Friday 6 January 2012

What... 2012 already?

So, hang on a minute - Christmas and New Year’s are over?  Already?!  Huh... who’d have thunk it?  Doesn’t time fly when you’re concentrating on consuming more calories per hour than you’d usually consume in a year...

Christmas is nothing if not a time of excess in the Duncan household... there was more food than we knew what to do with (and trust me it takes A LOT of food before the Duncans start feeling overwhelmed)!  

We’d filled every available surface, cupboard and container in three rooms AND the garage before the voice of reason (read: Mum) finally suggested we stop. Every time anyone left the house they seemed to arrive back with bags full of provisions, and that’s not even counting the stream of deliveries!   It was glorious!!

The whole Christmas period seemed to be over before it began... I keep feeling like I need to run home and knock up endless batches of biscuits, or put the finishing touches to Fraser’s fast growing menagerie (monkeys, puppies, pigs, ducks... you name it, I’m pretty sure I’ve tried to fashion it out of an old pair of socks).  But no: there’s no decorating, no wrapping, no cooking... NOTHING! 

...Well almost nothing.  I’ve impulse booked myself an additional week of snowboarding out in the south of France the week after next – If we’re honest it was the only way I was going to get through January sane.  How incredibly foolish of me to think I’d last until March before I’d succumb to the call of the mountains.  It was never going to happen... especially with this much snow - I can’t wait!!!

Anyway, I’d like to say that ever since the Christmas excesses I’ve been on a healthy New Years diet of raw fish and steamed vegetables... or is it steamed fish and raw vegetables?  Either way I’m afraid not!  Goodbye Christmas dinner... hellooooo LEFTOVERS! 

OK so the photos aren’t so good but you have to give me some leniency – these were baked after new years and I was feeling pretty delicate...

Preheat the oven to 180˚C.  Butter the cake tin, line with baking parchment then add a second layer of butter over the top of the parchment.

Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla and mix.  Stir in the dry ingredients until just incorporated.  Add the mincemeat and mix so that it’s evenly dispersed. 

Bake for approximately an hour in the centre of the oven, it’s done once a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Once done, cool in the tin for 10 minutes.  Then cool completely on a wire rack.  Once cooled, dust with icing sugar. 
Mincemeat Cake: (8” spring-form round tin)
150g butter, room temperature
1 2/3 cups plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp salt
1 cup Demerara sugar
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
2 cups mincemeat
Icing sugar