❄️ Gluten-Free Christmas Cake ❄️

This is my take on the traditional Christmas cake, with a few subtle differences (fondant icing use being one of them). This is simply for ease and I prefer the taste. You could easily substitute the fondant icing for royal icing.

This recipe is gluten-free and absolutely packed with dried fruit and nuts. I've suggested a few methods of decoration, as shown by the accompanying photos. This recipe provides the amounts to make the large, round cake shown in the photos. The smaller cake was made by halving the quantities and placing in a 1lb loaf tin.

This recipe can be made in two days, with one day of fruit soaking and making the cake on the second day, if necessary - so it is perfect for last minute baking with everything else going on at Christmas time! However, I'd suggest leaving time for a week of fruit soaking, so that they are nice and plump with brandy and fruit juice to keep the cake moist.

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❄️ Gluten-Free Christmas Cake ❄️ 

You will need:

For the fruit:

• 500g Dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, chopped apricot etc.)
• 100g  Candied peel
• 100g Glacé cherries
• 5tbsp Brandy
• Juice and zest of 1 orange
• Juice and zest of 1 lemon

For the cake:

• 125g Butter
• 50g Muscovado sugar
• 75g Soft brown sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 2tsp Mixed spice
• 1/2 tsp Ground ginger
• Juice and zest of 1 orange
• Juice and zest of 1 lemon
• 160g Gluten-free plain flour
• 1 Green apple (e.g. Granny Smith), grated
• 100g Flaked almonds

For the icing:

• 6 tbsps Apricot jam
• 200g Golden Marzipan
• 300g White fondant icing

For the decoration:

• Icing sugar
• Silver dragées in at least 2 different sizes (I used Asda's own "silver balls" and Dr. Oetker's "chocolate silver pearls") 
• Silver edible paint and paintbrush (optional)

Equipment:

• Piping bag and small round nozzle
• Silver cake board
• Snowflake icing embosser (optional)
• Icicle pattern icing embosser (optional) (Mine was free from a magazine called "Cake Decorating") 
• Ribbon (optional)

Method:

For the fruit:

1. Between 1 day and 1 week before making the cake, soak the dried fruit, candied peel and glacé cherries in the brandy and zest and juice of the lemon and orange in a shallow dish.
2. Stir every now and again to ensure that all fruits are fully exposed to the fruity, alcohol syrup which should be developing.

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to Gas 2/150°C.
2. Cream together butter and both types of sugar until fluffy.
   
3. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time.
   
4. Then add mixed spice, ground ginger,  orange and lemon rind & juice.
5. Fold in the flour.
   
6. Stir in the mixed dried fruits, glace cherries, mixed peel which have been soaking, as well as the syrup they have been soaking in.
7. Fold in the almonds and grated apple.
8. Place the mixture into a deep, greased, 20cm cake tin and smooth over the top.
   
9. Bake for  about 2 hours, or until golden and a knife comes out clean.
10. Allow to cool completely in the tin.

For the icing

1. Warm the apricot jam in the microwave for about 20s and then pass through a sieve.
2. Spread a very small amount onto the cake board, and press the cake onto this.
3. Spread half of the remaining jam  over the cake.
4. Roll out the marzipan and lift it onto the cake, pressing it to the sides and trimming any excess.
5. Spread the marzipan with the remaining apricot jam
6. Roll out 250g of the white fondant icing and lift this onto the cake, again pressing the sides and trimming the excess.
7. Leave the icing to set for a few hours.

For the decoration:

1. Combine icing sugar with a small amount of water until a thick, smooth consistency is achieved.
2. Place the icing into a piping bag and squeeze a thin line around the base of the cake, slowly pressing a mixture of different sized silver dragées into the icing.
3. Silver dragées can also be used to decorate the sides of the cake if pressed into small dots of icing. 

Optional extras:

1. You could fix a ribbon around the sides of the cake , attaching the ends with a little of the piped icing
2. You could press an icicle pattern embosser into the sides of the cake to decorate.
3. You could also cut out snowflake patterns with the remaining fondant icing using mould and paint these with edible silver paint.

Hope you enjoy this recipe. 

TOP TIP: Christmas cake is best enjoyed in a daft Christmas jumper and Father Christmas hat! 

 Merry Christmas!

Love, Chloe xx

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake

This is a cake idea that I came up with for a friend’s 21^st Birthday. I wanted to come up with something that looked quite sophisticated, tasted great and was easy to make (no mean feat!)

Eventually, I came up with a chocolate and salted caramel cake, decorated with fresh strawberries and marbled chocolate shards.

The richness of the chocolate is complemented perfectly by the salt of the caramel and sweetness of the strawberries. The thin chocolate shards also provide a different texture to the cake.

With simplicity in mind, I have taken a few shortcuts with this recipe, such as using ready-made chocolate fudge icing and not making my own caramel. If you wanted to (and had time), you could do these yourself, but I think it tastes just a good with a little bit of cheating! 

 

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Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake

You will need:

For the cake:

• 175g margarine
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 150g self-raising flour, sifted
• 50g of cocoa, sifted
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• Salted caramel (I used Asda Extra Special Salted Caramel Sauce)
• Betty Crocker chocolate fudge icing

For the decoration:

• 500g strawberries
• 150g milk chocolate
• 150g white chocolate

 Instructions:

For the chocolate shards:

1. Cover a baking tray in cling film.
2. Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water (bain marie method).
   
3. Pour the white chocolate across the baking tray.
4. Next, melt the milk chocolate in the same way.
5. Pour the milk chocolate directly over the white chocolate.
6. Taking a teaspoon, make swirling patterns through the two layers of chocolate to get a “marbled” effect.
7. Leave the chocolate to set completely in the fridge, before breaking into large shards.

For the cake:

1. Heat the oven to 180°C. Grease 2x18cm round tins with a little margarine.
2. Put all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or a hand-held mixer for 1 minute, or until just combined.
3. Spoon the mixture into the tins and bake for 45-50 minutes. A skewer to the centre of the cakes should be pulled out clean.
4. Leave the cakes until completely cool before decorating.

For the filling and decoration:

1. Spread one of the 2 cakes with the chocolate fudge icing, then cover this with a layer of the salted caramel sauce.
2. Spread the rest of the chocolate fudge icing around the sides and across the top of the cake 
3. Taking the chocolate pieces made earlier, press onto the icing around the sides of the cake, slightly overlapping the pieces as you go – (It looks best if they are at different heights to make a more messy outline). Keep a few of the smaller shards or excess pieces to decorate the top afterwards.
4. Next, take the strawberries and remove the leaves. Slice each through the middle.
5. Place the strawberries all over the surface of the cake stalk side down at varying angles.
6. Taking the remaining chocolate, break these into small shards, which can then be stuck into the icing in and around the strawberries.
7. Finally, drizzle a small amount of the remaining salted caramel over the strawberries as a finishing touch!

The cake is now complete. It’s best to eat it as soon as possible (as if you could resist to eat it later), as the strawberry juice can tend to make the cake a little soggy after a while. 

If preparing in advance, leave the strawberries off until the last minute, and keep back a little of the chocolate fudge icing to stick each one individually before serving.

If you wanted to simplify the recipe even further, you could use Betty Crocker’s Devil’s Food Cake mix instead of making your own chocolate sponge.

Hope you enjoy!

Love, Chloe xx 

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~ 

Very Pink Piñata Cake

This cake was inspired by as ASDA recipe, which can be found here.

The basic recipe can be adapted in numerous ways: sponge colour, icing colour, using chocolate and variations on the filling, so I think this is a recipe I’ll be using again and again, adapting each time!

This was a birthday cake for a friend who loves all things pretty and pink, so I adapted the original recipe with differing shades of pink icing, and a multitude of pink sweets!

~

Very Pink Piñata Cake 

You will need:

For the cake

• 460g butter, softened
• 460g caster sugar
• 8 large eggs
• 460g self-raising flour
• 4 x 20cm cake tins (or cook in batches if you only have 2 tins)
• Strawberry jam

For the icing:

• Pink Food Colouring
• Red Food Colouring
• 450g butter, softened
• 900g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Freeze dried raspberry pieces

For the filling:

• 350g small pink sweets

(I used smarties, dolly mixtures, mini marshmallows, pink sprinkles, pink and white edible pearls, pink and purple sugar hearts, pink sugar crystals, freeze dried raspberry pieces, strawberry lances chopped into 0.5cm lengths)

Instructions:

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease and line 4 x 20cm sandwich tins.
2. Beat together 115g butter and 115g caster sugar until light and creamy.
3. Sift 115g of the flour. Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time, then add a spoonful of the flour.
4. Beat again, then fold in the rest of the 115g flour.
5. Put the mixture in one of the cake tins and level the top. Now repeat the process to make 3 more layers of cake.
6. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed.
7. Remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing:

• Using a spoon, mix the remaining 450g butter with the icing sugar, vanilla and 4 tbsp cold water until the sugar is just blended in, then beat with an electric mixer until light and creamy.

Assembling the cake:

1. Cut out 10cm rounds from the centres of 2 of the sponge layers, leaving the other 2 layers whole.
2. Take one of the whole layers, this will be the bottom and stick it to a plate or cake board using a little buttercream.
3. Spread some of the butter icing in a ring on top of this layer, leaving a 10cm circle bare in the centre.
4. Spread a layer of jam onto the buttercream in a ring.
5. Put one of the sponge ring layers on top of the iced bottom layer.
6. Spread icing and jam onto this ring and place the second of the ring layers on top.
7. Fill the hole with the sweets.
8. Spread icing and jam on top of this ring, then cover with the final whole layer.

Icing the cake:

1. Put 2 heaped tbsp icing in a bowl and thin down with 2tsp water. Spread thinly over the sides of the cake.
2. Divide the rest of the icing into five equal portions.
3. Put two portions together in a bowl and colour one shade of pink. Set this aside and only use for the top layer and the surface of the cake.
4. Colour the other portions in differing shades of pink with the red and pink food colouring.
5. Get four plastic piping bags and cut off the ends. Fill each bag with a different colour icing.
6. Pipe the first shade around the base of the cake, then use a palette knife to spread it around the sides of the first layer.
7. Pipe and spread the second shade of icing around the edge of the next layer, and the third shade around the third layer.
8. Pipe and spread the set aside icing around the sides of the top layer, then spread the rest over the top of the cake.
9. To finish, combine any excess icing together and colour in a darker shade of pink.
10. Pipe decorations with a star nozzle around the top and base of the cake.
11. Finally, sprinkle with a few freeze dried raspberry pieces.

Enjoy!

Love, Chloe xx

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

I created these cupcakes for a Macmillan coffee morning, as I wanted to put a simple twist on chocolate cupcakes to make them a bit more exciting. The chocolate cupcake and icing recipe I usually use is one of Mary Berry’s, but I have added to and altered it in this case.

These cakes are inspired by a favourite flavour combination of mine, encouraged by the annual receipt of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange in my Christmas stocking!

I encourage you to have a go making these very simple, but delicious chocolate orange treats!

~

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Makes about 24 cupcakes

You will need:

For the cakes

• 4tbsp Boiling water
• 40g Cocoa powder
• 175g Margarine
• 175g Caster sugar
• 3 Eggs  
• 115g Self-raising flour

For the icing

• 1 ½ tsp orange oil
• 60g Unsalted butter*
• 30g Cocoa powder*
• 3tbsp Milk*
• 250g Icing sugar*

OR  - for a shortcut, you can replace all starred ingredients with a ready-made chocolate frosting – such as Betty Crocker Chocolate Buttercream Style Icing

For decoration

• Orange paper cases
• Orange jelly slices - (I used Dr. Oetker Orange and Lemon Slices)

 

For decoration:

Cupcakes:

1. Line two cupcake trays with paper cases and preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F, gas mark 6).
2. Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl and mix into a thick paste with the boiling water.
3. Add the butter and sugar and combine until smooth and creamy.
4. Beat in the eggs a little at a time.
5. Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, until the mixture is of a dropping consistency.
6. Divide the mixture between the cases and place in the centre of the oven for 10-15 mins until risen and springy to touch.
7. Leave until completely cool.

Icing:

1. Melt the butter and pour it into a bowl.
2. Sift in the cocoa powder.
3. Then stir in the icing sugar a little at a time until the mixture is glossy and thick enough to spread – adding the milk gradually if too thick.
4. Add the orange oil and stir until fully combined.
5. Fill a piping bag with the mix and pipe a large swirl onto the top of each cupcake.
6. Garnish with a jelly orange slice.

OR – if using ready-made icing, start with step 4, adding the orange oil to it.

The coffee morning was a great success, hosted by friends of mine. If you’d like to host your own coffee morning, please visit the Macmillian Coffee Morning Website

It's for a great cause!

Love, Chloe xx

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Lemon Curd and Fresh Raspberry Filled Macarons

Macarons are a meringue based treat, with a filling in the centre such as jam, ganache or buttercream. They have a smooth top and a ruffled "foot" which gives their characteristic appearance. Recently, they've become a very popular confection, so I thought I'd give them a go!

I have only just started making macarons as I was put off by their reputation as being very difficult. Since macarons are a challenge, this recipe is only a very small adjustment to a basic recipe to create a delicious, zesty treat! I am going to experiment a little more with flavours in future posts, but I thought I'd start off pretty simple and create these fruity ones! 

~
Lemon Curd and Fresh Raspberry Filled Macarons 

Makes 40 shells (20 filled Macarons)

You will need:

Equipment

• Piping bag with 1cm nozzle
• 2 baking sheets
• Non-stick baking parchment  
• Electric whisk

For the macarons

• 200g icing sugar
• 100g ground almonds
• 3 egg whites
• A pinch of salt
• 40g caster sugar
• 1 unwaxed lemon 
• Yellow food colouring paste/gel - (N.B. NOT liquid, as it makes the mixture too runny)

For the filling

• 3 egg yolks
• 75g caster sugar 
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter 
• Grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon 
• Juice of 1 lemon 
• Small punnet of raspberries

Instructions:

For the macaron shells:

1. Tip the icing sugar and almonds into a food processor and blend for 30s until combined completely. Put this mixture aside. 
2. Tip the egg whites into a spotlessly clean and dry mixing bowl. Add the salt.
3. Using an electric whisk, beat until the egg whites just about hold a stiff peak. 
4. Add the caster sugar a teaspoonful at a time, while continuing to whisk at a medium speed. 
5. Mix well to ensure that the sugar is thoroughly incorporated. The mix should look glossy, thick and white. 
6. Wash and dry the unwaxed lemon and finely grate the zest. 
7. Add this to the egg and sugar mixture along with a very small amount of food colouring. (A good tip is just to dip a cocktail stick into the gel and then into the mixture as you only need the smallest amount, and the macarons look best in pastel shades). Mix thoroughly to ensure an even blend. 
8. Using a large metal spoon, fold the ground sugar and almond mixture, which was set aside earlier, into the egg whites until completely mixed and smooth.
9. The mixture should now be in a smooth, molten mass. 
10. Use the mixture to fill the piping bag. Then, pipe evenly sized rounds about 5cm across onto the baking sheets lined with baking parchment. (Alternatively, you can use a silicon macaron tray as it is often much easier to remove them and ensures evenly and identically sized macarons). 
    
11. Tap the bottom of the baking sheets  sharply on the work surface in order to remove any excess air bubbles. 
12. Leave the macaroons for between 20-40mins until they have set and formed a dry shell. Leave them for longer if they are at all sticky or wet when touched with a dry fingertip.
13. Preheat the oven to 170oC/Gas 3. 
14. Bake the macaroons in the middle of the oven for about 10 minutes. They are done when the tops are lightly coloured and crisp. They should easily remove from the baking tray and be dry to touch at the bottom).
15. Leave the shells to cool on a rack until completely cool. 
    

For the Lemon Curd:

1. Place all of the ingredients into a heatproof bowl set above a pan of water which is gently simmering.
2. Stir until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. 
3. Continue to stir the mixture continuously for about 15 mins, until the curd has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.
4. Finally, strain the curd through a sieve into a bowl.
5. Leave to cool, then refrigerate until needed.

Final stage:

1. Take your cooled macaron shells, fill with a generous layer of lemon curd. 
2. Add one or two raspberries to the centre and then sandwich the shells together. 
3. Now they are ready to enjoy! 

Enjoy with afternoon tea or as a yummy picnic dessert. These macarons should keep for a few days, but may start to go soggy beyond that, due to the raspberry juice in the filling. 

Although there is an official Macaron Day (20th March), I recommend eating these all year round! 

Love, Chloe xx

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