I woke up about 5 o’clock this morning with a sore neck. I couldn’t think why though – what had I been doing? Then I remembered. I’d made Christmas cake yesterday.
Because of my advancing dotage, I could not remember the last time I’d baked a Christmas cake (I used to make them all the time). Furthermore, I’d forgotten that I had a recipe for a perfectly straightforward and acceptable fruit cake – so easy, as it only has four ingredients (see my other blog).
Nevertheless, I set about searching for an easy recipe and came up with this from the BBC: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/you-it-christmas-cake
You’ll see that Step 3 suggests that the butter, sugar and vanilla are ‘beaten’ until light and fluffy. Well, I’m too old for all that beating malarkey so I got my trusty (rusty in parts) Kenwood Major (Model #A907D) down out of the attic, so it could do all the hard work. I knew it was well used when I took possession of in in the late 80’s, but according to the Kenwood site, it could have been built in the late 70’s. So, I let it acclimatise overnight before starting work on the cake.
Everything weighed out and ready (butter softened as required), I set about beating the sugar and butter in the ‘Major’. I then left the room to pick up some mail and when I returned the kitchen was full of smoke and there was a ‘Major’ meltdown. It was unplugged as quickly as it could be (… the precious butter-sugar-vanilla mix rescued) and thrown out the back door as rapidly as possible. Luckily the extractor fan did a brilliant job of clearing the smoke and it wasn’t long therefore, before I was faced with the prospect of ‘beating’ the sugar and butter ‘until light and fluffy’.
That’s hard work I’ll tell you!
But two paracetamols and another couple of hours sleep made it all worthwhile. I can’t wait for my first slice of cake, with a nice piece of cheese and (possibly) a brandy.
Saturday Walks 