For this year's Christmas cake, I've gone for a classic - Nigella Lawson's Christmas Cake.  It's the basic one that appears in almost all her books, unphotographed, with weights and measurements for 3 different sized cakes.  I often think it's just included for the sake of completeness rather than any excitement on Nigella's part.  Perhaps not quite as dazzling as her marzipan fruit cake, or her chocolate fruit cake, but a good reliable cake nonetheless.

She does tweak the recipe from book to book, and in case you're interested, I used the recipe from Nigella Christmas, in an 18cm round tin.  It's quite similar to previous versions, except that it contains less varieties of dried fruits, more alcohol (wahey!) and some almond meal.  As y'all will have realised by now, I don't usually reprint recipes, (they're not mine to share, so please stop asking me guys!), but if you want to have a go at it, the original Christmas cake recipe is at this website.  Love the incredible mid-90's design, complete with pale blue animated background, hehe! 

Let's have a look at how it's made...

Mmm... Muscovado sugar and butter...

Spices, flour and almond meal

Sultanas, currants and glace cherries, which had been soaked overnight in brandy

The all-important lining of the tin

Mixture in the tin.  I can never get fruit cake mixture to be smooth on top!

And finally... baked!

The aroma was heavenly!  I've been feeding the cake with brandy and we'll be having it as dessert for our Christmas dinner this year.  So excited to try it!

You'll see it's quite a plain looking cake, and I wasn't able to get it completely smooth.  (You can see all the little cracks on top and on the sides.)  But do you know what?  This means that this year, yes, I will finally be icing my Christmas cake.  I'll be doing the whole shebang - marzipan and rolled white fondant and any little extra decorations that I fancy.  I haven't done a proper fondant icing before, so I hope it turns out well.  For those of you who are more experienced in these matters than I am, any tips for a spectacular Christmas cake? What types of decorations do you like?

I wasn't going to devote a whole post to Vanillekipferl again this year, but I so enjoyed making them last weekend, and got some great pictures, so here we go again!  And it can't hurt to gently remind y'all of just how fabulous these crumbly, buttery little biscuits are.  Every time I mention them, someone seems to ask me for the recipe, so for anyone who wants to get their Christmas biscuit baking, let me link you the recipe.  You can thank me later.

I was really excited to finally try out the silicon Kipferlform that the folks in Germany got me last year for Christmas.

Mmm... I love the fragrant crumbly dough

I didn't have any vanilla sugar, so I added the seeds of half a vanilla pod and a teaspoon of vanilla extract, for extra intense vanilla-goodness.
You can only make 16 at a time, but the upside is that you get perfectly formed little Kipferl!  I halved the recipe here, and got about 24 biscuits out of the mixture.


The only issue I had with the silicon tray was that the biscuits weren't cooked all the way through by the time they were brown on top.  (I'm not used to baking with silicon - perhaps I should have placed a metal tray underneath to conduct the heat more?)  Anyway, it wasn't a huge problem - I just unmoulded the cookies and put them back in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up.

Still a little white and doughy

The snowy dusting of icing sugar, I've realised, has to be super thick, and has to be done when the biscuits are still piping hot, so the sugar slightly melts and adheres to the biscuits, forming a light crust.



If you do try out the recipe, let me know how you go!  What are your favourite Christmas biscuits?

The tree is up...
The Christmas cake has been baked...
The Adventkranz is out...

The pudding has been delivered...

The first batch of Vanillekipferl has been made (and devoured!)...


...Christmas is coming!

I'm very excited about Christmas this year, and have lots of foodie plans for the next few weeks.  I'm so proud of our Christmas tree, a real mini-Tannenbaum from Bunnings - cute, huh?  The Christmas cake I've chosen this year is Nigella's classic Christmas cake, and the pudding is the one we made at The Langham's Pudding Making Class earlier this year.  Big thanks to Tina from Media Moguls for delivering it personally!  Can't wait to try it.  I love Christmas pudding.  I'll be doing a proper detailed post about the Christmas cake and Vanillekipferl soon!

I've got a couple of weeks off work for some proper relaxation time - so excited!  So apart from all the cooking, I'm just gonna relax at home and spend time with my friends and family.  What does everyone have planned for the holiday season?

For Melbourne Cup this year, I had a big weekend all planned.  Weeks in advance, I organised to have the Monday off so I'd have a 4-day weekend, booked a nice restaurant for one of the nights, and thought of a zillion fun things to do.  But by the time Melbourne Cup rolled around, it happened that we were both sick with the flu and spent all 4 days coughing our lungs up on the couch.  D'oh!

The upside is that I really managed to actually relax at home!  I don't know why it is, but sometimes I get so excited by the mere prospect of a weekend that I feel compelled to fill it with hours of activities and socialising, and end up exhausted rather than rejuvenated.  On this weekend, however, all I did was watch season 3 of Mad Men, and cook a lot!

The first thing I made was Nigella's praised chicken (previously made here), because as we all know, chicken soup cures everything.  And it was with that chicken broth that I made one of the more interestingly titled recipes from Kitchen, 'soup made with garlic and love'.  The inspiration for the soup is literary, and the recipe is from the final chapter in Kitchen, The Cook's Cure for Sunday-Night-Itis. This chapter is full of comforting, homely food for quiet nights in.  Mmm... perfect Sarah food!

But back to the soup in question.  It is just chicken broth, with a healthy amount of garlic, thyme, a leek and a couple of potatoes added.

Leeks, garlic and herbs cooking

Nigella suggests serving the garlicky soup with pumpkin scones, which is exactly what I did!  Her recipe uses tinned pumpkin, which in Australia is both difficult to find and expensive.  I steamed my own pumpkin for this one!  It was actually quite easy, so perhaps I'll try making pumpkin pie soon!  (You'll also note that since the Germ Knödel, I have purchased a proper Chinese steamer.)

Steaming pumpkin

To the mashed pumpkin, you add the below ingredients...


The mashed pumpkin provides most of the moisture for the scones, and there's no butter in the recipe, just 2 teaspoons of chilli oil. So I daresay they're a bit healthy.  Or at least not un-healthy.  You could always replace the plain flour with wholemeal as well, I suppose.

I only mixed the dough lightly, as I'm always paranoid about overworking the dough and making tough scones.  In this case it meant there were also nice chunky bits of pumpkin dotted through... yum!


I left half the dough plain, and decided to add feta and chives to the other half, as I thought it would be a nice combination.


Y'all know I have issues with my scones not rising properly,so I was incredibly happy when I opened the oven and saw these beauties.  Yay!


I loved the soup! With all those herbs and garlic, Sandra found it a bit rich and strong, but that's exactly what I liked about it!  And I'm sure garlic is good for colds as well - the clear, light soup was just what I needed.  The scones were light and fluffy, with a pleasant crust and sweet pumpkin taste.  And the feta/chive scones tasted just like those expensive savoury muffins you find at cafes or that we sometimes get catered for training.  Heh.  We had a couple that day, and I froze the rest and ate them slowly over the next few weeks for breakfasts.  They defrost quickly and a short zap in the microwave brings them back to life.

The other week, I suddenly realised it had nearly been a year since I'd last seen my family friends Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen, and swiftly issued an invitation for dinner.  I also thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out a full-on British roast beef dinner that I'd been wanting to do since, well, forever!

Mmm... beef.

A full English Roast Dinner for 6
Roast Rib of Beef
Roast Potatoes
Savoy Cabbage "the best way"
Cauliflower Cheese
Yorkshire Puddings
Horseradish Sauce
Onion Gravy

Bakewell Slice

The above recipes are all from Nigella's Feast, although various incarnations of most of those recipes appear in other books of hers.  In Feast, she refers to it as the Ultimate Sunday Lunch.  Who am I to argue?

Beef Rib

The beef in question was a gorgeous organic beef rib from Rendinas Butchery.  Beautiful!  We bought all the ingredients the day before, and then made our way over to Mum and Dad's place on Sunday arvo and spent the whole afternoon cooking.  Let's have a look, shall we?

Mmm... beef

I rubbed the beef in a mixture of garlic oil, porcini powder and mustard powder, for extra deliciousness.

Now, the all-important side dishes!

Savoy Cabbage "the best way"

Nigella's recipe for savoy cabbage is simply stir-fried with a bit of stock and other flavourings.  It complemented the rest of the menu well, but was a bit boring on its own.  I must admit, I only made the cabbage to be a bit healthy, and to try the complete menu.  But now we get on to the fun sides!

Cauliflower Cheese

I frikkin LOVE cauliflower cheese.  It's so easy, and now I want to make it all the time.  Just blanch the cauliflower, make a white sauce, add unholy amounts of grated cheddar and bake it!  It goes with everything.  However, when you make it yourself, you see (there's no way you can avoid it), just how terribly rich and unhealthy it is.  Small portions, small portions!  You may remember that I had a wonderful cauliflower cheese at the Black Cow Bistro in Launceston, from whom I took the idea of sprinkling chives on the top.

Roast Potatoes

Nigella's recipe for roast potatoes.  Still the best.  This time, I eschewed the goosefat for slightly healthier olive oil, and they still turned out well.  You don't get the artery-clogging tasty coating, but they're still crunchy outside and fluffy within.

Yorkshire Puddings

Yorkshire puddings are also super-easy to make, but I've only ever made the savoury version once before. I just can't go past a sweet Yorkshire pud, whether it be plain with golden syrup and ice-cream, or studded with apples.  The savoury version, however, is perfect Sarah-food - crunchy on the outside, and mega-doughy on the inside.  Mmm.. stodge.

Yorkshire Puddings

Fluffy insides

But I know what y'all are really here for... pictures of the beef!  I tend to either overcook or undercook my meat, so I was relieved that the roast came out just the way I wanted it - browned and slightly crusty on the outside, and tenderly pink on the inside.  (Using a meat themometer makes it really easy!)

Medium rare slices

Mmm... beef

Interestingly enough, after sitting around for a little while, the slices lost their pinkness and became more brown.  I'm not sure if it's because they were continuing to cook, or if it was a reaction with the air. Ideas?

Not pictured but most definitely eaten were a marsala-onion gravy, and a horseradish sauce.  Nigella's horseradish sauce is a mixture of (amongst other things) Greek yoghurt, cream, horseradish and chives, and it was absolutely wonderful!  I tell you, chives make everything taste awesome.

Well, after that massive meal, there isn't really room for a proper dessert, so I did the Bakewell slice in half-quantities, just something small and sweet to mark the end of the meal.

Bakewell Slice

Bakewell pie consists of a shortbready pastry, topped with jam and then an almondy frangipane.  (I previously made a version with fresh raspberries here, and very good it was too).  This time, I made it in a mini-foil barbeque tray, which means it's very easy to make (no need to roll out the pastry, just press it into the tin).  The foil tray also means that the base cooks evenly all the way through, and is incredibly buttery and crispy.

The Bakewell slice went down really well - I didn't think we'd get through more than half of it, but we polished the whole thing off!  Even German Sandra, who was suspicious of this strange-sounding British dessert, loved it and had seconds.  Even more exciting, Uncle Mike asked for the recipe. That means my attempt at cooking English food for an English person was a success!  Yay!

Bakewell slice, sliced

I spent the next week eating the most wonderful roast beef sandwiches - cold roast beef, grainy toast, cheese and horseradish cream.  As if you needed another excuse to get roasting!

***EDIT: I've added some extra thoughts about my subsequent visits to Pillar of Salt at the bottom of this post.***

It's always exciting when a new cafe opens, especially one that looks funky and has a lot of fresh energy from new owners.  I spied Pillar of Salt on Church street earlier this week, and popped in yesterday for a quick juice.  One look at the gorgeous goodies on the counter, and I knew I had to come back for lunch.  Which I did, today!

Counter

Pillar of Salt
541 Church Street
Richmond VIC 3121
Ph: (03) 9421-1550

The building used to be a pretty average cafe, run by two lovely Chinese ladies, whose food and coffee were, unfortunately, not as lovely as they were.  It closed down a while ago, due to too much competition in the area.  Since then, the new owners have completely refitted the space, with funky exposed brick walls and a light airy feel, which extends to a bright courtyard out the back.

It was a bit of a struggle waiting till lunchtime for my coffee, but I don't do more than one a day and I really wanted to enjoy a nice dine-in coffee with my lunch so I could get a good picture!  (See the sacrifices I make for my readers?  Hehe.)

Latte, Cappuccino - $3.50 each

The coffee was pretty good, although I think there are nicer ones at cafes that concentrate soley on coffee (Espresso 3121, Brother Baba Budan etc).  It seems that cafes these days concentrate on either coffee or their food, and Pillar of Salt falls into the latter category.  It's hard to find a cafe that excells at both food and coffee.  But if you know of one, I would love to hear about it!


My friend ordered the lamb burger with chips.  It was $18 on the menu, but only came up as $16 on the bill, wahey!  I have to admit I was a little skeptical when I saw it, as the burger was quite small, and the chips didn't look crispy - I think it's one big potato slice, fried on either side and then cut into chip shapes - but by all accounts the lamb burger was fabulous!  It had a soft bun, and generous amounts of sauce, feta and rocket.  It looked small, but was a satisfying lunch.

Lamb Burger and Chips - $16

I had to order the tart of the day, which was the item which caught my eye the day before, cooling on the bench.  Apparently they have a different flavour every day; today's was goats cheese, mushroom and herb.  Incidentally I had the exact same flavour in an omelette at a nearby cafe the day before, but this was so much better!

Tart with goats cheese, mushrooms and herbs - $12

The pastry was very buttery and short, with a warm and creamy (Nigella would say baveuse) filling, studded with whole mushrooms and herbs.  I would have liked the herbs to have been more finely chopped, (a mouthful of whole rosemary leaves is no fun), and perhaps a little more goats cheese, but all in all it was delicious!  The massive pile of rocket was lightly dressed, and was a refreshing counterpoint to the rich tart.  I loved it, and now am determined to make one as the veggo option at my Christmas party this year.

Other options at Pillar of Salt include a range of baguettes, rocky road, toasted sandwiches and freshly baked muffins (rhubarb today) in the cabinet, a cooked breakfast menu and other lunches.  Can't wait to go back and try more!

***EDIT***

6/12/2010 - So, as I'd mentioned when I wrote this post, I was very keen to go back to Pillar of Salt and try more food.  I've been back a couple of times now, and here are some thoughts:

• The Positive: Breakfast savouries in the front cabinet are fabulous!  
• They have delicious-looking rolls with either bacon or smoked salmon, and they also do extremely cute mini rolls.  These are filled with one slice of tomato, a few spinach leaves, one perfectly poached egg and a spoonful of kassoundi.  I got one for breakfast the other day - only $3.50 and quite tasty, although I found it a bit odd to have a poached egg that was both runny AND cold.
• Another morning I went in looking for a savoury breakfast, and because none of the rolls had been assembled yet, they made up a toastie for me - actually slicing thick pieces of ham off the bone, and toasting it up with ciabatta bread and cheese.  So nice of them!

• The Negative: Service was a bit lacking on my subsequent eat-in visit, during a busy weekday lunch.  
• My friend ordered the same lamb burger as he did on our first visit, and although the chips were better (Matt from Pillar of Salt, by way of Claire, by way of Twitter, has informed me they have a proper deep fryer now), we saw lamb burgers at other tables with more generous servings of chips.  Also, they didn't give us dipping sauce this time, which disappointed my friend because he really liked it the first time we went!
• As for me, I ordered a chicken baguette... and was given a chicken sandwich!  When I told the waiter it wasn't what I'd ordered, he went to check, then came back and told me they'd run out of chicken baguettes, but had ham baguettes and chicken sandwiches.  Um... ok?  Why wouldn't they have told me this before they made the sandwich?  That way I could have changed my order or accepted the substitution.  And it would have been a total non-issue then.  I was staaarving, so just took the sandwich - and it happened to be delicious - but it just seemed odd the way the whole situation was handled.

 Anyhoo, the food is great, and they're still pretty new so I'm sure these issues will get ironed out.  In the meantime, I'd recommend sticking to takeaway!