Christmas Baking Recipe #2

Christmas cake ~ do you love it or do you hate it? This recipe is not the typical Christmas cake served as it's a light coloured cake. I've made this recipe every year that we're married except last Christmas. I thought people had had enough of it and last year we only baked cookies. I was wrong. My mom, brother and husband each asked me to make Christmas cake again and not miss any more years.

LIGHT CHRISTMAS CAKE

Preheat oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 6 small 3 x 6 inch or 2 regular sized loaf pans with waxed paper.

In a large bowl combine:
2 cups slivered citron
2-1/2 cups Sultana raisins
1 cup candied red cherries, halved (for more colour you can use 1/2 cup each red & green cherries)
1 cup blanched, slivered almonds

Sift over the above mixture and toss until well covered with flour:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

In a mixer cream together:
1 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
5 eggs (add one at a time until well combined)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup undrained crushed pineapple

Add the wet ingredients by hand into the dry mixture. Combine well, spoon into loaf pans and press down to level. Bake at 275F for about 2 hours or until the cakes are lightly golden on top and a cake tester comes out clean. Wrap cooled cakes in foil and keep refrigerated until serving. They will be ready in 7 days.

Notes: We brush some of the loaves in rum every few days or wrap them in cheese cloth soaked in rum before wrapping in the foil.
This recipe doubles extremely well and can be kept in the freezer after baking for a few months.

I've also being doing some knitting and sewing. My sock got frogged back to the heel turn and I'm working on that again, love this yarn! It was too big for my tiny feet so I've got a much better fit going on now. My Urban Sweater sleeve is slow going, I seem to just get started into it and something else keeps coming up. I intend to wear this sweater soon so it's going to get more attention in the next few days. Like Kelly at Celtic Cast On I would really like to finish up my started projects before the end of 2008.

Sewing has produced 19 blocks and there's 11 more to sew. I've been calling this my Latte quilt because there's a coffee bean motif in some of the fabrics. The black/brown colour combo is a pleasure to work with. The black fabrics are kept diagonally on the left side and brown fabrics are on the right. This block has a traditional log cabin centre with star points and then 2 more rows of log cabin on the outside. I plan to assemble the blocks with a 3-column sashing and 9-patch corners. The finished top will nicely cover a queen sized bed.

Only 2 more weeks until the kids are on Christmas vacation! Yeah!! The Christmas cake will be aged and ready to eat by then.