Merry Christmas

Tomorrow is going to be all about the full-on preparation for the big feast that is planned for Christmas Day. Today, however, has a slightly slower and altogether gentler pace. It involves baking a batch of amaretti biscuits for the Christmas trifle; dipping a few things in chocolate and turning the rest of the melted chocolate into curls to adorn the aforementioned trifle; and - the nicest bit - icing the Christmas cake.

I think this is probably only the second Christmas cake I've ever made. I feel that I need a houseful of people to justify making one, not least because the alternative means I end up eating 90% of the cake myself. This is something not recommended for the waistline nor for the taste buds - guaranteed to make you very happy not to see another slice for a whole year.

However, I'm hoping that my Christmas guests will find space to squeeze in a slice an appropriate amount of time after lunch on the big day, with other visitors and house guests arriving before the year is out helping to consume what remains.

I made the cake back in November and have been feeding it with rum in the weeks since. The cake isn't a traditional recipe but a fruit cake with lots of grated cooking apples in it.  This means that it's very moist, further assisted with the rum. In fact, I seem to recall that I rather overloaded it with brandy the last time I made it. The evidence being that a thick, sticky liquid managed to ooze out between the icing and the cake board. It was tasty but rather unsightly, to say the least!

I'm hoping I've not over-done it with the rum but have made two other changes this year in an attempt to prevent a re occurrence of the 'great ooze'. The first is to put it on a plate, which means there is a slight lip to stop any liquid that may drip out from spilling everywhere. It may even help it to run back under the cake to be reabsorbed - I can but hope! The second is that I have decided not to ice the sides.

When I was little, the best thing about Christmas cake was always the marzipan and icing but now I find it a bit too sweet and sickly. I've therefore just put the marzipan and icing on the top. I'm nervous this may make the cake dry out but am hoping the apple and rum will mean this won't happen, further helped by the cat-proof tin that I'm obliged to keep it in. You may think that a cat wouldn't like Christmas cake but that would be because you haven't met my cat. With her, pretty much anything goes, apart from vegetables and then she will probably have a bit of a lick if they've been cooked in something she does like - butter, oil, stock, milk, cream, the oven...

As for the decoration, I've gone for a Christmas tree made of sweets with chocolate coins to decorate the sides. I'm very happy with the results and enjoyed listening to a radio play as I calmly put it all together. I'm imagining this is the calm before the storm and am relishing every moment.

Let's just hope I can channel some of this tranquillity whilst making the turkey stuffing tomorrow and when trying to get it all cooked and on the table at the same time on the Big Day.

I wish you a very calm and relaxing Christmas, whatever you are doing, and if that's just not feasible (or desirable), let it be merry, joyous and bright!

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas...

At Christmas markets I often linger over the decorations made with dried citrus, cinnamon sticks and pine cones but tend to move on when I spot the prices. It was with some delight, therefore, that I spotted a 'recipe' for making my own dried orange slices in a magazine I was given last Christmas.

Eleven and a bit months later, I finally got to give it a go. Not that it was really that difficult and I'm sure, with a bit of experimentation, I could have sussed out the recipe myself. Mind you, it's nice to embark on a project you have some level of confidence will turn out as you expect, especially one that takes a few hours, as this one does.

So, if you fancy giving it a go, this is what you do.

Take 2 large oranges and a lemon and cut into 5mm slices. Place them in a single layer between a few sheets of kitchen paper to remove the excess juice, then lay out onto a couple of wire cooling racks - the sort you use to cool cakes on.

Place the racks and slices of citrus into a pre-heated oven - 90C or 70C fan - for 4 hours, turning the slices halfway through the drying time.

Into the oven they go....

Out of the oven they come...

Having been collecting pine cones all year, I decided to use some of the dried citrus slices to make some festive pot pourri. To adorn these bowls, I also made some clementine peel stars. To make these, carefully peel a couple of clementines. Choose 'easy peelers' and try to remove the peel in large pieces. Take a small star cookie cutter measuring 1-2 cm across, and punch stars from the clementine peel. Add these to the wire racks in the oven for the final 2 hours.

For the hours that the slices and stars were in the oven, the house was awash with the aroma of citrus, which really put me in a Christmassy mood and ready to plan what else I needed to complete this crafty gift.

The next step involved a trip to my local Indian supermarket - apparently the largest supplier of ethnic foods and spices in the South West of the UK and pretty fabulous it is too! Here I stocked up on those quintessential Christmas spices of cinnamon, star anise and cloves. I also dug out a can of gold spray paint and applied it to a few of the smaller pine cones for an element of festive sparkle.

Today I have enjoyed assembling all these ingredients into festive packages.

There's a slight irony in my gift giving in that some of the recipients live in the countryside and so probably have their own supply of pine cones, however, I've decided that's not the point! I just hope the recipients enjoy the festive scents as much as I do.