There's been so much baking and cooking going on in my house recently and I feel ashamed that I did not do a post since 17 November. Oahu time flies!
For Christmas I baked a few cakes but these are very worth noticing. One is by Ruby Tandoh's
Cherry stollen with pistachio marzipan and the other is for spiced sable biscuits by Will Torrent from his amazing book
Patisserie at Home
Cherry stollen with pistachio marzipan
Ingredients:
250g strong white flour
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp cinnamon¼ tsp ground cloves
1 (7g) sachet instant dried yeast
20g sugar
¾ tsp salt
150g butter, divided in half
115ml milk
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 1 orange
125g dried cherries, roughly chopped
75g mixed peel
30g icing sugar, for dusting
For the marzipan
150g pistachio kernels
130g icing sugar
⅛ tsp salt
30g egg white
Let's do it:
In a bowl combine flour, spices, yeast, sugar and salt remembering to not to put together or directly on each other yeast and salt. In a small pan melt 75g of butter, remove from the gas and add milk, vanilla extract, orange zest and egg. Mix well and then check if the mixture is tepid to warm which should be. If not gently heat it up and add to the dry ingredients. Mix well until all ingredients are well combined and form a dough, move to a kitchen top and knead for 10 minutes and then knead in the peel and dried cherries. Put the dough ball in a bowl, cover with cling film and leave until doubles it size. This will take up to 2 hours.
In the meantime to make marzipan: using a food processor blitz pistachio kernels until breadcrumbs, add icing sugar, salt and blitz very briefly, next transfer to a bowl. Add 2/3 of the egg white and mix well. My marzipan was too wet so I rescued it with adding ground almond. Form into a 20cm log and leave on the side.
After the dough doubled its size gently knock it back and roll into a 20x30cm rectangle. Put in the middle the marzipan log and roll the dough around to ensure the seam being in the bottom and fold the ends underneath. Transfer to a baking tray with a baking parchment on and leave to rise for 45 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted)
Bake for 35-40 minutes checking towards the end. Melt the remaining 75g of butter and as soon as stollen is done brush all the butter into the cake including bottom and sides. Once cooled dust with icing sugar.
Cinnamon, orange and cloves sables
Ingredients:
75g icing sugar
150g softened butter
1 vanilla bean
grated zest of 2 oranges
2 eggs lightly beaten
250g all purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
Let's do it:
In a bowl beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy, you can use a wooden spoon or a hand held mixer. It will take 5-6 minutes.
Split the vanilla bean, scrape seeds out into the bowl and beat in the orange zest.
Gradually add eggs until well incorporated then fold in the flour, cinnamon and cloves with a metal spoon. Make sure that all ingredients are well combined but don't over mix it. Form dough into a bowl wrap in a cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for 1 hour. In the meantime prepare a big or two big flat baking trays with baking parchment on and lightly dust with flour.
Preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted). Take the dough out of the fridge and on a lightly floured surface roll out with a rolling pin until 5mm thick. Using cookie cutters cut out the sables and arrange on the baking trays. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
When cooled you can either dust with icing sugar or make a quick icing and decorate like I did:-)
Happy Festive Season!
I am not a big fan of bubbles so this year hubby and I decided to buy a good (or two) bottle of white to welcome 2014. As it happened that we were in Wimbledon we went to the local wine merchant and here is what we got. 
