My Rich Fruit/ Xmas Cake

Rich Fruit Cake

Hi my lovely reader I was asked by a friend on Face Book if I could give her the recipe to my fruit/ Xmas cake, which I bragged about (well that’s what Face book is for isn’t it? bragging about what types of food you bake and your children which is a sort of baking as well I guess :) ).

Anyway after receiving this request I was quite chuffed; then had a think about how I would write what I do down. Hmmmmm … so here goes I hope its clear enough for you.

This recipe is a mix of a few I have played with over the years and I have stuck with this method which I feel gets me the best results.

Materials you will need

1 Large Bowl

1 medium sized bowl

Cling wrap

Baking paper

Siscors

1 skewer

An electric hand beater

Wooden mixing spoon

And spatula.

(This recipe is designed for a fan forced oven.)

So prep time for the different stages

24 hours for soaking the fruit (some times I go longer it just depends on how strong a flavour the Sherry or Brandy you have).

30 mins for mixing ingredients

Another 30 mins for preparing the tin (it can be shorter but I think 30 mins is about right. The first time I did it I think it took me about an hour so factor that into your timing)

N.B Prepping the tin is very important for the bake, as you want to protect the fruit from burning

Then 3.5 to 4 hours bake time depending on your oven.

Ingredients

1 cup of brandy, sherry or Rum

(I have just tried rum for the first time this year so fingers crossed, but I find Sherry lovely)

500g Sultanas

375g raisins chopped

250g glace Cherries cut into quarters or halves

(I do half and half mainly because I get sick of cutting them, but it is also fun to get a big bit of cherry in the cake).

250g unsalted butter, softened

(Just bung it in the microwave if you are short on time and have forgotten to take it out, 1 min should do it.)

230g soft dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons of apricot jam

(Or any jam, I have also used raspberry, which was great. Jam is also awesome in chocolate cake too just pop it in after you beat the eggs )

2 tablespoons of Golden Syrup

1 tablespoon of grated lemon or orange rind.

(This year I have mixed them both up so hopefully that worked, I will let you know.)

4 eggs

350g of plain flour

(Which roughly turns out to be 2 and ¼ cups)

1 teaspoon of ground ginger

(I use the powdered stuff, which is a little stronger in taste so if you don’t like ginger just be a little conservative with that)

1 teaspoon of mixed spice

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

(This has the same warning as the ginger).

Wrapping the tin

OK this is important I get this ready before I mix any ingredients

Get a 22cm spring formed tin and grease it generously with butter.

With your baking paper cut out a circle for the bottom of the tin (I usually trace around the tin to get an accurate fit)

Next pull out a long length of paper enough to wrap the inside circumference of the tin and to over lap the ends just a little bit.

Now fold the paper in half

Now cut on a diagonal along the bottom of the paper, (about 2cm width apart and 2cms in length.) Make sure you don’t cut the folded side; below is a little example of what I mean.

N.B – the paper needs to be thicker than a regular cake needs and also a couple of inches higher, above the tin. This protects the top of the cake and the fruit from burning.

Now place the paper inside the tin starting with the side of the tin first. The cuts should be placed on the floor of the tin; this is to make it easier for the paper fit in a circle, and to fit inside the tin nicely.

Next place the circle shaped paper on the bottom of the tin, which should cover over the cut part of the paper which you have pressed down on the bottom of the tin.

N.B this is why you need to generously grease up the tin it needs to hold a bit of paper.

(AFTER THE INGREDIENTS IS MIXED)

NOW THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT once the cake mix is in the tin you wrap the outside of the tin with more paper I use news paper  (the Age) because it’s easy to get and the length is perfect. But if you are worried about the ink in the oven, don’t, it doesn’t affect the flavour at all, but if you are worried try and find some butchers paper or something simular.

Whatever you use it needs to be about 3 pages thick and folded over (I find that’s the best). It just needs to be the same height as your baking paper inside the tin.

All this wrapping sounds a bit OTT, but it needs to be insulated as it is in the oven 4 hours.

This is not my cake of course, its a nice pretentious image. Yours and my cake paper will look a lot messier and darker after being in the oven for 4 hours. But technically this is what it should look like going into the oven, minus the almonds of course. The cake mix should reach the top of the tin but don't worry about that because it wont rise. 

Method for mixing the cake

Put all the fruit in the smaller bowl and pour the Alcohol over the fruit, cover the bowl with cling wrap and let it soak for at least over night or 24 hours.

After the fruit is soaked you are ready to mix the ingredients

Pre heat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius

In the bigger bowl

Beat the butter and sugar together so it is just combined, (with the electric beater)

Next beat in the Jam, Syrup, and rind so it is just combined also.

Now add the eggs one at a time beating really well after each addition.

(Stop using the electric beaters now and pick up your trusty ol’ spoon)

Mix in the fruit and its juices (the booze :) ) with a wooden spoon (mix this really well.)

Combine the flour and the spices together and sift them in to the fruit mix.

Now mix this really well, I stir for about 3 or 5 mins just to make sure all the flour has gone through. Make like a digging action just to make sure the bottom is all clear (it will be smelling awesome right now)

N.B don’t use a cake mixer for mixing these ingredients, for a few reasons, first I am pretty sure you wont have a bowl big enough and the mixture is so stiff your engine on the machine will burn out. Use your elbow grease its fun and you get to lick your fingers after (if this is the first time you are doing this you will get messy I guarantee it :) )

Now once the flour is all mixed in, Spoon the mixture into the lined tin and start wrapping as described in the above text.

Once the tin is wrapped and the oven is heated to 150, Place more paper on the rack inside the oven and place the bottom of tin on top of the paper just to give it more insulation. Close the oven and wait 3.5 to 4 hours.

N.B you can check your cake with a skewer, if it comes out clean it is ready if it doesn’t put it in for some more baking.

After the cake is done. It needs to completely cool in the tin, but it needs to cool slowly. So wrap the WHOLE cake in more paper then wrap it some more in a few tea towels. The cooling process should take about 12 to 24 hours. N.B if you put it on a cooling rack, all wrapped up, it will cool faster.

Once the cake is cool you can take it out of the tin. Brush some more alcohol over the top of the cake  (about 1 table spoon) and then wrap it in cling wrap and put it in an airtight container and put it in a cool dark cupboard (I use my linen cupboard).

Then once a week for about 4 weeks take the cake out and brush it with 1 tablespoon of alcohol. This is the make sure the fruit and cake is fully preserved as you are able to keep this cake in these conditions for several months and if you freeze it, it can be kept for 12 months even longer I have heard.

So now your cake is made I usually start making this for Xmas at the start of November just to give me plenty of time.

So this is the cake hope you have fun making it. Its even better eating it I promise :)

Let me know how you all went

Love Allison 

Cezsan Vs Barrack who can Choose?

Hello my lovely reader 

Well its been awhile since my last entry but lets face it life is just a little to unpredictable and hectic to be a regular blogger like I have done in the passed. I also find my time stretched between my arty crafty and my writing, of which i tend to favour my arty crafty more as that is my career choice and the blogging is - well - a hobby. 

So as it is i have actually found some time. Between LM sleeps, jet lag, my in laws and the fact that I am half way around the world and 30 hours away from my arty crafty equipment. I feel quite happy to go on a walk with you :) 

( just bear in mind jet lag is a killer so if i say anything strange id like you to just give me some leeway there cheers) 

So where are we walking today? Well how about Cananda ? Prince Edward island (PEI) to be exzact and well we all know how amazing the literary is here so i feel it only right that i do some writing in respect to this amazing place.

PEI is just beautiful the country side is everything Lucy Montgomery describes and more, minus the red dirt roads ( well there are still a few but there are alot of high ways now) and the train line has been pulled out. But other than that the beauty that the country side holds pulls on the very fibre of your heart and janks it straight up to your throat, naturally causing you to gasp ( a bit of Anne embellishment there, possibly a little more graphic than the great Lucy would have liked but you get the drift. :) ) 

So wherehave i been walking; well to be honest the only walking LM and I have done is to and from the car visiting relatives and friends of relatives and friends of Daddy's etc etc etc its actually starting to feel and bit like work having to be this polite and quite frankly I think poor LM has had enough and being a baby she holds no qualms about letting everyone know what she doesnt like. Which is refreshing to say the least.

Anyway what have we seen? well all the houses in the country side are just spectacular every where you look you feel like you have entered an oil painting from the 1800's. The difference between here and my normal route is phenomenal and can not be expressed in words i will just have to post you some images. 

Margate PEI Canada

French River PEI Canada

Philip Island Victoria Australia

Wheelers Hill Victoria Australia

But in terms of paintings I feel PEI is a Cezsan and Melbourne is a John Barrack what do you think?. Both spectacular and interesting in their own right, but also incomparable in beauty. How do you compare the urban to the country? I guess this was the same dilemma that most impressionists faced when confronted with what the industrial revolution and war brought to the cities towns and villages; moving them to look for the beauty in light within their surroundings instead of just raw beauty. 

Machines dirt and stone - wood earth and water 

Interesting?

Well that's our little wander around the universe for today I hope you enjoyed 

Looking forward to next time 

xoxo Allison xoxo 

Returne from Oblivion.

Hello there my lovely reader.

So here is my next entry, I must admit these blogs are coming slow and sluggish but I am finding it hard to fit everything in plus running around after my crawling soon to be walking child its crazy she is like a little ant scurrying around getting into everything (trying to eat everything)

So where have we walked and what thoughts have we wondered around with since last time?

Well lets see, time just escapes me like a blur it has actually taken me a week to write this much, I have a friend who is just finishing up her masters and has a beautiful little girl, and I have no idea how she is doing it, but she is its amazing. Between LM and my Bonnie Nell creations (my arty crafty) my brain is left completely full sometimes I can’t find enough room for a vocabulary.

My walking helps especially those sunny days were I can walk for an hour or so while LM is snoozing and I sip on a latte soaking in that lovely blue winter sky. Below is a picture of what we are lucky to walk under sometimes I guess its these grey overcast days that make us love the winter sun more than the dreaded summer sun (as you might be aware from my thesis blog I don't do heat well at all).

So what have I seen on my walks? Well to be honest I have seen a lot of frozen moments of change. What I mean by that is that I have seen a block of land flattened and cleared of the house that once occupied that particular space and only a scrap of pavement left in the now extinct drive way. The ground looks scarred and raw like the flesh appears under the newly formed scab. It looks tired, worn and naked, littered with small scraps of rubbish that the weather will eventually dispose of. The ghost of the old house is still present but the air around it longs for something new.

I wonder why the house was demolished or what was wrong with it if anything. Houses around my area were built in the 1960's, new and flash for that time, but now tired and old. Renovations upon renovations pile up on the structure of the building - the appearance of "value"- so there is only a vague glimmer of the original design and architecture

This gap in land? property? time? or life? It is a strange scene to behold, like the times when you "clean" out your life. The scab from the events leading up to this adjustment is raw and weeping. But the knowledge of time fading and healing the wound makes the individual eager to pull the blistered skin away before its ready. Rebuilding is tricky. (Also council permits are a pain in the ass to get approved ;))  

I guess over the last 12 months I have been trying to rebuild myself from the oblivion of childbirth and the shock of motherhood. Regaining my identify changing the ideas and notions of who I am, what I want to do, and what life means to me now as apposed to what I thought they were before LM entered my life. 

In thinking on this and looking at the image of this empty block I feel I am much further along the rebuild than this site. But I have a long way to go, but at least the groundwork is done, the concrete is poured and the building frame up.

Now? For the next stage. 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I will blog again soon xoxox 

Letter boxes and numbers

Hi there

Well let me see where have we walked this week? To be completely honest we havent had much time to walk as LM has had her first cold. So like a typical mew mum I have kept LM inside, wrapped up and taking it really easy. But I have to get back into walking or my bottom will start getting a little wider as my sanity gets a little thinner :)

So last post I said that I would talk about letter boxes and numbers.

Well Im not sure how to put it but I have a secret obsession (well not so secret but just quiet) I am obsessed with numbers and all the different ways the single or multiple digit is represented, Im not sure why, I think it started 6 or 7 years ago when I started going for walks with my then boyfriend and now husband :)

We liked to walk and look and take photos of all the street art and graffiti that would pop up on the streets where we used to live. And I started thinking that I admired the number along with the other art work.

I like all the different colours and desgins, how big they are or how small and where they are placed espically for businesses. I started thinking that the "Number" as an entity is highly under rated as a meaningful symbol. The number of a building a business or a home is one of the major identifiers of our every day to day life, and we take it for granted. We look for numbers when we are trying to find a specific place we use them on maps on keyboards and phones. We use numbers and quianties in cooking calculating telling the time, even right now, I am inadvertently using numbers, here inside this computer as I write. We use numbers for everything.


IMAGINE IF SOMEONE TOOK ALL THE NUMBERS AWAY?

imagine not being able to use numbers?

I guess I over think this subject a little bit but the whole thing fascinates me. So because of this I take photographs of what I feel are very interesting numbers. I even found a letter box that had no number which was interesting as at first viewing I knew there was something wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it then I realised that it was actually the absence of the number that made the whole thing look strange. So this photo is up there with my favourite numbers.

See; empty hey? I feel pretty lucky that I got this image as I would almost bet money that the next day the owner of this home would have placed a number on it.

So at the moment letter boxes are my big focus which makes sense as I am walking around suburbia and I am surrounded by numbers on these boxes all the time. So as a result I have seen hundreds and hundreds of letter boxes and numbers Mostly all of them are the generic design from your local bunnings but occasionally you get a few great ones. What I do not like how ever are the letter boxes that resemble fake wood complete with fake moss they are every where around this area

They might not seems annoying at first but after nearly 12 months of walking passed these poor excuse for nature they start to get on your nerves. You cant tell from the photo but its hard plastic and there is this faded green all over it posing as moss I guess. 

Well I think I have just had an aphfiny. I think the reason why these letter boxes annoy me is because they are so unorginal. I think I miss my walks around fabulous street art and graffiti and all I look at now are boring generic letter boxes. I think I need to hit the galleries, that will get my arty crafty back Im sure.

So maybe that will be my next post LM and I at the Gallery not sure which one but that will be a surprise.

Well LM is stirring 

Look forward to our next walk :) 

Baby Steps.

Well the dishes are done, the shirts are ironed, and the kitchen table has a limited amount of clutter on it, so I feel happy to be able to sit down with a well-deserved cuppa and type my first blog in two weeks.

Well where have we been walking? The last couple of weeks the weather has been so lovely LM and I have walked around our streets here in suburbia but also we have been lucky enough to celebrate the suns last dance before she retires for the winter and had some fantastic adventures. We have had fish and chips on the beach in Mentone, on another day we had a lovely lunch at Montanans Cafe, which was awesome, but best of all we were lucky enough to visit the beautiful land of Phillip island, which was spectacular.

So lots of walking and seeing new things but not so much pondering and thinking done in regards Bonnie Nell and the Crafty Arty. It would seem that I am stuck on what my "bread and butter" will be. I have realized that hand woven products however lovely are just a little to time consuming to make the quick money to get Bonnie Nell off the ground. I have also been reading about starting up a small business and what it takes, (which is scary enough thank you very much) and another thing that has got be a little stumped is the question how does Bonnie Nell Crafts help people? How will my products make other peoples life easier?

So these are the questions going around in my head. Now I am fully aware that Bonnie Nell crafts is not going to find a cure to cancer or create the path to world peace, but I’m not entirely sure how a hand made product can make life easier for other people.

Hmmm tough questions but also extremely boring to blog about; anyway if I come up with any ideas I will let you know or if you have any thoughts please swing them my way :)

Anyway this is my blog entry not very exciting I'm afraid but the baby waking and feeding seems to zap all my brain matter hopefully I will get better at this. Well I guess this is what the blog is for, to help my brain move again :)

Well I will sign off hopefully next time I will have something profound for you or at least funny; I think I will talk about letter boxes and numbers. 

Happy walking xoxo 

P.S here is a lovely tree we and I found on our walk, Autumn is on its way :) 

Who is Bonnie Nell ?

Hello there

How are you all? it has been awhile between blogs but I think its time to stat talking again.

So what has been happening? Well I finished up my masters and jumped head first into motherhood which has been an amazingly fantastic journey, but as a result everything else artistic and crafty has been pushed to one side.
It has nearly been a year since my wonder and joy came into our lives and I cant imagine my life without her. I could even be slightly obsessed but we will leave that for another blog :)
However as LMs 1st birthday looms up ahead, so does the end of my self imposed maternity leave, which is great because I have started really wanting to recapture the old artist and crafter and I would love to see that part of myself rise again, but also make it a new, with the addition of my LM brain, which is loud and very in the forefront of my mind, (but again we will leave that for another entry:) ).

Any way.......

So on one of my lovely walks with my baby (we shall call LM) I thought that I would start up a blog and just start talking, and hopefully my creativity and crafty nature will come back.

So what and who is Bonnie Nell? Well she is actually two people Bonnie and Nell are my Grandmothers and their love of craft and creativity inspired me onto my own craft/ art journey. So I have honoured them, their amazing life and skills in craft and named my own small business Bonnie Nell Crafts

So what does Bonnie Nell Crafts produce? Well to start with, I will start out with hand woven scarves and once off hand machine embroidered badges and patches, and then go from there.

So what will this blog do? Well hopefully it will get my mind out of baby world and get me back into the real world, but also on my walks with LM I have these amazing thoughts and ideas and see some fantastic sights and quirky things that I would love to share with people but since its just LM and me the moment just slips away. So this is what "Bonnie Nell's Walk" is; you will be taking our walks with us, minus the cardio vascular feel :) of course. So in short you will be getting all the pleasant Autumn colours, Spring breezes, winter snaps, and summer warmth, coming to you through this little blog. All without putting your sneakers on :)

Well thats what this is I will post when LM gives me the time and hopefully you will join the chat with me.

So there is nothing else to say except lets get walking :)