The Christmas Cake Tale – Christmas Cake Recipes
The rich dark colour cake is an all-time classic and can be baked easily all year long and not just on Christmas! Basically, baking plum cake on Christmas is a tradition that began with the plum porridge made with oats, dried fruits, spices, honey (raisins, or currants, were referred as plums) that people ate on the Christmas Eve, after a day of fasting. With the passage of time more ingredients made their way into the porridge, oats were replaced with flour, eggs and butter, that took the form of the cake gradually.
Usually the process of baking cakes for Christmas starts two or three months prior as the dried fruits that goes in the cake batter is soaked in wine. This Christmas, if you are planning to include a tailored ‘self-baked’ cake for the Christmas hamper along with the wine and presents, check out these plum cake recipes, that could be prepared instantly.
Plum cakes are made in many ways, with either dried fruit or with fresh fruit and can be light, dark, moist, dry, heavy, spongy, leavened, unleavened. Some are made with nuts soaked in rum, dried fruits soaked in wine, whereas some have no alcohol at all!
Christmas Wine Fruit Cake
Soak the dry fruits like seedless dates, almonds, cashews, red cherries, tutti-frutti, walnuts in red wine or apple juice. Cover the jar and keep it at least for 3 days. Sieve the all-purpose flour (maida) with salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon powder, grated nutmeg and instant coffee. Mix it well.
Finally, add the soaked dry fruits mixture, brown sugar, yogurt and water mixture, oil, milk and vanilla essence. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients well until smooth. Pour the batter in a greased cake pan and bake the eggless Christmas wine fruit cake mixture.
Wine Poached Plums Cake
Boil 1 cup of red or rosé wine with 2 tbsp of brown sugar until it starts getting syrupy. Add a drop of vanilla extract and 3 to 4 plums to it, cook until soft but firm. Keep it aside and allow it to cool.
Meanwhile in a large bowl combine the dry ingredients the ground almonds, plain flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. And in another bowl mix the eggs, plain yoghurt, almond extract, melted unsalted butter and vanilla extract until well combined.
Mix in the dried and wet ingredient to obtain a smooth batter and pour into the cake mould to bake. Garnish the cake with the wine poached plums, without the syrup, and sprinkle sugar on top.
Sticky Chocolate Plum Cake
Mix the butter and muscovado sugar (cane sugar, jaggery) well until fluffy, then gradually whisk in the eggs. And fold in the flour, baking powder, cocoa, ground almonds, and chocolates.
Pour the mixture in the cake mould and arrange the sliced plumps on the top, pressing them down lightly into the cake batter. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar (cane sugar with large, crunchy grains) and bake. Garnish the cake with melted jam. It can be easily prepared by adding the jam in a small pan along with water. Brush it over the cake and scatter chopped almonds over the top of the cake.
Instant-Made Christmas Plum Cake
While you are multi-tasking between adorning the Christmas trees, contemplating on Christmas decoration themes, and Christmas dishes, the instant made ‘no soaking of fruit’ cake comes to your rescue!
Most of the work is done by bubbling things up in a pan for instance, brown sugar, butter, dried fruits, orange juice, lemon zest for few minutes. Leave it to cool before adding in the ground almonds and 3 eggs. Stir together and add in the flour, baking powder, mixed spice like cinnamon, nutmeg and fold it all together.
Also, add finely chopped fresh fruits like apples and plums as well before adding the milk. Mix well and pour the batter into the cake mould and smoothen it evenly. Bake the mixture, until golden and springy to the touch. Brush the vanilla syrup over the cake to finish.
Dates Walnut Coffee Cake
Dry roast walnuts on low-medium heat. Once they start to turn brown, turn off. Soak the chopped dates in hot coffee for 15 mins.
In a medium sized bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, the all-purpose flour, nutmeg, baking soda, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground cardamom, salt. And in a separate large bowl, combine the butter and sugar well and add eggs and vanilla to it. Mix until it’s creamy.
Mix the dry and wet ingredients, and the coffee and dates mixture to it and blend it well with an electric mixer. Finally, add the chopped walnuts and fold. Pour the batter into the cake mould and bake it.
For preparing the coffee buttercream for frosting or glazing, blend melted unsalted butter, instant coffee granules, powdered sugar, pure vanilla, hot coffee well. And let the buttercream sit for 10 minutes before frosting as it will thicken. Once, the cake cools down completely, layer it with the coffee buttercream and you are all set for the 2019 Christmas Eve Celebration!
