Home made chistmas cake

Happy Christmas..

Today's post is a recipe for my homemade Christmas cake as I've never made a one before and thought I'd give it a go.

 

 

Oven: 150 degrees Celsius or gas mark 2

Time takes to cook: 4 1/2 hours

 

Ingredients:

 

What you'll need (cake mix):

12 ounces self-raising flour

1 tsp. mixed spice (optional)

4 ounces ground almonds

8 ounces butter/margarine

8 ounces caster sugar

4 eggs beaten with 8 tbsps. milk (or 1/2 milk and brandy)/

4 ounces halved glace cherries

24 ounces mixed fruit

 

 

 

What you'll need (top of the cake):

selection of nuts: almonds, walnuts, pecans

glace cherries

 

 

 

First, you'll need to sieve together the self-raising flour, spice (if you're using it) and ground almonds in one bowl. Then cream together the butter/margarine and sugar, stirring the flour and eggs with milk a little at a time in a separate bowl.

butter/margarine and sugar

 

ground almonds and self-raising flour

 

Once the butter and sugar are creamed together, it should look like this. Very light and a fluffy texture.

 

creamed butter/margarine and sugar

 

adding a little flour at a time then stirring together.

Lastly, add you mixed fruit a little at a time to the mixture as well as the glace cherries. You must make sure you mx all of the ingredients thoroughly!

 

 

Then, line and grease an 8inch square or 9inch round cake tin, (I used a round one) with grease proof paper (brown paper). Once you've lined your cake tin, pour in your mixture..

 

scoop in the mixture.

smooth out the mixture with the back of  a large spoon so that it's even.

Now, this part is optional but I then went ahead and arranged a selection of nuts on the top of mixture before it went in the oven. Creating a circle pattern starting from almonds to walnuts pecans and brazil nuts with a small circle of glace cherries in the centre.

 

 

All you have to do now is bake your Christmas cake in a slow oven on gas mark 2 or 150 degrees Celsius for 4 1/2 hours making sure not to let it burn and don't undercook by not giving it the full 4 1/2 hours. Don't open your oven door otherwise it'll deflate!

 

 

Thankyou for reading, have an amazing Christmas, everyone. I'd love to know in the comments if you've tried my recipe out!

Festive cupcakes

Hello everyone..

Since it's getting more and more closer to Christmas, I thought I'd share a very simple and quick 'festive cupcakes' recipe with you all. I love making these cupcakes as they're so quick to make and are lovely for if you want a little sweet treat.

 



Ingredients:

 

What you'll need (cake mix):

4 1/2 ounces self-raising flour

4 1/2 ounces sugar

4 1/2 ounces butter/margarine

2 large eggs

1 tsp. baking powder 

 

 

To make your cupcake mixture is very simple..

 

First, you'll need to cream your butter/margarine (whatever you have) and your sugar in a food mixer or food processer until the consistency is light an fluffy.

Once it's reached this consistency, add in your baking powder and self-raising flour gradually. Mix all of these together until there's no flour lumps visible. Now crack in your two large eggs and mix again until of the mixture is combined together.

 

Scoop the cupcake mixture evenly into your lined bun tray. You can use festive cases like I did to give the recipe a more Christmas vibe. Now just bake in the oven for 25 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius or gas mark 5.

 

 

Ingredients:

 

What you'll need (for decorating):

250g icing sugar

1/2 jug of cold water

festive sprinkles/decorations

 

For decorating my cupcakes I opted to mix up some royal icing as I like it much better than buttered icing. For this, you'll need to weigh out 250g icing sugar and add it to a big enough bowl so that you can mix it around without it leaving the bowl. Then, get your cold water and add a tbsp. of water to your icing at a time and mix the two together with a small spoon until you get the thickness you desire but remember that if the icing is too runny, it won't look nice and it'll run off your cupcakes.

 

Once you're happy with the thickness, use the same small spoon to put a little blob on the centre of a cupcake and spread the icing out with the back of the spoon. Decorate each cupcake at a time, while it's wet so that the sprinkles will stick to the icing.

 

My sprinkles are from B&M for anyone wondering :)

 

Have fun baking your festive cupcakes. Let me know in the comments if you try them!

 

 

Oh christmas tree...

Good morning!

I thought I would just share a little post with you all about my little Christmas tree. So because I was beginning to get a little too excited about Christmas, I decided to get out my little Christmas tree, my decorations and make my room all festive...

 

 

All my tree decorations are from Tesco but I bought them a couple years ago so they aren't available anymore. My little husky decoration is from M&S. It's so cute, I love it. It looks just like my little Skye.

 

 

Thankyou for reading,

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet? Let me know in the comments and also if it has a coloured theme!