Delicious Christmas cake

I have been looking online for the recipe I used yesterday from Delicious magazine, but I can't find it at all...It is Mary Berry's recipe [one of her Christmas cake recipes] so I shall share my version of it, on the basis that a list of ingredients is not copywritable, and anyway, I changed it slightly!

The amount in the magazine is supposed to fill a 23cm round cake tin, but I haven't got one of those - first challenge of the day!  Actually, though, it filled a 17cm one AND a 19cm one amply, so I managed to get two smaller round fruit cakes out of the amount.  Then I made it all again, and filled a 18.5cm square tin and a 2lb loaf tin from the second batch.  The aroma in my kitchen yesterday was amazing!

At the weekend, I soaked the fruit in the brandy.  The original intention was to soak it overnight, but it ended up being for about three days.  It certainly didn't come to any harm, and we stirred it often.

The soaking part is for this fruit - and these are the amounts I used, not the exact original recipe - 

500g currants [just used the whole packet!]

250g raisins

250g sultanas

150g dried apricots

200g glace cherries [these are expensive and 300g for each mixture seemed too many]

80g mixed peel

The dried apricots were of the "ready-to-eat" variety, and I used organic ones, which were all Sainsbury's had available, but it meant that they weren't too bright an orange colour and blended in well with the rest of the fruit.  I had to chop them up into small pieces.

The cherries were quartered and then rinsed and dried of all the gloopy sugary syrup.

All of that was set in a bowl and 4 generous tablespoons of brandy was mixed through it.  Lovely smell!

Yesterday, I double lined and greased the baking tins, including the 100+ year old one from my grandfather's bakery which is the smallest one, and got on with the baking.

I beat 300g of margerine [never buy real butter, sorry!] and 300g dark brown sugar [muscovado is the recommended, but hadn't got any of that...] together, and then slowly added 5 eggs beaten with a tablespoon of black treacle, alternating with the flour mixture [300g plain flour, 2 tsps mixed spice and half a tsp of nutmeg and the grated rind of a lemon] so that it all mixed together nicely.

Then I put all the fruit in.  Major arm exercise followed as I mixed the fruit into the batter!

I shared the mixture between the two round tins, then repeated the whole exercise to make the mixture for the square and loaf tins.  They all went in a low [120C] oven together.  The loaf cake was done in just under two hours, the round cakes took about three, and the square cake about 3 and a half.  I just kept checking them!

One tip I did find very handy was to cover the cake with a circle [or square as appropriate] of baking paper so that the top didn't brown too quickly.  I found that this also avoided the odd burnt pieces of fruit that I have had rise to the top before and sit there on top of the cake like Nanny MacPhee's wart!

The loaf cake has been used for taste testing already, and UJ and the FH have judged it most satisfactory, moist and full of flavour.  Success indeed.

Now the remaining three cakes are to be double wrapped and stored away until the week before Christmas when they will be covered in marzipan and iced.  Looking forward to that!  Photos at that stage.

In the Navy

(image from telegraph.co.uk)

I've read the term "Navy showers" twice just lately, and on further investigation, I have found out what it means.

Apparently, a "Navy shower" is one in which the person having the shower turns the water on and gets wet, then turns the water off again whilst washing themselves and their hair perhaps, and then turns the water on again to rinse the soap off.

I had no idea!  I thought everyone showered like that - I always have.  Then I realised WHY I have always showered like that: growing up, we didn't have a shower in our house, only a bath, and the first time we started showering a lot was at a campsite, where you had to push a button and the water flowed for a while, and then it stopped, so you had to push the button again.  I automatically showered then like I was in the Navy, and always have done.  

I'm a little bit shocked that everyone doesn't shower like this, as any other way seems like an awful waste of water.  I am glad to read of people standing in boxes to collect the water for the flushing of the loo if they are having the water flowing constantly........

How do you do it in your house?

We're back online

Having been given a slot of 8am - 1pm to expect a BT engineer this morning, it was brilliant to see a van similar to this one [below] park outside the house at 8.05am!

(image from en.wikipedia.org)

The chap came in and started furtling around in the socket box in the corner of the sitting room, where the line enters the house...

which was only replaced in July after the lightning strike - you remember?

Then there was some muttering, and I gave him some black coffee......

and he disappeared up the street to a manhole....

more furtling in the corner - and then it was FIXED!

He was pleased I told him about the lightning, because that gave him a clue - and when he came back from the manhole, he explained that the lightning had caused damage to a cable, which had been slowly deteriorating since then, until it completely gave up last week.

I'm online, obviously, and I have made a phone call - life as we know it can resume.......

BUT I have enjoyed the downtime, I have to admit!  We have had a bit of breathing space - no phone calls from people doing surveys, no one asking us to do something or go somewhere, a bit more "together" time as the family sat together in the sitting room rather than three of us working on three separate computers!  We'll have to do more of it.

Monday madness

It's been one of those days!  This morning, I was conscious that I had to go out at 3pm this afternoon and so I wanted to get as much done on the list as I could, and beavered away quite steadily, as you do, working my way through stuff.  Loads of washing out in the verandah to bake in the sunshine, chicken food fetched, phone calls made, kitchen tidied, bathroom cleaned, stairs swept, the FH tended to [resting in bed with his sore shoulder], and so by lunchtime, it was definitely time for a break!

The sun was shining gloriously, so I took my cup of tea outside and found a sheltered spot near the back door, in full sun, and sat there absorbing the Vitamin D or whatever I get from sunshine, and relaxed for 15 minutes - it was bliss!

(image from screencrush .com)

Come 3pm, I was off - picked up the girls and delivered them to the cinema, with the Tesco tokens, and they were watching Thor 2 by 4pm!  I left them there, had a potter around Staples [that Martha Stewart stuff they advertise is horrendously expensive!] and then went to a huge Garden & leisure complex, where I browsed tonnes of stuff no one really needs, for about half an hour.  It was easy not to spend anything, because there were few useful items that were reasonably priced.

Until I came across a delightful little book of prayers.  Good collections of prayers are rare as hens' teeth round here, unless you know what you want and buy it from Amazon, of course, so I gave in to temptation and bought it.  The FH has flicked through it tonight and I have had a good delve into it, and I do think it is money well spent now.

I then popped over to my dad's for a quick half hour chat with a cup of tea, and then it was back to the cinema to collect the girls and homeward bound.  The FH had prepared the supper and all we had to do was eat it!  This evening has been rounded off with a heap of ironing.......

I am really looking forward to the BT engineer coming in the morning, and hoping that he [usually is a "he"] can fix the problem.  I had a text message from them today asking me to check all my equipment as their tests indicate that it is an internal fault...I have unplugged all our equipment but the phone doesn't even ring in the exchange but goes straight to the messaging service, so I can't see how it can be our equipment.....could be our wiring, though...£130 if Mr BT has to sort that out....oh, bother!

Some website links for you

Sharing a few links to some great websites - some I just enjoy reading and others where I find inspiration and motivation to do stuff!  Always a benefit...

The first is The Prudent Homemaker, where Brandy rarely shops, and feeds a family of eight on healthy, home-grown and home-made food.  She has a new series where she is sharing the items she is making in November to give as Christmas gifts.

Elaine at Mortgage Free in Three continues to inspire me: her writing takes me home to Cupar as that is where she lives, but I also enjoy reading about her adventures with her two boys, her fabulous recipes and her Armageddon store cupboard.

One Hundred Dollars A Month is Mavis's story - she gardens and does all sorts of great stuff.  A reader pointed me in her direction a while back and now I follow her on Facebook to get regular updates.

And the last one is Dirt Under My Fingernails - a very recent find, but some great recipes here that I shall have to try.

Do have a look at some and let me know what you think.  Share your recommendations too, anytime xx

Good morning!

The sun is shining, the wind has dropped somewhat, and it looks like it might be a lovely day out there today!

We are off to chapel this morning, where I am leading a service based around All Saints' Sunday, and I am just finishing up preparing some of my "props" for the service - I have a thanksgiving tree, which is actually more of a twig, which I will take a photograph of later, when it is in full leaf.  The idea and the printables came from Ann Voskamp's A Holy Experience website, and I thought it would be perfect to use in my service.  It is also a fabulous idea to use at home.

Here's the photo, edited in tonight.  The congregation shared thanks and wrote them on their leaves.

The girls are back to school tomorrow, so there has been much scurrying about doing homework these past few days, and yesterday the YFG let me know she needed to read Act 1 Sc 2 of Romeo & Juliet, and where could she find a copy?  I don't have a copy, strangely enough - I can do King Lear, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream, but not the star-crossed lovers!  We had to go to the library, amid much muttering, where 30p bought us a photocopy of the necessary pages from a Complete Works.

There was also some not-quite weeping but almost last night as the YFG realised how much work she needs to do on her three piano pieces ahead of her Grade 2 exam on the 7th December!  There are some tricky bars in all of the pieces, and I think she plays the ones she can play and then stops when she gets to the ones she struggles with, and then goes back to the beginning, so I need to encourage her to Keep Going through the harder bars, so that she does actually play through them instead of stopping.....It's going to be a long month, I hope!

The EFG babysat for neighbours over the road last night, and came home with £25, so she was very pleased!  The going rate for babysitting has gone up drastically since I last did it as a teenager and she is finding that these particular neighbours are going out once every six weeks or so and supplementing her pocket money nicely at the moment - they have had long spells of not going out, when she thought the work had dried up completely, so she is quite pleased with their sociability at present!  It will help with her savings fund for uni if they carry on a while longer...

The dongle has signal right now so I am going to publish and hope to come back later with thoughts about our plans for the month, and my savings goals and aspirations......Hope you have a lovely day x

Super steak dinner

After I had taken a lesson from FrugalQueen about cooking steak last month, I felt more confident about having another go - my track history with cooking steak hasn't been great!

I bought some "quick fry steak" from Aldi for just £2.69, which is very reasonable considering that it feeds three of us very amply - the EFG is eating a lot less meat these days and prefers not to have steak.

I followed Froogs' instructions quite well - with a few variations of my own.  I did bash the steak with a rolling pin, but when I rubbed the oil into the steak, I used oil which I had crushed a clove of garlic into, and it makes such a difference to the flavour.  I used the oil, some salt and pepper and then put the steak straight into a very hot [smoking!] griddle pan, and it cooked beautifully.  I cook my steak right through, but this steak remains juicy and tender.  The FH enjoyed his with some horseradish sauce, too.

As you can see, I served it with home-made wedges, carrots and green vegetables.  It was delicious!  For a Saturday night treat, it was also well priced - we don't eat like this every day, after all.