185: Christmas pudding, p361

Finally made the Christmas pudding! Like the Christmas cake, this is the first time I've made my own Christmas pudding - and the first time I've steamed a pudding. I didn't have a suitable basin to use, so I ordered one from the wonderful Lakeland, but it only just arrived - the terrible weather having messed up deliveries over the past couple of weeks. Better late than never! I'm hoping it doesn't affect the pudding too much, not having so long to keep before Christmas. I'm probably going to save it for the day after New Year's Day when lots of the family are coming down to visit us - so made during 2010 but not actually consumed this year :) 

Easy peasy to make, but I halved the recipe - which called for 2x 1.5L pudding basins. Lakeland do a 1L and a 2L basin, so I decided that ordering the 2L and halving the recipe would be okay. One very shiny, scrubbed 50p tucked in the pudding, and it's currently bubbling away steaming for 3.5hrs in the biggest pan I've got. Fingers tightly crossed!

 **UPDATE 02/01/11: Absolutely spot on - definitely a recipe to repeat! Verdict from the massed family was that it was one of the best Christmas puddings they'd ever had :) And it also set light rather pleasingly (see below)...

96: Marmelade cake, p10

Another cake to take to work - am feeding up the team, trying to get them to all put on some weight... Another one of Nigel's super easy pound cakes, and another success. People grumble that they can't make cakes, or don't have time to make them, and yet these recipes are so so easy - esp if you've got a food processor. Just bung the sugar and butter in to cream, mix everything else in, splodge it in the cake tin, and bake for 40mins. Easypeasy! And I have two shocking cheats, to horrify the purists out there... firstly I don't bother sieving the flour most of the time (started when I bought that McDougall's 'so fine it doesn't need to be sieved' flour, and then went back to normal but forgot, and found it didn't actually make much difference...), and secondly I don't bother cutting out baking parchment to fit the tins, I just tear a piece to large than the whole inside area and scrunch it in, with the leftover uneven edges sticking straight out the top. Seems to work fine! And the added bonus is that you can just lift the cake straight out of the tin, no more turning out disasters, cool it in the paper, and wrap it straight up to take into work with the leftover edges. Lazy, moi?

57: Coffee and walnut cake, p355

Bad me - I forgot to post this one, just over a week before I went away. We had a cake sale at work in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care, and I made the coffee and walnut cake that kick started this challenge idea back in November last year. Bizarrely, I didn't get to try it... I put the cake up in our tearoom with everyone else's and dashed off to a lecture, and an hour later went back to slice it up into pieces so people could buy it slice by slice - but the whole cake had vanished! A week later I was chatting to a friend in another department and she said she'd dashed over to the cake sale and bought a whole cake to take back to the office for her team, and that it had been fabulous! It was mine! So at least I know it turned out okay - and I did get to try it last year when I made it, so think I can get away without having to make it again...

9: Double ginger cake, p15

Got a cake craving last night. Must have been the pilates class and 'light' dinner...

Potential problem is that I don't actually much like ginger. Not in sweet foods, anyway... It's supposed to be really good for nausea but I tend to feel a bit nauseous after eating sweet gingery things... But, it's in the book, it's got to be done!

Curious batter this, very fluid... Recipe says 'mixture should be sloppy' and Maggie Don's blog says that the ginger/fruit sank to the bottom because the batter was so floppy, but still a bit worrying... and it took a good 10mins longer in the oven that the 40mins in the recipe (maybe Nigel does have a fan oven after all). Ho hum. It smells delicious and hopes are high... if only one didn't have to wait for it to cool down a bit before diving in!!

No gym class this evening, in-case you hadn't guessed...

Cake-related disaster! Got a little bit stuck in the tin and so sides look a bit... eroded...

It is a nice, light, moist texture, has risen really nicely, but unfortunately, as predicted, it's a bit too sweet and super super gingery (that'll be the double ginger) for me to really like.

EDIT: actually, on second tasting (and a proper piece instead of all the overcooked crumbly bits that fell off/were left in the tin), it's actually quite nice! The ginger bits and raisins did sink to the bottom, and aren't for me, but this leaves lots of nice lightly gingery cake on top, hurrah!