Stir up Sunday - Wikipedia
tells me that the name comes from the collect in the Book of Common Prayer
which is read on the last Sunday before advent, I associate it with The Archers
where I first heard the term in relation to baking. It’s also the traditional
day to make Christmas pudding and mincemeat, and if it doesn’t need a long time
to mature it’s also a good day to make your Christmas cake.
Coincidentally I did
make my first Christmas cake yesterday, but only discovered the synchronicity
with the dates afterwards, it’s going in my diary for next year (just so I
know). If the cake is good it’ll become a fixture and I have to admit that it’s
really going to test my patience waiting another 5 weeks to see if it’s any
good. I have an inkling that it will be acceptable because the top got a bit
crispy and I decided to slice it off and in the process I tried a little bit. The
recipe used was the Dan Lepard I’ve been sitting on for the last year and if
nothing else it’s made my flat smell amazing.
I didn’t make the
cake in my new toy – I wanted a bigger bowl and it’s not a recipe that calls
for much mixing bar the folding in of the fruit and – well it just seemed more
appropriate to do it by hand. However the Scottish one has been encouraging me
to use the Kitchen Aid (part of me still thinks I should have waited but it was
a part easy to ignore) and so I thought perhaps I should. So I did and made
another Lepard cake – Hazelnut and Prune – there’s a link to it on the
Christmas cake page. It’s pretty good but calls for quite a lot of nutmeg which
I will halve next time because currently I feel it tastes a bit virtuous and a
little unbalanced; which is as much a reflection on my heavy handedness as
anything else – I may have erred on the side of excess.
The hazelnut and
prune effort went through the mixer which was extremely satisfying, so
satisfying that I felt I had to bake something else and so opted for the Gugelhupf
recipe in ‘Tanta Hertha’s Viennese Kitchen’. It’s turned out well but I’m not
sure it’s for me (hard to tell at the moment because I burnt my mouth on a very
hot piece of lamb stew and everything tastes a bit off). This version doesn’t
use alcohol which might add a bit of richness – instead its lemon and almond
based and perhaps a bit subtle for someone geared up to Lebkuchen and heavier
fruit cakes. I’ll keep eating it until I’m sure. I could probably have carried
on baking all night but perhaps fortunately ran out of ingredients. I love my
new Kitchen aid.
That looks really impressive- you certainly had a good stir up Sunday. I've never made a gugelhupf - does that refer to the shape or is it a specific sort of cake?
ReplyDeleteVerity - I think it refers to both. It's a traditional German/Austrian cake in this case made with yeast and not unlike panatonne or brioche. It uses a bundt tin which according to wikipedia was originally a gugelhupf tin. Traditionally it's a birthday cake in Germany. It's growing on me, I made it after seeing a couple of others - Robin at Red Red Robin and Jane Brockett I think - and having cake envy
ReplyDeleteHow can you bake so much in one day? You must be some sort of superhero. If I cook one meal or bake one cake I have to rest for at least 24 hours...
ReplyDeleteI missed Stir-up Sunday so pretended it was today. Because of you I have made Dan Lepard's Christmas cake, however I lacked many of the ingredients and am hoping that using plain flour will have been OK (and forgetting the bicarb, oops). It is a bit black on top because I omitted to check it (can you tell I'm crap at cooking?) but it looks like a sort of mad ruined castle and smells good, so it's not all doom. And boiling the sugar at the beginning and then adding the cream was really good fun! (I don't get out much.)
Helen - once I get started I just keep going, but it helps that I love cooking and especially baking. Your cake sounds a bit like mine but I have high hopes for it. I don't get out at all!
ReplyDelete