Christmas Cake Wrap

 
    When you google Prune Cake in search of its history or origins, you discover everyone's great aunt or grandmother had a recipe that was likely handed down to them, and there are more prune cake recipes out there than you can poke a stick at. That's the history of this cake... it's been around for ages and lovingly baked to nourish and delight (and surprise - it's amazing how many aunties and grannies kept mum about the main ingredient; poor prunes, it's just not fair). And many of these vintage recipes have the beautiful toffee icing, sometimes called a butterscotch glaze. One version I read added vanilla to the cake mixture - I adore vanilla, so I am tempted to add that next time, although it won't be the same recipe as the Wyoming pioneer one I've presented here on Blackbird Pie. What cook doesn't love to experiment with their favourite flavours, make a recipe their own? Me, I've changed the name of the cake...

I love a Santa with muscles!

     So, I made my spicy fruit and nut cake for Christmas (cue the wonderful aroma on the morning of Christmas Eve as it was baking, mmm), and draped the cake and the toffee nut topping with a smooth layer of sugar icing so it looked like snow (the nuts in the toffee gave the white surface a natural undulating surface that I really liked the look of), topped it with bright red cherries and dotted with silver cachous. I replaced the walnuts with pecans and I used gluten-free flour (as I mentioned I would for the gluten intolerant one in our family). I think I preferred the walnuts and although the gluten-free flour produced a beautiful cake, I prefer gluten-fierce flour overall.

The whole thing not particuarly pioneer I grant you, but well, whenever you are introducing something new into the family, you are pioneering a little, I think (especially when someone declares I hate prunes, and enjoys eating it nevertheless, bit like making it to the Promised Land really). At Christmas time the family are sticklers for tradition, so anything new has to be well rationalised. 

    Anyway... I hope you enjoy the pics of the pioneer prune cake made over into Christmas spicy fruit and nut cake, with its delicate Christmassy spices and fragrance, it went down a treat with the family. I think it looks quite festive. And I just wanted to acknowledge GEM and her beautiful photography; her gorgeous Christmas pics will continue to pop up.

The golden candles look a bit like antennae! 

I hope you all enjoyed a bright and beautiful Christmas of amazing festive treats.

Prune Cake

                          "... if you or your dear ones don't fancy traditional Christmas cake  

                          or would like a change, roll out some smooth white fondant over 

                          the top of the toffee icing and crown this spicy fruit and nut cake

                          with a festive topping..."

 While prunes tend to get a bad wrap from time to time, once you've tried this traditional prune cake recipe you'll be convinced that not only have prunes been a desirable source of nutrition for a very long time, but they also make a delicious cake.

If you've opened up to this and thought, "Prune cake?" and "Is that the best she can put up?" perhaps we should address the name of the cake... in essence, this is a spicy fruit and nut cake. Now, doesn't that sound better? Rich with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, dotted with mixed nuts (your choice) for crunch, hearty with eggs, butter and flour and that secret magic ingredient sour cream, it's delish and satisfying. And the icing, a toffee and nut confection... well, let's just say it very nearly didn't make it to the top of the cake... yum!

      So, you'll need a couple of large mixing bowls; this is a big cake, quite thick in texture. Wet and dry ingredients prepared separately and then combined.

      I preheated my fanforced oven to moderate... 160 C, but you could go lower and cook the cake slower, I think. Grease or line your cake pan. I used an 8 in (20 cm) pan.

      What you'll need for this spicy fruit and nut cake:-

For the wet ingredients:

1 cup of sugar

3/4 cup of butter

3 eggs

4 tablespoons of sour cream

1 cup of chopped prunes

4 tablespoons of prune juice

For the dry ingredients:

1 teaspoon of bicarb of soda

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of allspice

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of chopped nuts

So, cream together sugar and butter, and then add the eggs and beat these in. Add the sour cream, the chopped prunes and the prune juice. Give it a mix. 

      How hard was that then? Well, if your butter isn't room temperature, it will be a chore, so keep chilled butter for your shortbread pastry. Also, the sour cream looks clumpy when you mix it in, but don't worry about that because it all works out in the end. As for the prunes, well, there'll be a few left from the packet for tossing in your mouth while you mix. A health bonus, you might say. And prune juice is vitality itself. If I haven't convinced you yet, well maybe you're a hard case and won't ever touch a prune. More's the pity.

      Okay, on with the cake batter...

Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Well, you can't sift the nuts, so sift all the others and then fold in the chopped nuts when you combine the wet and dry ingredients. You could sift the dry ingredients directly into the prune mixture... I just like keeping things a little separate in case I make a mistake and have to start again.

     I chose walnuts and almonds this time, but you could use whatever combination you fancy. The walnuts certainly go well with the spices, as would pecans for instance.

     Once all the ingredients are in your large bowl and getting to know one another, emitting a pleasing and spicy aroma, and the batter is becoming thick and fulsome beneath the wand work of your wooden spoon, you will realise what a great recipe this is turning out to be. Then when all are combined, spoon into your prepared cake tin and smooth out.

     Bake in moderate oven for 45 minutes, but do use a scewer to test doneness because it is a thick mixture.

     As thick a mixture as it is, as moist a cake as it makes, it still has a lightness to it.

     It is even better the next day (all cakes are in my opinion, except for gluten-free cakes). That's if it will last till the morrow.
  

     I let my prune cake cool in the cake pan for five or so minutes before I could wait no longer to turn it out.

     Now to frost this baby... this was a new way of creating icing for me, so I was completely fascinated by the process.

    Cook: 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 1/2 cup of sour cream, and 1/2 cup of chopped nuts in a small saucepan until all the sugar has melted and it starts to resemble soft toffee.   

Stir it well often, and don't go leaving it alone for too long while you attend to something else.  You'll know when it's done because apart from the fact that it looks and smells like soft nutty toffee, you'll have been taste testing it and wondering whether to bother icing the cake with it and resisting the temptation to eat it straight out of the pan... once you've got past this stage you're thinking 'I get to put this on prune cake, oh yum'. 

     The cake and the icing take quite some time to cool.

     Smooth that frosting over your prune cake (while beating back little fingers, and not so little, doing a good imitation of Winnie the Pooh and a jar of honey).

I sprinkled some almonds on top of mine, but you know what... if you or your dear ones don't fancy traditional Christmas cake or would like a change, roll out some smooth white fondant over the top of the toffee icing and crown this spicy fruit and nut cake with a festive topping, decorating with silver or gold cachous, or marzipan/candied fruits or whatever you usually like to adorn your Christmas cake.

This is an old-fashioned cake. It tastes amazing. The best part for me was that I could not help but feel a wondrous connection to that other time, and saw my sweet spicy fruit and nut Prune Cake sitting on Sheriff Cliff Ryan's kitchen table, waiting for him to slice a generous piece and tuck in. The grateful citizen who made it for him knew it would nourish, sustain and uplift him, and show him how much he was appreciated. Only fiction, you say... maybe, but in that moment of reflection and wonder, the cake and its sense of history were very real.

Post Script: This was such a hit with my family, I'll be baking it again for Christmas, this time testing out the recipe with gluten-free flour.

 

TO BURN OR NOT TO BURN... JUST DON'T BURN THE FOOD!

BACK IN THE DAY, I’m pretty sure cooks didn’t have temperature settings on their wood burning stoves! In fact, they used different types of wood to achieve the right temperature for the kind of food they were cooking.

   This link gives a very informative description about how a cast iron wood burning stove works! I recommend it...  http://www.everydishtellsastory.com.au/?p=790 

    Possessing the skill to judge the right baking time and temperature is obviously a skill that most 21st Century cooks can only wonder about. The recipes on the What’s Cooking...? page of my website have been adapted over the generations, hence the standard baking temperatures. Because my own oven is particularly hot (burning was not uncommon in the early days), as well as fan-forced, when I test these recipes I will most probably lower the temperatures and reduced the cooking times where needed. You may or may not have to do the same. A bit of trial and error may be needed, particularly with recipes that have travelled through time.

     I was doing a bit of research on the Aga, a 20th Century evolution - and don't they look the business - and found out that to make it to work successfully you really have to know your stuff, know your oven. It's technical, it is. You can't just make a dish and then stick it in there and fasten the door. It's positively scientific, in fact. But quite a few cooks have them and swear by them, and I love watching tv chefs, such as Rick Stein, cooking with their Aga. I don't know anyone who owns an Aga, so I can't share any firsthand information. 

     When I was growing up we lived over a shop, which was very very old and still had original features, such as an antique Kookaburra gas cooker. I recall the peas cooking on the back hob (I didn't like peas back then) and the lamb chops (still my most favourite meat - I can always eat a lamb chop or three) or steak sizzling in the old frypan on the front hob. A roast went in the oven on Sundays and fed all eight of us. A lot of simple goodness came from 'the living flame' of the old gas Kookaburra.

     I suppose childhood memories are where we all start when it comes to our attitude to food and cooking. My father made everything he ate look positively irresistable, and he cooked beautiful Italian food that I could hardly wait to eat. And he timed everything; he was a stickler that way. Observing him cook taught me to cook. And I make killer gravy because my mother often asked me to stir the gravy.

   Anyway, I'm no foodie, just someone who likes cooking and history and the thought of combining both in some small way. Hope you do, too.

     Which brings me back to my initial comments...  there is a lot of skill in knowing how to bake to perfection when the temperature knobs and gauges aren't anywhere to be seen! Perhaps we can channel our inner frontier cook and take a step back in time.