Rich Christmas Cake

[Prometheus]

From Brother KEITH:

In a saucepan, bring to the boil orange juice, rum and orange rind. Remove from heat and add dried fruit. Cover and leave fruit to soak overnight. Stir essences, lemon rind and almonds into saucepan. Sift flour, soda and spices into a bowl. Cream butter, sugar and treacle until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in sifted ingredients alternately with fruit mixture. Line a deep, square 23 cm (approx. 9 inch) tin with two layers of brown paper followed by one layer of baking paper. Spoon mixture into tin. Bake at 150º - 160º C (300º - 325º F) [Gas No. 2 - 3] for 4 hours or until an inserted skewer comes out clean when tested. After about an hour, place a piece of butter paper or baking paper on the top of the cake to stop the top cooking too quickly. Leave in tin until cold. Wrap in foil. Store in a cool place. It will be mature after about a month or six weeks.

If you don’t want to ice the cake, you can glaze it with 2 tablespoons apricot jam, 1 cup water, bring to the boil. Sieve to remove fragments of fruit. Brush over the surface of the cake. You can then decorate the top of the cake with nuts and glacé fruit..

Preheat a measuring spoon in hot water for easy measuring of treacle or golden syrup
Standard No. 6 egg weighs approx 50 g. (just under 2 oz)
__________________
Keith
Secretary, Lodge Kaimanawa 426
Waikato Lodge of Research 445
PM Waimarino 175

[Keith]

You forgot to transfer the list of ingredients for the cake!

Here they are:

1 & 3/4 cups orange juice, 3/4 cup dark rum or brandy, 2 tablespoons grated orange rind, 500 gm currants, 500gm raisins, 2 cups sultanas, 2 cups chopped dates, 150gm crystallised ginger, chopped, 150gm mixed peel, 150gm glace cherries, halved, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence, 1/4 teaspoon almond essence, 2 teaspoons grated lemon rind, 1 cup blanched almonds, 2 & 1/2 cups high grade flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon mixed spice, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 250gm butter, 1 & 1/2 cups brown sugar, 2 tablespoons treacle, 5 eggs

And sorry, I gave Karen a plum pudding recipe on the other topic, transfer it here if you like, but make sure the whole recipe is transferred!

[Alysse]

Your translator here: For the Americans who do not know what treacle is...well, we don't anything like it in this country. It is close to corn syrup but with maybe a 1 to 4 ration of good maple syrup added. It kind of looks like motor oil. In the UK it comes in a tin with a pry open lid on it. At least that is the way it was when I lived there.

[Keith]

As I said in the Open Forum, treacle is not too different from molasses which I understand you do have in the States, you could use that, it's very dark and would have a similae effect on the rersult

[Alysse]

Our molasses has a very strong and dominating flavor and I don't remember treacle being quite that black. Although there is the black treacle. I've only ever used the lighter one. If the cake should have a strong dark taste, then molasses would do it. If it is supposed to have a little lighter flavor you could go with half molasses to half corn syrup.

Sounds like a great recipe. Now if we can just get past the difference in cups. We measure dry ingredients by cups rather than by weight, i.e. 500 gms. Our cup is 8 oz and I have a set of measuring cups from the UK and your cup seems to me to be about 9 oz. Am I wrong about that? Flours are different too. I'm thinking an "all purpose" flour in our terms as it has the baking soda as a raising agent.

What do you think is in your "mixed spice"? I'm thinking it is like our pumpkin pie spice.

I'm going to give it a whirl. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Originally Posted by Keith

As I said in the Open Forum, treacle is not too different from molasses which I understand you do have in the States, you could use that, it's very dark and would have a similae effect on the rersult

[Alysse]

I just noticed that the recipe only has 2 tablespoons of treacle so it probably won't amount to a hill of beans what is used. Molasses should be fine since it's such a small amount needed.

[Keith]

I know Imakegarb (Karen) has made the cake very successfully last year. What did she use?

To help with conversions to "real" measurements as used in America, there are precisely 28.3 grammes to an ounce, we generally take it as about 30gm. a metric teaspoon is 5ml, a tablespoon, 15ml. a standard cup is 250ml 1 litre is about 2 & 1/4 pints. Take a pound as being 500gm (it is precisely 465gm). It seems that you have different names for some common items used here. Don't mix different measures, convert so the proportions are the same

We went metric over 40 years ago.

Oven temperatures are in degrees Celsius (Centigrade). COnversions are

110C - 225F
120C - 250F Very cool
140C - 275F
150C - 300F Cool
160C - 325F Cool
180C - 325F Moderate
190C - 350F Moderate
200C - 400F
220C - 425F Hot
230C - 450F
250C - 475F Very Hot
260C - 500F Very hot

1 Metre - 100 centimetres or 1000 millimetres
30cm - About 12"
23cm - about 9"
20cm - about 8'
5 cm - about 2"
2.5 cm - about 1"

I'll see if I can fiind a full set of conversions from Metric to Imperial You can't mix them or the proportions are wrong in the recipe

[Alysse]

For me, it's okay. I have a British scale and measuring cups. I lived there for over 6 years so I'm used to the differenes but someone else might certainly benefit from your search...Thanks again.

[Keith]

This is a useful site to get conversion between Imperial and Metric

http://www.metric-conversions.org/me...onversions.htm