Anyhoo.. as I've mentioned before, we did our family's big Christmas lunch a couple of weeks ago, before we came to Germany. Let's take a look!


Let's start with the pudding. Every year I mean to get organised and make it in advance - at least a week, possibly a few months - but mostly I just forget until the last minute. (Except in 2011, where I made two puddings and froze one for the next year). Anyway, this time I actually made it super last minute - I made up the batter the day before, and steamed it while we were eating Christmas lunch the next day. I was worried that with only one steaming, and no maturation time, it might taste weird, but it turned out delicious! Hooray!

I got some suet at Rendinas Butcher on the day I made the pudding. Luckily they had some (I'd been to another butcher the day before and had no luck), and even better, they kindly gave it to me for free!

Suet

I Googled around, and apparently you can make Christmas pudding with cold grated butter or vegetable shortening, (my backup plans), but I'm told that suet gives the best result. The melting temperature of suet is higher than the other fats, so it takes longer to melt. By the time that the grated suet melts, the batter will have already begun to set, leaving little air pockets in the batter and giving the finished pudding a light and spongy texture.

Here's what it looks like grated up.

Grated suet

As usual, I use Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding recipe, for utter perfection.

Christmas pudding mixture

Even the batter smells good, with its Pedro Ximinez-soaked dried fruit and generous spices.

Delicious mixture

Okidoki, let's look at the lunch itself! We rocked up at my Dad's house late in the morning, Sandra set the table, and we got to work putting lunch together.

The table

As you can see, this is our traditional and much-loved Christmas lunch - Gordon Ramsay's turkey, goose fat roast potatoes, red cabbage and a vegetable side. This year it was roasted carrots.

Bacon blanket for the turkey breast!

Bacon blanket for the turkey breast

Ta-dah! (I'd been given some cherries from the Victorian Cherry Association the week before, so we thought we'd add them to the table. So Christmassy!)

Fooooood

My turkey-carving skills are surely improving. Woop woop.

Carved turkey

Here are the potatoes! As you can see, some of them are a little pale. I forgot to bring the semolina with me, and I think the potatoes were a little overcrowded in my baking tray. Never mind, they still tasted good. (And on my second, small Christmas lunch, you'll see that I made sure they were semolina-dusted and super crispy).

Goosefat roast potatoes

FLAMING!

Christmas pudding

I absolutely love Christmas pudding - and I see no reason to try to find a more crowd-pleasing dessert for the big day. Pavlovas, fluffy sponges and chocolate puddings are all well and good, but for me, the proper Christmas meal must have pudding.

Nigella's ultimate Christmas pudding is my favourite one - both rich and light, super moist and gorgeously aromatic. I don't want to wait until next Christmas to have this again! (We had some leftover and it was just as good microwaved in individual slices for an absolute treat of an afternoon tea).

Christmas pudding

Although I must admit, for some people, the highlight of the Christmas meal isn't the pudding, but rather the vanilla custard. Ahem.

Custard

Merry Christmas everybody!

Served with double cream and raspberries

To really gild the lily, I served it with double cream and more fresh raspberries. The cake doesn't necessarily need anything extra, but the cream and raspberries took it from afternoon tea to dessert.

Raspberry Bakewell Cake

I hope you enjoy this cake as much as we did!

Raspberry Bakewell Cake
Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food

Ingredients
140 grams unsalted butter, softened
140 grams caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
140 grams ground almonds
140 grams self-raising flour
2 tablespoons raspberry jam
150 grams fresh (or frozen) raspberries
2 tablespoons flaked almonds

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a 20cm springform tin with baking paper.
Beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time and beat in well, followed by the vanilla extract.
Add the ground almonds and beat on a low speed until just combined.
Sift in the flour and beat on a low speed until just combined.
Spoon half the mixture into the prepared tin and spread out gently. (N.B. the mixture will be quite thick).
Spoon over the raspberry jam and spread out as evenly as you can.
Sprinkle the raspberries over.
Spoon the remaining mixture over and spread out gently.
Sprinkle with the flaked almonds.
Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cover the cake with foil halfway through if the top looks like it's going to burn.
Allow to cool in the tin on a wire rack before transferring to a plate to serve.

I tried to go for a menu that was still special, but not as belt-poppingly decadent as a full turkey lunch. A roast chicken was the centrepiece, accompanied by some delicious vegetable sides, followed by a buttery almond cake. Ta-dah!

Trussed Chicken

For the chicken, I splashed out on a fancy Organic Milawa chicken, and roasted it simply. I mixed up some butter, chopped sage, parsley, lemon zest, salt and pepper, and spread this mixture under the skin to keep the breast moist. Half a lemon and a garlic clove went into the cavity, and then I trussed the chicken to keep it looking nice. (Check out my guide on "How to Truss a Chicken" for more details!) Then it went into a roasting tray, atop a trivet of chopped onion, celery and carrots. I seasoned it generously with salt and pepper, and drizzled it with olive oil, and then it went into the oven at 200C for 20 minutes per 500 grams plus 30 minutes. Done!

Carrots and sweet potatoes, ready for roasting

After the chicken came out and was resting, carefully covered in a foil blanket, I roasted the potatoes on the top shelf, with the the carrots and sweet potatoes in a tray underneath. (These were just roasted in a little olive oil, with the seasonings and flavourings added separately afterwards).

And here's the chicken!

Roast chicken

Carved

Here are the sides! The sweet potatoes were to keep my mum happy, the carrots were to keep Sandra happy, and the roast potatoes were absolutely non negotiable for everyone at the table! (The avocado rose was because our latest delivery from Barham avocados has been ripening faster than we can cope with in this heat! My mum was very impressed with my avocado-presentation skills, heh).

The sides

Goosefat-roast potatoes

The potatoes were Nigella's perfect roast potatoes, with a few sage leaves added for the last 10 minutes of cooking. Best.

Roast carrots

Sandra did the carrots - seasoning them with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper, and drizzled with a little honey. Lovely!

Sweet potatoes with goats cheese and chilli

The sweet potatoes were a bit of an impromptu dish - we'd picked up some cute small sweet potatoes the day before, with no idea of what to do with them. On the day, while I was cooking, I thought some chilli and goats cheese would go well. (My dad and Sandra kindly went to the supermarket to pick up both ingredients!) Once the sweet potatoes came out of the oven, I sprinkled them with cumin, salt and pepper, and arranged them in a bowl with goats cheese, chopped chilli and parsley. How festive with the red and green flecks! I was surprised by just how good this tasted - my sweet-potato-obsessed mother couldn't stop eating these! Def making these again!

Phew! That was the lunch! And then while we were slowly cleaning up, picking at the last pieces of food, Sandra jumped up and baked a batch of Vanillekipferl like it was no big deal. What a champion. (These were for gifts throughout the week; I swear we didn't eat them all at once!)

Vanillekipferl

So, after cleaning up, we put some tea on and got stuck into dessert! I'd baked a raspberry Bakewell cake - a buttery almond cake, with a layer of raspberry jam and fresh raspberries in the middle. I'd actually thought of making a trifle or a Bakewell tart, but I was too lazy to do either. The cake was much lower effort, but was so good! I'll be sharing the recipe soon. This was served with fresh raspberries and double cream - ridiculous.

Raspberry Bakewell Cake

And while we're here, I just wanted to quickly show you some gifts that we've been distributing to friends and colleagues in the week leading up to Christmas. These include those Vanillekifperl you saw earlier in this post, but also the coffee stout gingerbread, the raspberry bakewell cake, and yes, some avocados.

Jump to recipe

Good morning to you! Exactly one week until Christmas... squee! I was thinking of breaking up the Christmas baking posts here with something different (a restaurant post, perhaps, or a book review), but then thought better of it. More Christmas baking! More, I say! Hang those who talk of less!

About this time every year, I suddenly panic and think I should bake some gingerbread, and then look through all my Nigella books to compare all the different recipes and try to decide which one to bake. Nigella has a real way with gingerbread, and she's got so many recipes for it, all of which look very tempting. The subtle differences - treacle or golden syrup? Fresh ginger added? Chocolate chips? A lemony glaze? I get paralysed with indecision! (I see that trying to choose between different Nigella recipes for the same food is a uniquely "Sarah" problem - so forgive my blabbing on about it). Perhaps one day I'll bake them all and do a side-by-side comparison. Can you imagine!

For future reference, (i.e. when next Christmas comes around and I'm frantically comparing gingerbread recipes), let me remind myself that I love the stem-ginger gingerbread from How to Eat, and that last year's efforts of Nigella's sticky gingerbread (from Nigella Christmas) were also rapturously received.

Today's gingerbread, however, is a little riff on Nigella's Guinness Gingerbread, which comes from Kitchen, and is also highly recommended by my friend Clarice (baker extraordinaire and fellow Nigella-obsessive!) Some months back, I'd bought a hipster coffee-infused stout (seven ancient grains and organic coffee), and never got around to drinking it. I thought that a malty drink, with the added power of coffee, would be perfect in a rich, spicy gingerbread.

Hipster beer! Ironic espresso cup

I also added a shot of espresso to the batter because coffee is life.

Ingredients!

Look at all those ingredients! So rich, such aroma. By the way, I love using dark muscovado sugar in baking - not only does it give baked goods such a lovely treacly flavour, but it adds a great fudgy texture.

Sah aromatic

The gingerbread contains a generous amount of spices - two teaspoons each of dried ginger and cinnamon, and a quarter teaspoon of cloves. The house smelled so Christmassy and welcoming as this was baking!

Baked!

For funsies, and to make sure the coffee taste really came through, I added a coffee glaze after it was baked - icing sugar, butter, cocoa powder, espresso and a little more of that coffee stout. To be safe, I reduced the sugar in the actual gingerbread, to make sure it didn't go OTT sweet once the glaze was poured over.

Gingerbread!

Boy howdy, this was some good gingerbead! It was so moist and tender, and I thought the coffee glaze worked so well, with the fresh espresso cutting through the sweetness of the gingerbread, but also enhancing the dark and spicy flavours. The glaze is quite thin (add more sugar or use less liquid if you prefer a more spreadable icing), but I loved the light crackly-crunchy texture it added to the top of the gingerbread, not to mention the added moistness.

This is serious gingerbread - definitely one for grownups and coffee lovers. Enjoy!

Coffee Stout Gingerbread with Coffee Glaze
Gingerbread recipe adapted from Nigella's Guinness Gingerbread (Kitchen), Coffee Glaze recipe adapted from Nigella's Chocolate Gingerbread (Feast)

Ingredients
For the gingerbread
150 grams unsalted butter
300 grams golden syrup
150 grams dark muscovado sugar
250 millilitres coffee stout (or regular stout)
1 shot espresso (30 millilitres)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
300 grams plain flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
300 grams sour cream
2 eggs
For the glaze
250 grams icing sugar
30 grams unsalted butter
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 shot espresso (30 millilitres)
30 millilitres coffee stout (or regular stout)

Method
Preheat the oven to 170C. Line a 30 x 20 x 5cm baking tray with baking paper. (If you're using a foil tray, grease it with butter).
Place the butter, golden syrup, dark muscovado sugar, coffee stout, espresso, ginger, cinnamon and cloves in a saucepan and melt gently over a low heat, whisking to combine well.
Take off the heat, and sieve in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Whisk gently to combine, making sure you get all of the lumps.
Whisk the sour cream and eggs together in a separate bowl, and then beat into the gingerbread mixture.
Pour the mixture into the prepared tray, and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a cake skewer comes out with just a few moist crumbs.
Allow to cool in the tin before icing it.
To make the glaze, sieve the icing sugar and set aside.
Place the butter, cocoa, espresso and coffee stout in a saucepan over a low heat until the butter is melted.
Take off the heat and whisk in the icing sugar.
Remove the cooled gingerbread from the tin and place onto a wire rack. (I suggest putting a tray or some kitchen paper underneath to catch sticky drips!)
Pour over the glaze, (you may not need all of it, just pour and spread it until the gingerbread is covered), and cut into slices once it's set.