It's all yours Mick. I'll leave it to you to explain. Hopefully you will get a response from members who haven't posted before as well as our regular people.
WELCOME to the THORNE GRAMMAR SCHOOL Website, including Imported Blogs from the old Multiply Site, and the Complete Image Archive (see "View Gallery" below the thumbnails on this page).
My Mum learned her cooking during the thirties, the war, and the late 40's. What with the economy, her Dad was down Markham Main, war shortages, and then rationing there were limits to what she could do. Not that we were ever hungry, far from it, and Sunday dinners and Christmas dinners were always special. Mum was especially good with fruit cake. Not so popular these days but then again we are not talking about Mums. When I settled in Canada back in the sixties she started making a cake for me in June or July and through the mail it came, a fortune in stamps. Sometimes I could collect it personally if I was visiting during the summer and stick it in my suitcase for the trip through customs. Never stopped once.
ReplyDeleteWell Mum has gone now but the cake lives on. I got her to dictate the recipe to me sitting in the kitchen one day. Somehow I managed to miss out the amount of sugar and by the time I was ready to attempt it it was too late to find out how much. A couple of years later I guessed and made up the batter. Tasting the raw batter scraped from around the bowl took me straight back 60 years or more and I knew that I had got it right, even before it went in the oven.
It's a bit late to make the cake for this Christmas(the maturing and doctoring process don't you know?)but I will type it out with all the little tips I've picked up making it over several years. I enjoy cooking although I'm not much of a baker and so if you would like to conribute any of your family favourites then we could get a good exchange going. My friend and ex TGSer Graham Harker makes a Yorkshire Pudding to die for and I'm sure many of you have something special up your sleeves. Alan, what about Welsh rarebit or is it rabbit? Lets read your faves and put Jaimie Oliver to shame.
G'day from Tanunda,
ReplyDeleteI was taught how to make Yorkshire Pudding when I was around 8 or 9 years old. That was MY duty on a Sunday in the early 1960's as well as preparing the spuds and other veggies.
I still am a dab hand at cooking and can rustle up quite a variety of dishes. Just keep the red wine up to me and I'll cook you a good nosh on the BBQ!
Tootle Pip
Ron
Making the Yorkshire pud was my job too in my mid childhood. Hardly ever eat it now. Still like the old favourites like apple crumble, but I also enjoy experimenting with international recipes. Lamb Tagine with apricots is popular at present - recipes on the Internet. Best wishes Rowena
ReplyDeleteMicks' Mums' Christmas Cake. Ingredients.
ReplyDelete1. 1/2 lb. raisins
2. 1/2 lb. sultanas
3. 3/4 lb. currants
4. 1/4 lb. glazed cherries, red or green or both.
5. 1/4 lb. mixed peel
6. 2 ozs. blanched almonds, chopped or sliced.
7. 1/2 lb. butter
8. 1/2 lb. plain flour
9. 1 teaspoon ground allspice
10. 4 large eggs
11. 4 ozs. sugar
12. 1 large tablespoon Tate and Lyles Golden Syrup.
13. 1 bottle rum or brandy. Some for the cake and some for you.
Optional. If you like more spices in the flavour add 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cloves and/or nutmeg and/or cinnamon and a teaspoon of freshly grated orange peel.
Method and tips to follow.....
Micks' Mums' Christmas Cake. Method and tips.
ReplyDeleteDay 1. Mix first six ingredients in a large bowl with about 8 ounces of brandy. I use Duff Gordon. Use rum if you prefer or some of both. One year I want to try Madeira or even that Christmasy smelling stout-I think its' a Sam Smith; Imperial Stout or Christmas Cheer or somesuch. Mix well together with fruit and let sit 24 hours giving a couple of stirs now and again. Most or all of the alcohol will be absorbed by 24 hours. Don't forget to lick spoon after each stir to assess progress of marination.
Day 2.Put butter out to warm up when you get up. It creams much easier if it is room temperature. Put eggs out as well
Cream butter and sugar til smooth. I use a Kitchen Aid. Mum used a wooden spoon. I have tried the wooden spoon method and your arm falls off.
Add an egg and about quarter of the flour. Keep mixing eggs and flour til all flour incorporated and toss in the allspice and syrup to finish the batter. It should be like thick cream.
Pour and scrape the marinated fruit into the batter. Include any liquid that may remain in bottom of fruit bowl. Using a wooden spoon mix the fruit and batter thoroughly.
Bake and Doctor to follow...
Micks' Mums' Christmas Cake. Bake and Doctor.
ReplyDeleteMum used this amount of cake mixture to make one large round cake but I prefer to use two regular size loafpans and end up with two smaller cakes that bake more quickly and slice easily so.....
Day 2 continued. Turn the oven on to a temperature of 275 degrees..
Use a small pat of butter to grease the insides of two loaf pans. Line the loaf pans with parchment paper and use more butter on the inside of the parchment paper. All this paper and butter pretty much guarantees that your cake is not going to stick in the pan. If you are using non stick pans then you know what to do.I don't have any hence all the paper and butter. Pour or more likely spoon and scrape the cake mixture evenly between the two loaf pans. They will be half to three quarters full. The cake rises minimally so it is unlikely to expand out of the pan.Help the cake mixture to fill in the pan by pressing lightly on the mixture and making the top more or less level. Scrape and eat any remnants of the cake adhering to the sides of the bowl. Children also enjoy these scrapings.
Put your pans in the middle of the oven. They will be done in 2 hours. My oven takes 1 hour 50 minutes so there is some variation between ovens. Check the cake after an hour in the oven and if it is browning too much put a rectangle of aluminium foil over the 'crust'. Having come this far you don't want to burn it, or any of the bits of fruit sticking up out of the mix.When it's done the top will still depress if pressed but will come back. Soggy finger holes in the top mean it needs longer. A surface as brittle and dry as a pit tip means you've ruined it by overcooking. If you must err do it on the undercooked side as it is supposed to be a moist cake. Mum used a needle to stick in the cake. If it came out with bits stuck to it then it wasn't ready. A clean needle meant it was done.
Once the cakes are cooked lift them from the oven onto the counter to cool. Leave overnight.
Day 3. Patience gentle reader. We are near done.
The cake is cool and in the pan. Give the pan a good rap on the counter. Keeping one hand under the cake turn the pan upside down and catch the cake as it slips easily from the pan. Remove any paper.
Put the cake, upside down, on the counter. The bottom will be soft and ready to absorb the brandy(or rum or scotch or..or.. your choice)that you doctor it with. An ounce or so per cake every so often. Weekly or monthly depending on when you bake the cake. Mum would wrap the cake in muslin and keep it in a cake tin with a tight fitting lid. I keep mine in plastic boxes and use cling film to wrap them after each doctoring. Muslin is probably best as you can sprinkle it with a drop of the brandy as well.
Ice the cakes. A few days before cutting the cake buy some Marzipan. I buy a brand called Odense from Denmark.Mum used to make her own. Heat a tablespoon of apricot jam and brush the top and sides of the cake with it. Roll out your marzipan and drape over the cake. The jam helps it stick to the cake. For the hard white icing mix icing sugar with water til you have a smooth thick paste. Add the water to the icing sugar drop by drop as it mixes readily to become too liquid and then you have to start adding icing sugar. Pour the thick icing over the cake and spread with a blade .Be prepared you will not get this perfect and will likely have to make several batches.. When it's done put your iced cakes on a rack or a plate for the icing to harden. Some will drop off.
There is a point where the icing is soft enough to use the tynes of a fork to flip it up into hundreds of little peaks that hold and harden. Mine have always sunk like the Titanic-slowly and inevitably so I usually end up using the fork to make some swirly lines.
That's it. Cut thickly for family and friends. Have a store bought handy for all others. Hope you get as much satisfaction from this as I have this past seventy years....Mick..
Can I come for coffee and cake to your house please MIck??
ReplyDeleteMerry Merry Christmas!!
ReplyDeleteIt's a long trip but welcome. Greetings to you too June.
ReplyDeleteYour Christmas cake recipe reads very much like my Mum's, Mick. One thing she never used was wooden spoon. She used a table fork for the creaming, and a tablespoon to mix. She did all her cooking in the oven on the range. She was a brilliant cook, that's what she had been until she married in 1929, so she was used to cooking on the range. She knew how to put the coal for a slow oven, and again for a very hot oven. I did help her, but my cooking never matched hers, although my stews are the same, because I do them the same.........
ReplyDeleteHer Christmas cakes were lovely, and when they were iced, she roughed some of it up with a fork, and we were allowed to place some small pot figures who were sledging or sliding, and they were washed and packed away after Christmas until next year. They were dressed like little Eskimos, and we thought they were brilliant. She also had silver cachous (sp) for the cake.
O.K. Eileen. It's stew season starting so pass on your Mums' recipe. I love a beef or lamb stew but don't think I have the right technique. Do you add the vegs later when the meat is part done or at the start? I am not so interested in fat free, fat reduced, no butter, no salt, no taste recipes. Give me the ones that include beef suet, bacon, cow heel or full fat cream, or any of that good stuff that came before arteries had to be coddled..
ReplyDeleteEileen I believe you are correct about the fork being used for creaming and a spoon for the mixing.
ReplyDeleteI didn't take note of the delicious stews cooked by my mum and my sisters I've never baked a Christmas cake or duffed a plum pudding I've nothing to pass on to my daughters I'm not fit to be a mother but this is my recipe for an on the spot Hotchpotch to make when you come in from the cold.
ReplyDeleteIngredients
Homegrown or carried home root vegetables dried herbs from a well stocked kitchen cupboard ready roasted chicken from Morrisons tap water
Preparation
Peel scrape chop multi-coloured root vegetables leave onions whole
Tip into saucepan cover with tap water .
Spinkle with mixed herbs black pepper garlic granules stock cube
Put lid on pan
Place on gas hob
Bring to boil for just a few minutes while you dispose of peelings wipe down worktop
Turn off gas
Leave pan on hob
*Go and get shower put pajies on - app.10 mins
Return to kitchen lift pan lid
Drop in bits & pieces of cooked roast meat top with broccolli florets
Replace lid
Bring back to boil simmer for just a minute or two while you set the kitchen table
Return to pan turn off gas lift lid sprinkle a little Bisto relight gas under pan
Gently stir til it comes to boil
Turn off gas
Mmmm smells good tastes good
Replace lid
Ready to eat when you are
* At this stage activity optional take as much time as you want, .
.
Shirl that's the second time in a week that I have seen a recipe calling for a pre-roasted chicken as an ingredient. The other one was for butter chicken. How does it feel to be in the van of what is obviously the latest trend. With our continuing cool weather I will be trying your Hotchpotch shortly.We pay about $6.99 for a roast chicken about a kilo by weight-roughly 2 pounds per lb. Fresh chicken is about half that, depending on where you shop.
ReplyDeleteWhat's 180 celsius in fahrenheit? There must be a formula. My oven dial is fahrenheit .My recipe for Facen Goch says 45 minutes at 180 celsius and the inside ended with the same consistency as a Mars bar. This is supposedly a historic Welsh cake recipe. Perhaps it needs a historic Welsh oven to bake it right.
ReplyDelete0 degrees celsius is 32 fahrenheit and 28 c is 82 F. These I remember but they are not much help in baking. I am reminded of one of the first times I tried making a cake at a friends house.They had a new fancy oven and we were going to christen it. I was up half the night trying to bake the cake on the pilot light.
Does this help Mick?
ReplyDeleteI Googled it a couple of years ago.
http://www.greenigsociety.org/tempchart.htm
Does this help Mick?
ReplyDeletehttp://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060606060313AAYb9GP
Thank you. It led me to the right spot.
ReplyDelete