Stir up Sunday adventures

Today is Stir Up Sunday. Called this because the words opening the 1549 book of Common Prayer for today are:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people;

It was seen as a reminder to the cooks and the good wives of the villages and towns to get making the Christmas pudding. Although I'm not religious I do love that old language of the Common Book of Prayer and the St James bible. The language is so dramatic, mysterious and poetic. It makes me think of the poem by John Donne "Batter my heat three person God" one of my all time favourite poems:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me

Any way enough of religious poetry. As it is stir up Sunday I decided to make a proper Christmas cake. I've never made one before, in fact I've never made a traditional fruit cake before. So the preparations started last night as you can see below:

Mixed fruit steeped in Courvoisier 

 I got all the mixed fruit, sultanas, raisins, currents, peel, glace cherries and apricots together then steeped them in some brandy. The bowl was then covered and left over night.

Mixing the cake was fairly straight forward like making any cake apart from the fact that their were so many ingredients. I used Nigella's Traditional Christmas Cake recipe as she has a very helpful conversion table for measurements relating to different cake tine sizes and shapes. I'm afraid I can't link to it as it's copyrighted so not on the web, but it's in her Domestic Goddess book and the one I use Feast.

Ingredients mixed ready to go into the tin

It was hard going folding in the flour and fruit towards the end as the mixture was so full of goodies!

Double lined tin, expert work by Jason

Jason lined the tin for me with double thickness baking parchment, the double thickness and tall sides help prevent the edge of the cake blackening and drying out. There is no way I would be able to line the cake tin like that!

Mixture in the tin ready to go into the oven

So the mixture goes into the tin and into the oven for 3 hours at least at a lowish heat (130C in my fan assisted oven). I tested mine at 3 hours and then gave it an extra 10 minutes. Here it is fresh out of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven

That isn't the end of it though! I then had to wrap it in double thickness of silver foil and leave it. As I type this it is steaming nicely as it cools, this prevents the top of the cake drying out.

Wrapped in silver foil

So now I just wait for it to cool, then wrap it up again and store it in a air tight container for at least 3 weeks before icing it. That means I'll probably ice it the weekend before Christmas as that is 4 weeks from now.

Of course I shall post up a photo of the cake when it emerges from its silver foil cocoon and once I've iced it!