Christmas Cake 2010

OK not much time to write this, but for the record, here's the Christmas cake I made this weekend. It's currently wrapped in plastic and I'll ice it in a few weeks.

Christmas Cake

1.5 kg of mixed dried and glacé fruit

I used the following:

• 320 g sultanas
• 320 g raisins, chopped in half
• 300 g currants
• 130 g glacé orange slices, chopped finely
• 165 g glacé red cherries, quartered
• 125 g glacé apricots, chopped
• 140 g glacé pear, chopped

125 mL orange juice (about 2.5 oranges)
125 mL brandy
140 g walnut halves
250 g unsalted butter
230 g light brown sugar
160 g orange marmalade
5 eggs
250 g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg

Pick over the fruit and remove stalks from sultanas and currants, and seeds from the raisins. Combine all the fruit, add the orange juice and brandy, cover with cling film and let it soak overnight, stirring every now and then. [Note: other fruits could include glacé ginger (not popular in our house!), mixed peel (also not popular, but I have compromised by adding the glacé orange slices, which have some peel on them). Glacé figs were available in the shop I went to, but figs have a gritty texture so I avoided them for the cake.]

Next morning, preheat oven to about 160°C (150°C fan-forced) and bake the walnut pieces on a baking tray for 8–10 minutes until lightly browned. Let them cool, chop them up, and add them to the fruit. Put the softened butter, brown sugar and marmalade in the large bowl of an electric mixer and mix until it's light and creamy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each one. Transfer this butter/egg mix to the largest bowl you have.  Sift together the flour, bicarb and spices, and add 1 tbs of this flour mix to the fruit (this makes the fruit a bit sticky and gluggy and prevents it sinking in the cake). Then alternately add the flour mix and the fruit to the butter mix, beginning and ending with the flour (so that's 1/3 flour, half the fruit, 1/3 flour, remaining fruit, remaining flour). Combine it well but don't overdo the mixing.



Put the mix into a double-layer lined and greased 20 cm square tin. Drop the tin on to the bench a few times to dislodge big air pockets, smooth over the top with wet fingers and then wrap the sides of the tin with a few layers of newspaper tied with string. Sit the tin on more newspaper in the oven and bake for 3–3.5 hours. I'd recommend testing it after 2.5 hours, as I used a larger tin so it cooked a bit faster than I would have liked. When the tester comes out clean, take it out of the oven and splash some more brandy (around 1/2–2/3 of a cup) over the top. Cool the cake in the tin, then turn it out, remove the paper and put in an airtight container until it's ready to be iced.


I left the icing far too late—in fact I iced it the day before our work Christmas party—but luckily it turned out OK anyway.  I bought marzipan (without almond essence—yuk!) and Royal icing from the supermarket.  I trimmed the top of the cake to remove the raised edges, then turned it upside down on to a tray. I filled the holes formed by sunken sultanas with little bits of marzipan, then glazed the whole thing with warmed, strained apricot jam. I rolled out the marzipan on a bench dusted with icing sugar to a fairly thin layer (about 3 mm I'd say) and smoothed it over the cake. Then I left it uncovered on top of the kitchen cupboard (out of the way of cats) overnight.  The next morning I rolled out the Royal icing in the same way, this time making it about 7 mm thick (I'd do it thinner next year—it was a bit too sweet).  I washed the marzipan with whisked egg white, smoothed the Royal icing over the top and down the sides, and trimmed the edges with a sharp knife.  It was a last minute icing but I think I got away with it.  A few weeks later the remains of the cake were still really delicious—in fact I think it was getting moister and the layers of icing had really begun to stick together well.

Cheese on film!

This video is a couple of months old now, but I thought I would put a link to it here. I was asked by talented University of Otago Science Communication student Nicole Schafer if I would participate in a video she was making about cheese. Most specifically the video was about the charismatic "Evansdale cheese man" and his family, who sell delicious cheese at the Otago Farmer's Market. I demonstrated the cheese making process by making haloumi and ricotta in the lab, and I talked about some of the microorganisms involved in cheesemaking, including Brevibacterium linens (which forms the smelly yellow rind on wash-rind cheese), Penicillium (forming white and blue mould on some soft cheeses like brie and blue cheese), and Propionibacterium (gives holes to Swiss cheese). It was pretty good fun, but as is the nature of these things, about 4 hours filming me and my cheese making was tamed into a couple of minutes of cheese film goodness. I hope you enjoy it!


Cheese from Nicole Schafer on Vimeo.

Eating simply?

Something of a shock to realise that the last three posts were about fried food. OK healthy eating starts this week!  In the meantime (and to brighten up this otherwise brown set of photographs on the blog so far!), here is a culinary going-on in the garden today.

Quince (Cydonia oblonga)

The quince is so pretty isn't it? Give it a few months and it will be laden with big fat yellow pomes, and I'll have to try making some quince jelly. I made quince paste a couple of years ago, and that was great (but somewhat dangerous—it was like cooking lava!), and last year we stewed them up with the pears from the neighbouring pear tree. This year I think jelly is on order. I won't repeat the quince paste recipe here as it was a few years ago now and I can't really remember what I did. Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion would be a good place to start.

Whitebait fritters

After my earlier post about mock white bait, I thought I'd try making the real thing. Today our local supermarket had, for the first time as far as I've noticed, fresh whitebait. There was about 80 g in a polystyrene tray, for just under $8—so that's $100 a kilogram for these little delicacies. The 80 g converted into enough mixture to make 5 whitebait fritter (pattie) sandwiches, and I can buy one of those pre-made from the Otago Farmer's Market for $5, so I've converted $8 of whitebait into $25 worth of sandwiches—now that doesn't sound so bad does it?!

Whitebait fritters

80–100 g fresh whitebait
2 large eggs
125 mL milk
1 tbs plain flour (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

2 tbs butter or oil for frying

Buttered white bread
Wedges of lemon
Additional salt to serve

Heat the butter/oil in a heavy frying pan. Rinse and drain the whitebait in a sieve or colander. Whisk the eggs with the milk, flour and seasoning. If the batter is lumpy, strain it before you add the whitebait. Add the whitebait to the batter and mix gently. Fry spoonfuls of the mix until golden on one side, then flip and fry the other side—it only takes a short time. Serve on the buttered bread with a squeeze of lemon juice and a generous sprinkle of salt.

Saffron milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus) on toast

Saffron milk caps are wild mushrooms native to Europe that are commonly collected in Australia in pine plantations. They have been introduced into New Zealand too, but at the moment they are quite rare. The saffron milk cap is an ectomycorrhizal fungus, which means it grows on the roots of trees in a symbiotic association. The fungus gains sugar from the plant roots, and the plant in turn gains phosphate and other nutrients from the fungus, so everyone benefits! In the autumn, the fungus produces pretty pink–orange coloured mushrooms that bruise green, and bleed a saffron-coloured milk from the gills when damaged (hence the name). In Australia, you can purchase these mushrooms from markets in the Autumn. I am lucky that my partner's family have some trees on their farm that produce an annual crop of these fungi, and this year I cooked them up for dinner one evening when I was visiting.

NOTE: There are many different species of fungi that grow in pine plantations, and some of these may be deadly, so DO NOT EAT any fungi you've collected yourself unless you have had a competent expert identify every fruit body for you. There are many reports of people being poisoned by mushrooms because a "friend told them it would be OK", so don't become one of those casualties!

Saffron milk caps on toast

5 fresh saffron milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus), sliced, cleaned and picked over to remove pine needles etc
1 clove of garlic, crushed or thinly sliced
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp butter
1 tbs olive oil
2 slices crusty bread for toasting (I like a white bread as I don't want to overpower the flavour of the mushrooms)

Put the bread in the toaster or under a grill. Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan over a high heat and add the saffron milk caps. Fry until they are soft (try to get them to brown a little by ensuring the heat is nice and high, and try not to stew them). When they are almost done, add the butter and garlic and cook for another 30 seconds, then add the lemon juice and toss to mix. Pour the mushrooms and their juice on to the toast (no need to butter as the juice does the job!) and serve. This is nice with a glass of white wine.

An interesting fact about these mushrooms is that they turn your urine a pale pink colour! If you happen to notice this, don't panic—it's normal and won't last long! I've heard that some people find these mushrooms a little bit indigestible, but I've never had a problem, and many people (especially Eastern Europeans!) think these are the really tasty, so if you're unsure, try a small amount at first and see how you go.

Mock White Bait

This may seem like a strange dish to start with, but to those who know it, it is a classic. I first learnt about mock white bait through my grandmother in Sydney Australia, and my mum says she had to learn how to cook it when she met my dad as it was a staple food for him. It is delicious, and was always a surprise when mum would agree to making it, saying it was easy to make, and I secretly hoped she wouldn't realise how much we liked it for fear of her discovering some other "easy" dish to make instead. It is called "mock white bait" and it wasn't until much later in life did it ever dawn on me that "mock white bait" may have actually been mock whitebait. Growing up in Sydney, I knew whitebait as a fairly long fish that would be served individually fried in a basket. When I moved to New Zealand, I discovered a completely different thing called a whitebait pattie, and this has dozens of little whitebait fish mixed with egg and fried, then served on buttered white bread with salt and lemon juice. I realised then that this is what mock white bait is trying to imitate. They are really different dishes though, and my first "real" whitebait pattie in New Zealand was quite a disappointment as the flavour is much more delicate and mild that my favourite staple mock white bait. Before I give the recipe, I should say that there is a "Mock whitebait pattie" recipe in the NZ Edmonds cookbook—and I realise I might get into trouble over this claim (remember the pavlova and all that)—but the Edmonds recipe doesn't cut it—it contains cheese, too much flour, and is pretty bland. Try the recipe below and see if you don't agree! The perfect mock white bait is crispy on the outside and deliciously creamy inside. If the potato is still raw in the middle, turn the heat down and cook a little slower. You can use other oils, but peanut oil gives the best flavour.

So, here's the recipe

Mock White Bait

5 large potatoes, coarsely grated (peel if desired, but I like to leave the skin on)
3 large eggs
1 tbs plain flour (optional)
Salt and pepper

Peanut oil for frying

Shredded iceberg lettuce, sliced tomato and tomato sauce to serve

Grate the potatoes coarsely into a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs, flour (if using) and seasoning and mix well. Heat about 0.5 cm of oil in a heavy frying pan and fry tablespoons of the mixture until golden brown, then turn and fry the other side.  Drain and serve hot with the lettuce and tomato. Some food snobs may shudder, but it is pretty much mandatory to serve these with a good squirt of tomato sauce. I like to add other condiments like prepared mustard, sweet chili sauce etc, but you can experiment to find your favourite additions. I've tried basil pesto a few times, but the pesto/mock white bait combination a bit oily, so more piquant condiments work better.  Enjoy!