HEALTHY CHRISTMAS CAKE

This is stolen from Kate Farrells Facebook page.  Completely and unashamedly:

I made this one on monday, turned out beautiful. Plus its gluten and dairy free for those with allergies and intolerances. 

600 g mixed dried Fruit or a mix of the following (raisins, prunes, figs, apricot, currants, sultanas, dates)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract or paste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
zest and juice from 1 orange
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 eggs
200 g (2 cups) ground almonds
50 g walnuts

Preheat your oven to 150 C (fan forced)
Prepare a 20 cm round cake tin with baking paper lining the sides and the base.
Combine dried fruit, spice, vanilla, orange zest + juice, olive oil and eggs.
Add the almonds and walnuts and mix through.
Spoon Christmas Cake batter into your baking tin.
Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Check with a skewer to see if it comes out clean, if not bake for another 30 minutes.
Cover the top if necessary to prevent over-browning.
Cool, then remove from the tin and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month.

NOTE:
If you wish to soak your Christmas cake in orange liqueur, as soon as you remove the cake from the oven, skewer holes through the cake and drizzle over 1/4 cup orange liqueur so it can penetrate through the holes and infuse into the cake.

This cake can also be served as a pudding served with vanilla bean custard or thick natural yoghurt.

For nut allergies replace the almond meal for 1 CUP wholemeal or spelt flour and omit the walnuts. Add one more tablespoon olive oil.

20 serves per cake 
Nutrition per serve:
Protein: 4.4 g
Total fat: 9.8 g
Saturated: 1 g
Carbs: 18 g
Fiber: 3.3 g
kilojoules: 740
Calories: 177

Thanks to The Healthy Chef (www.healthychef.com)

Raising Agent / Leavening Agent

Basic rule of baking if you want something to rise you will either need to use eggs and/or a raising agent of some description. You need bubbles to make cakes, breads and even some cookies rise.  The bubbles get warm in the oven they expand and your baking goods get lighter.  So the obvious question would be why are there so many types of raising agents and whats the difference between them.  Can you swap them?

Yeast - Typically used in breads, pizzas and bread based buns (Chelsea buns & Cinnamon buns).  It's not suitable for cakes as a general rule because yeast has a fairly strong flavour, especially in the case of sour dough.  Using yeast means taking time to leaven and knead the bread.  Yeast is a living organism that needs feeding (sugar of some description) and warmth to be kicked into action.

• Fresh Yeast - The best way that I can describe it that it looks like putty and smells like beer.
• Dried Fast Action Yeast - Powdered version of fresh yeast that is much more predictable 
• Sour Dough Starters - This is nothing shy of magic in my books. In the new year I will tackle the whole Sour Dough Bread thing.

Bread Soda / Baking Soda -Typically used for scones, cookies and Irish soda bread among many others. If you've ever made a Baking Soda Volcano you will know that if you add an acid to Bread Soda (who for those want it's proper chemical term it's NaCl -Sodium Chloride) it will fizz up and release a gas called carbon dioxide (CO2 this is the stuff we exhale).  This is a fairly instantaneous release of gas so only add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients when you're ready to pop it into the oven.  Cakes that have a high acid content in them such as a lemon based cake or a cake with either buttermilk, sour cream, or yogurt in them will use baking soda as either the main raising agent or an additional agent to balance the chemical process and improve flavour.  This seems to be much more common in American baking recipes than Irish or UK equivalents.  I wonder of the origins I'm all ears if someone can enlighten (see the way I 'lightened' the sentence with a baking pun) me.

Baking Powder - Typically used for cakes.  Baking powder is composed of everything that you need   (Baking Soda and an Alkaline, a stabiliser (quite often Cream of Tartar) and some cornflour (so its not as at risk to moisture) in the correct ratios, to make a cake rise.  Typically a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon baking powder per 200g Plain Flour.  The actual baking powder recipe changes from company to company including one discovered by the man who created Birds Custard.

Self Raising Flour - I'm including this because even though it's not a raising agent it contains the correct ratio of flour to raising agent to make a cake rise, this makes life much easier.

Just a note on Scones and  Soda Bread if you have buttermilk use baking soda if you have fresh milk use baking powder

Macaroons

I've been searching for a recipe that I could use up the leftover egg white whenever I make cinema floor cookies and this is it. There is no flour in it and for those with issue with gluten their nice sweet treats. I've used lemon zest to flavour these but you could use almond essence instead.  Regarding Ground Nuts this is not limited to almonds; you can toast and skin all sorts of nuts before pulsing them in a blender for this recipe or buy them in the shop

1 egg white
100g Ground Nuts (or dessicated coconut)
100g Caster Sugar
Flavouring (see note above)

(Makes 8)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170c
2. Lightly beat an egg white
3. Mix in the remainder of the ingredients in a bowl.
4. Form little ping pong ball sized balls in your hands the mixture should be firm but sticky and place them on a baking tray and flatten a little with a fork
5. Bake for 10 mins until pale golden, then cool on a wire rack

Alternate method

1. Preheat oven to 170c.
2. Prepare a baking sheet with oiled baking parchment
3. Using a stand mixer whisk the egg white to soft peaks add a little sugar and mix briefly but thoroughly.  Add the remainder of the sugar. Mix properly but do not over whisk!
4. Fold in ground nuts
5. Half fill piping bag (I use one without the nozzle) and make 4-5cm diameter circles on the baking sheet
6. Bake for 10mins until pale golden, then cool on a wire rack

Chocolate and Almond Cake (Flourless)

This is a tasty flourless chocolate cake from Rachel Allens 'Rachel's Favourite Food at home' but I have changed the filling to nutella and cream, though you could use the original brandy cream

125g Dark Chocolate
4 Eggs
150g Caster Sugar
150g Ground Almonds
Icing Sugar for dusting
Nutella
125ml Whipped Cream

1. Preheat oven to 180c. Grease and line two 18cm cake tins. Melt chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. When the chocolate is completely melted remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

2. Whisk eggs and sugar using an electric whisk for 5-8 mins until light and frothy (if you don't have an electric whisk, whisk the eggs and sugar in a bowl over simmering water until it too is light and frothy).

3. Pour the egg and sugar mixture gradually into the chocolate stirring until mixed completely. Fold in the ground almonds.

4. Pour the mixture egually between the two tins and bake in the oven for 17-22 mins until the centre feels firm. Cool on wire racks.

5. Spread nutella on both cakes followed by a layer of whipped cream and sandwich gently together. Dust the top with Icing Sugar.