mincemeat!

I've wanted to make a real mincemeat, and then Dan Lepard, the fantastic baker and food writer at the Guardian, posted a recipe.

Here's the boozy mix of currants, sultanas, prunes, raisins, apples and spices — it sat for a month, being mixed once and topped with booze a hanfdul of times (I used, at varying times, bourbon, brandy, or rum).

Here it is mixed again and topped off with a bit of rum, in my favorite crust (Tartine's recipe).

 Topped with lattice...

And completed.

 And voilà!

"mrs. child's famous sticky fruitcake"

As Julia Child notes, "[t]his cake isn't sticky at all, but it started out that way during my first experiements, and the name has remained, as a family joke."¹ And thus began my first experiment with fruitcake. I've made panforte and convinced my fruitcakephobic family to relish that, and Child's fruitcake seemed like good introduction to fruitcake (she has yet to fail me, from pastry to roast chicken).

 The fruitcake began with me making mixed peel: I blanched lemon and orange peel in water and then cooked them in syrup (I wasn't about to buy the overly processed peel at a grocery store, and I've never seen the higher quality stuff of which British pastry chefs talk).

The base is four pounds of peel and fruit: I used the aforementioned candied orange and lemon peel plus raisins, sultanas, zante currants, figs, candied ginger, sour cherries preserved in alcohol, unsulfured apricots, and prunes. This sits overnight with a pound of nuts (I used pecans and walnuts), a pound of mincemeat (I used some from Dan Lepard's recipe: I should have made it a month ago, but this'll be fine — and now I'll have mince for a Christmas pie), ⅔ c. rum, ⅓ c. bourbon, 1 tbsp. espresso, ¼ c. molasses, and a mix of 1 tsp. cardamom, ½ tsp. each cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace, and 1½ tsp. salt.

Above left is what that looks like after 24 hours of maceration, above left is tossed with 3½ c. flour with 1 tbsp. baking powder.

To that mixture is added ½ lb. butter that was creamed with 2 c. sugar, ⅓ c. brown sugar, 2 tbsp. vanilla and six eggs. This is then spooned into buttered and floured tins lined with parchement. I ended up with four loaves a little under a pound each, one toping two pounds and a sixth weighing in at almost three-and-a-half pounds (the smaller caked baked for 80 minutes, the larger for 120-130).

These smell lovely. I sprinkled more bourbon and rum atop, wrapped them up, and we'll see how they are in a month (if I can wait)!


¹Julia Child, From Julia Child's Kitchen (New York: Grammercy, 1975), 583.

panforte

Have loved Tartine's recipe for panforte since I first made it. Quinces, orange peel, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts, medjool dates, Zante currants and a whole lot of spice (black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, star anise) baked in a mixture of honey and sugar (cooked to 250ºF) with a little bit of flour and cocoa.


Once baked, it just begins to loose its sheen and puffs slightly. Cool for fifteen minutes or so, but not before it has glued itself to the pan.


Perfectly unmolded.


Finish with powdered sugar. Gets better after a few days and keeps forever: a medieval confection, panforte was one of the provisions crusaders took with them thanks to it keeping so well.

Happy 2011!

currant jelly

I planted a red currant bush at my parents' house when I was a kid. Naturally, its most fruitful time has been since I've no longer been there. My parents dropped off about two pounds, so I made jelly (referring to Jane Grigson's Fruit Book as well as the preserving manual Putting Food By) :

Ingredients: just equal parts (weight) currants and sugar.

Grigson says to boil hard, then boil for 8 minutes. Sounds vague. I do like that she leaves the fruit whole (even suggests not taking out stalks) and then straining it. Putting Food By suggests making currants juice, then making jelly. That seemed to troublesome. But they direct one to boil until 8ºF above boiling.

I boiled the currants and sugar until they were at 220ºF, whisking at one point to make sure that the fruit was all broken. I strained it through a sieve and got 5 ½ pint jars. [n.b.: hot water bath for 6 mins.] It's tart and deep, deep red.