Christmas Cherry Cake - Mom

Here's another inefficient Christmas treat that bit the dust fairly early in my childhood.  I understand why this one was crossed off the list, it's fiddly like you wouldn't believe.  Normally I pull ingredients out of the cupboard and measure them as I bake, that's why I note the ingredients in between the instructions, I don't have to go jumping back and forth between ingredients and instructions just start at the top and work down.  I don't think that casual attitude would have worked with this recipe, so I have listed the ingredients first then written out my recipe as I would normally have done.  I have never felt so compelled to have everything assembled and some bits even pre-measured before beginning a baking session in my life.  Shortly after starting I thought it was worth commemorating the scene with a picture.  I also want to apologise for the lack of progress pictures, I like seeing what things should look like along the way when I'm making a new recipe so I like to include them but I was feeling the stress of this recipe.

This cake is most likely single-handedly responsible for my curious love of those sickly-sweet glacé cherries.  It might just be the only Christmas cake I have ever eaten with eager zeal, most of the time I have the mantra "be polite, just chew quickly and swallow, stay polite, don't pull that face, smile nicely" running through my head.  I have to do a lot of that around Christmas food in England.

I don't mean to be down on my adopted country, truthfully Christmas in England is magical in so many ways, people will stand outside in the cold for tree lighting ceremonies and first night of the high-street lights display and smile with awe in the spirit of the season rather than complain about their frozen feet.  They have silly  crackers to make your dinner festive and panto to make you feel like a kid again so you're sure to get a few good laughs somewhere, carollers make the rounds far more often than you can imagine and they even keep alive sneaky pagan rituals that have been sanitized into something fun rather than dangerous.  And unlike the foreign perception of British cuisine there's actually lots of good foods, like chocolate yule logs and potatoes roasted in goose fat and mulled cider and great big wedges of Stilton.  I don't want to be down on Canada either but I don't think I could go back to a culture that doesn't have such a unified idea of Christmas tradition, even if I moved back I'd want English Christmas.  But I can't in good conscience glorify it too much, English Christmas is full of culinary pitfalls for the outsider because for some reason people have this obsessive attachment to historical foods.  Like the Medieval mincemeat in my recurring nightmare of a food - mince pies* - which everyone claims to love but then pulls a face when eating them - don't think I don't notice and I know what that face means.  Or Victorian recipes for pudding that always include candied peel and other ingredients that (once baked and fed brandy for a month) have a semi-soft texture that make you think it's gone mildewy.  And don't forget the food of the devil - sprouts** - if they're so wonderful why do most people only eat them once a year?

Tellingly, the English are always trying to come up with new ways to cook these foods, which makes me think everyone secretly hates them, but no one will make a version without the objectionable and offending ingredients because that would deviate too far from tradition.  With the fourteen billion wonderful Christmas traditions in this country you'd think people would be willing to let go of the few they secretly hate.  So don't make a Tudor era Christmas cake full of weird spice combinations, soggy almonds, and the bits of oranges you normally throw away, make a Cherry Cake instead and have a happier Christmas.


Christmas Cherry Cake

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup milk

Recipe as per usual:

Pre-heat the oven to 350^F (176^C)

Separate
3 eggs
Whisk the egg whites until stiff, reserve the egg yolks for later

Sift the flour before measuring
1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour

Sift the flour again but this time with the baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Put the flour mixture aside but reserve 1/2 cup of the flour separately to be mixed in with the cherries.

Cream butter and sugar well.
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar

Mix in and beat well
3 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla

Add and mix in alternately in two turns
Flour mixture
1/2 cup milk
Start and end with flour and beat smooth after each addition (1/3 the flour mixture-beat, then 1/4 cup milk-beat, then second 1/3 flour-beat, then 1/4 cup milk-beat, then the last 1/3 flour-beat)

Fold in the beaten egg whites (I have trouble folding stiff egg whites but my whisk was in the dishwasher waiting to be cleaned and I foolishly put my mixer whisk in the sink and it was touching other things.  I just know one of these stubborn little marshmallowy lumps of egg white is going to turn up as scrambled egg in the finished cake.  This is not a finished folding picture, keep going.)

Sprinkle over the batter half the reserved 1/2 cup of flour (that's 1/4 cup of flour)
1 cup glacé cherries (1/2 lb) cut in halves (I did not cut mine in half, I wanted whole circles of cherry in the slices of my finished cake not half moons.)
Sprinkle the remaining flour over the cherries - rattle those cherries round in their flour dusting to make sure the are well coated before folding through.

Fold the cherries into the batter until all is well blended.

Bake in a well greased and floured 5" x 9" loaf pan for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours or until done, but be sure to check after an hour.

Results:
Good
It tastes golden+ and buttery just like my childhood memories of it, really, really yummy.  The texture is light and soft and moist all at the same time, and I think with some practice it wouldn't be as stressful to make it in future.  I also have to think the buttery flavour is very impressive given the proportion of butter to other ingredients.  Lastly I didn't find any lumps of scrambled egg white - so far.  I would consider this cake worth making even without the cherries - which brings me to...
Not-So-Good
I had major cherry sink-age and I don't know why.  I gave them a really good dusting of flour, I was even sneaky and put a drop-zone of plain batter on the bottom of the tin before adding in the rest of the batter with the cherries so they were all floating on the top on their way into the oven, but it didn't help they're all on the bottom.  Maybe I should have cut the cherries in half to make them less heavy?  Advice from the clever bakers please!  Also, sadly, I had serious sticking problems when de-panning that ended with a horizon split across the whole cake, so I've gone back and added "and floured" to the greased tin - even as I was greasing the tin I was thinking I should flour it but I didn't because I thought it's a greased non-stick pan, I'm being overly cautious already.

Yeah, I even went looking for a slice where the Cherries hadn't sunk.

If I had found a floating cherry slice I would have pretended they didn't sink.

+I know golden isn't a flavour but I don't know another  way to describe the lovely harmoniousness of the nutmeg-vanilla combo bathed in sweetness except as golden.

* Mince Pies are the most EVIL thing to do to someone at Christmas and I am so glad they died off of Mom's Christmas baking list in favour of butter tarts - thank-you Mommy, thank-you from me and every taste-bud in my mouth.

The Scone Apprentice's recurring nightmare that comes true every year during the Christmas season in England:

host: "who wants some dessert?"

TSA: "yes, please! I always save room for dessert!"

host: "do you want cream on your mince pie?"

TSA: "I didn't think dessert was going to be mince pies..." ... oh no! oh why did I say yes so quickly! full panic internal debate on whether to go for self-preservation and back-peddle with 'on second thought maybe I'm too full' or if I have to ask for two in an illogical attempt to be polite as a cover for the excessive disappointment and repulsion written all over my face even though the polite façade would only last up to the first bite

host: "they're a new kind!" ... there's hope, maybe it won't be so bad, maybe the new change will make it better

TSA: "do they still have candied peel and beef suet?"

host: "yes! and the pastry crust had a layer of grapefruit marmalade spread under the mincemeat to give them a fresh zing!" ...no that did not make it better, that made it the opposite of better - why don't people here eat butter tarts at Christmas?

** the only way to make sprouts non-offensive is to refuse to bring them into your house, and fyi given that sprouts are food of the devil it makes them most inappropriate to serve during the feast celebrating the birth of Jesus