Christmas gingerbread house

You could spend ages making the gingerbread sides/chimney/roof, but to be honest it's easier buying the kits (this one's from IKEA, with a price-tag to match).

You'll need royal icing to stick your choice of (revolting) sweeties on to the house. This makes quite a lot (you could use it to decorate biscuits to hang on the tree, or just spread it about the gingerbread house with rather more wild abandon).

an egg white
about 225g (ish) icing sugar

Separate your egg white into a large mixing bowl. Sieve the icing sugar into the bowl, and gradually incorporate. If you're piping it, it needs to be reasonably stiff (you may need to add a little more icing sugar, depending on the size of your egg) - make sure you beat it well with a wooden spoon to get rid of any lumps and bumps.

Stuff the icing into an icing gun or use a freezer bag (a la Jamie Oliver) with the corner cut off to pipe the icing all over the house. Your friendly 4-year-old should be able to do the rest.

We had some fondant icing left in the cupboard from M's birthday cake, so we also made snowmen and a snow cat, mouse, snake, penguin, sausage dog and pond complete with fish. I suspect that might have been the highlight.

Christmas cake

Guaranteed to make the house smell of Christmas.

You helped me to make this one, together with Philip and Judith. Everyone stirred, and made a wish with their eyes screwed up tight.

It makes an enormous amount of cake - enough for a 20cm cake tin, and a loaf tin - one to eat now, and one to feed and keep for Christmas. You'll need:

350g butter
350g soft dark brown sugar
350g plain flour
1kg of dried fruit - I used chopped apricots, quartered glace cherries, candied peel and some chopped prunes
5 large eggs
100g ground almonds
150g shelled hazelnuts
500g raisins/sultanas
5 tablespoons brandy (I wasn't allowed to use your Dad's armagnac, so I had to make do with some orange juice this time)
zest and juice of an orange and lemon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Line your cake tin(s) with greaseproof paper (which needs to come a few centimetres above the top of the tin). I ignored this bit and did it in silicon moulds - which was fine, but made for a rather chewy edge to the cake. Stick the oven on at 160 degrees C.

Beat the butter and sugar together until they turn light brown and fluffy. This is so much easier in a mixer, but you'll feel very virtuous if you spend 10 minutes working out your arm muscles instead.

Add the eggs to the mixture, and beat thoroughly. Then gradually add the ground almonds, hazelnuts and the dried fruit, pausing now and again to let your junior helpers have a try of everything. Mix in the zest, juice and brandy, and then fold in the flour/baking powder.

Scrape into the tin(s) and marvel at the sheer amount of mixture. Bung in the oven for 1 hour at 160 degrees C, then turn the oven down to 150 degrees C and continue to bake for another 2 hours. You might need to place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of the cake if it looks like it's browning too fast.

Poke a hole in the cake with a skewer - if it comes out clean, then it's done. Leave to cool, and then remove from the tin.

Wrap in greaseproof paper then foil, and place in a airtight tin. I tend to feed mine a little brandy every week or two from now until Christmas - make a few small holes in the top with a skewer, and then drizzle a little brandy over the cake. It'll be nicely sozzled by the time you want to eat it.

Mince pies

Having decided we'd hold an office party on Saturday (given that both me and your dad work from home the chances of us getting a Christmas party are zilch unless we organise one), I've spent the evening making mince pies.

You can get around 24 mince pies out of one jar of mincemeat.

You'll need:

one jar of mincemeat (I used the last one from last year's batch. It was a little on the dusty side, having been hidden at the back of the pantry all year, but tasted just fine.)
8oz plain flour
a little pinch of salt
4oz butter

Stick the oven on, at about 180 degrees C. While it heats up, get on with the pastry making. I use just a basic shortcrust pastry (I like my mince pies on the tart side), but you could add a little sugar to the mix if you wanted.

Rub in the butter and flour, and then add some really cold water to mix. Bring it together to form a smooth, pliable (and not sticky) dough. Roll the dough out on a floured work surface (you should probably leave it to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, but I ran out of time to do this today), and cut out the bases for the pie tins. I cut out some stars to go on the top as well, but you could use just plain tops too.

Dollop in a spoonful of mincemeat (if you're using a shop-bought jar then beware - it tends to go quite runny in the oven, so use a little less than you think), and then shove the star/lid on top.

Bake for 12 minutes or so in the oven, until the pastry has turned a golden brown. Turn out onto a rack to cool.

They're rather nice when warm, especially if you sprinkle them with a little icing sugar.

Christmas tree decorations

The idea for these is shamelessly nicked from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. They are deliciously spicy/peppery, and rather good fun to decorate.

You'll need:

300g plain flour
100g butter
100g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
4 tablespoons runny honey
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground allspice
2 teaspoons ground black pepper

Turn the oven on to 170 degrees C.

Stick the flour, baking powder and spices/pepper/salt in the food processor, and give them a good whizz round. Chop up the butter into little pieces, and then shove in the blender too. Give it a quick blitz, and then add the sugar. Whizz round until it's all combined.

Beat the 2 eggs with the runny honey, until you get a delightful gloopy mess. Add this to the food processor too, and the mixture will start to come together into a beautifully spicy brown dough.

Roll the dough out thinly (about half a centimetre or less) - you'll need a fair amount of flour so it doesn't stick. Cut out whatever shapes you fancy - we did hearts, stars (large and small), and some rather nifty Christmas trees.

Take a small pointy object (I used the nozzle of the icing gun, but a straw or skewer would do), and poke a hole in the top of the decoration - you'll need this to thread some ribbon through to hang on the tree.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes - they'll turn brown(er), and won't be doughy underneath.

Once they've cooled down, you can ice them, which is the really fun part. We did ours with an icing gun, and so made royal icing. You'll need:

one egg, separated into white and yolk
icing sugar - about 225g, but you might need a little more

Sift the icing sugar through a sieve into the egg white. Mix round until you have a smooth, glossy icing. You want it fairly stiff if you're going to pipe it through an icing bag, or use an icing gun.

This makes quite a lot of icing - we used the other half to decorate the gingerbread house we bought from IKEA. It keeps in an airtight tin for a few days if you've made slightly too much.

Christmas cake

We stirred this up properly this afternoon, and made a wish - you screwed your face up tight, and wished for snow on Christmas Eve.

The recipe comes from a rather battered page in Sainsbury's magazine, November 2007.

You'll need:

315g butter
340ml apple juice
295g dates, chopped
1 medium cooking apple (about 300g), peeled, cored and grated
350g raisins
315g sultanas
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
150g plain flour
150g ground almonds
lots of freshly grated nutmeg
zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

First of all, stick the oven on at about 150 degrees C.

Then get out a fairly large saucepan (you're going to be boiling up all the dried fruit in it, so it needs to be pretty big), and melt the butter with the apple juice. It'll look very strange...

Stir in the dates, apple, raisins and sultanas, bring to the boil, and simmer for 5 minutes or so. Then comes the fun bit - tip everything into a (large) mixing bowl, and add the bicarb. Once you mix it in, it'll fizz enthusiastically for a while - guaranteed to amuse small children.

Leave everything to cool for 5-10 minutes. Add the flour, ground almonds and nutmeg, and beat until it's all thoroughly combined. Grate in the lemon and orange zest and you're done!

Stick in a large tin (at least 20cm/8in round and 9cm/3.5in deep). This year we've tried a star-shaped silicon tin, rather than having to bother with all that wrapping in baking paper. It seemed to work and was much less faff. (If you haven't got a silicon tin then you'll need to line the tin with baking paper, and also wrap a double layer of paper around the tin itself before it goes in the oven). Lay a sheet of baking paper on the top, otherwise the cake will turn too brown.

Bake for 2.5 hours - it's done when a skewer or long thin pointy thing inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a baking rack.

If you're going to eat it straightaway, dust with some icing sugar, and go off in search of some Wensleydale cheese. If you're keeping it until Christmas, wrap in greaseproof paper, then foil, and place in a tin. You could feed it a little rum/brandy at intervals if you feel like it.