them as a side dish. So, the day after I went searching for sweet potatoes again, and there they were! And, oh, look! They were just beside beetroots, the first time I had the chance to find them in the vegetable department just picked up, and not cooked and sliced in a vacuum-sealed pack.

Beetroots are really intriguing! Nice, rustic, they reminds me of earth and fields. And, let me say this, they reminds me of Jamie Oliver… he’s not rustic, not at all, but he uses them often in his recipes, as they are an usual ingredient for English cooking!

So, I had sweet potatoes and beetroot: what to do with them? A colorful and rustic side dish, made precious with a few drops of honey balsamic vinegar.

Ingredients:

• sweet potatoes, 6 medium size
• beetroot, 3 medium size
• red onion, 1
• wild fennel, 1 spring
• salt and pepper
• extra virgin olive oil

Rinse sweet potatoes under running water and cut them into chunks, without peeling them. As soon as you cut them, put them into a large bowl with cold water, to prevent them form gettinug brown and ugly to see.

Peel beetroot and cut them into chunks and put them in a different bowl with cold water to avoid them from reddening sweet potatoes and create a Quentin Tarantino movie! Peel red onion and slice it thinly.

Use a large baking tray and pour some extra virgin olive oil on it. Drain potatoes and beetroot and season them into the baking tray with onion, salt, pepper and a generous splash of extra virgin olive oil. Mix sweet potatoes and beetroot with your hands, then bake them into preheated oven to 180°C for about 1 hour, mixing and turning potato and beetroot chunks time by time with a wooden spoon to avoid them from burning!

Serve as a side dish and season with a few drops of balsamic vinegar, if you like: I used an honey balsamic vinegard, whose bitter sweet flavour was perfect to suit with the sweet taste of potatoes and beetroot.

Have a good weekend! On Sunday we will pick up olives with some friends and I’ll make a very typical bread soup and home made pasta for them, following the suggestions of the chef whose cooking lessons I’m attending now!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Baked sweet potato and beetroot

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I love him. I can’tl help it. My love was born by chance watching Gambero Rosso Channel, maybe it was during an old The naked chef episode… He is joyful, rowdy, fun, enthusiastic. He is always singing and dancing while cooking, he gets carried away for a well-made dish, tastes everything with pleasure and makes everything with passion. What about his recipes? I love them… there is always that typical touch, that tip which can help you through… to cut a long story short, that for Jamie Oliver is true love!

Some days ago I saw a an old episode where Jamie was making a superb chocolate cake which left my mom and me standing open-mouthed.  Simple, fast, for dummies. You slice the cake and melting chocolate drops come out to mesmerize you.

I was up to something else (maybe stuffed zucchini) and so I wrote down allthe ingredients on a magazine sheet, with the intention to copy all my notes on my notebook as soon as possible. I lost the magazine, obviously. But, since I am a lucky girl, in the twinkling of an eye Fabien has found the recipe on line, right in time for the Fettunta Party.

The original recipe of this fabulous Two nuts Chocolate cake provides almonds and walnuts… since Jamie himself  says it can be made with different kind of nuts, I used hazelnuts instead of walnuts, as I had a whole sack of hazelnuts! However, try almonds and pecans too, because Jamie says it is his favourite version.

So, let’s hit the recipe as found here, with my changes in blue.

Ingredients (serve 8):

• almonds, peeled 150 gr
• hazelnuts, peeled 150 gr
• dark chocolate, 300 gr
• cocoa powder, 1 heaped teaspoon
• butter, 255 gr
• caster sugar, 100 gr
• large eggs, separated, 6
• salt

Preheat oven to 190°C.

Line the bottom of a 25cm tin with a piece of greaseproof paper before buttering the bottom and sides, then dusting with flour.

Place the nuts into a food processor and whizz up until finely ground. Add the chocolate (200 gr only) and cocoa, and whizz for 30 seconds to break up the chocolate. Put to one side in a separate bowl.

Add the butter and sugar to the food processor and beat until pale and fluffy. At this point, add the egg yolks one at a time, then mix together with the chocolate and nuts.

In another bowl beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt, until they form stiff peaks. Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate, butter and nut mix.

Pour all the mixture into the tin. Roughly chop the remaining dark chocolate and sprinkle over the cake, pressing inside the bits with your fingers (ad Jamie did in the episode).

Bake in the preheated oven for around an hour. To test if the torte is cooked, insert a cocktail stick or the tip of a knife for five seconds. When removed, it should be reasonably clean.

Serve with whipped cream, ice-cream or creme fraiche.

Some notes

IN this period I’m enjoying myself on this web site, Big Huge Labs, so be patient with my experiment!

The book in the picture is a Jamie book, but it doesn’t contain this recipe. However, you can find inside another delicious recipe for the Fifteen chocolate cake.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Jamie Oliver’s Two-nuts Chocolate Cake

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