Recipe: Christmas cake on Stir-up Sunday

A bit of a short blog entry this time, to quickly document my Christmas cake making, which I did this year for my grandmother on Stir-up Sunday.

For those who are interested, this term is commonly used in Anglican churches to represent the last Sunday before the season of Advent.  It is widely believed to have been introduced to the Victorians by Prince Albert, and comes from the opening words of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people
That they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  
Amen.

This year, it occurred on Sunday 23 November 2014.

Anyway, I digress.  The cake.  Now then… I make no apologies about this, but I will admit that I cheated.  Instead of doing it the hard way, I bought the Waitrose Christmas cake ingredients box - where all the ingredients, excepting the fresh ones (e.g. eggs) are supplied and weighed out.  I know it's cheating, and if Mary Berry was to read this she would probably be very disapproving, but never mind.  I made it last year and it turned out rather well - it's quicker and easier than measuring out and preparing all the ingredients individually, and it avoids ending up with hundreds of half empty bags of ingredients.  So yes, it is lazy, but just deal with it.

The process was really very simple.  I began by greasing a 20cm cake tin with generous butter, before covering the sides and bottom with enough parchment paper to decimate a small forest.  I realise the cake needs to be protected against the heat of the oven, but with this much paper I reckon it would survive a nuclear blast at close range.

Once protected, all the supplied ingredients (plus a couple of others, such as eggs and orange zest) were carefully added and incorporated, before pouring the mixture into the tin.  This was then covered in yet more parchment paper, before going into a low oven (140°C) for roughly 2 and a half hours.

2 and a half hours later, and with the kitchen smelling lovely, it was ready.  After the usual skewer test, it came out of the oven and slowly cooled down, before having its paper removed and being re-wrapped, ready for Christmas.  All that remains now is to decorate it much nearer the time, and (more importantly, in my mind) feed it once or twice a week with a selection of spirits - my preferred ones are Cognac, Calvados and dark rum.  Yummy.