christmas cake for fruit-cake haters?

[Whenisitmysleepytime]

any ideas?
i'd like to make a cake for christmas (i won't be cooking on the day) but me and dh are not fans of fruit cake. dh hates it and i'm not fussed enough to make baking one worth while.

i'd love some suggestions please! :)

[MarKettle]

Is this too much like fruit cake?

Or you could always make these ?

This is always nice if you've over-bought clementines

[Tinkerisdead]

Bbc good food has an ultimate chocolate cake. Its really easy to make but is gorg as a pudding with cream as well as on its own as a cake. Lovely rich and sticky.

[ToothlesstheDragon]

make a sponge cake with white frosting and edible glitter then make little marzipan or icing snowmen/christmassy type things. That's my plan as we all hate fruit cake here as well. So yummy cake with a festive theme :)

[alison222]

this perhaps - I made something similar from Delia's last minute Christmas book

[chirpchirp]

No-one in my family likes Christmas cake, however we all love cheesecake. Last year I made a Bailey's cheesecake which went down a storm. Year before white chocolate with cranberries. I think this year I'm going to do a Terry's chocolate orange cheesecake because to me Christmas isn't complete without a chocolate orange! They are all really easy no bake recipes, let me know if you want any of them.

[olibeansmummy]

Omg chirpchirp you're going to have to give me the recipe for chocolate orange cheese cake! :)

[chirpchirp]

Of course! I've never met anyone who hasn't liked it.

Ingredients
100g ginger nuts
100g digestive biscuits
100g butter
2 x chocolate oranges
250g of any soft cheese
250g of mascarpone
100ml (or there about) of double cream.

Smash the biscuits until they are crumbs, melt the butter, combine and push into a baking tin of about 9 inches of diameter.

Melt the chocolate in a large bowl and then allow to cool slightly. Add the cheese and slowly add the cream while mixing. Pour the mixture of the base and put in the fridge for at least six hours but preferably over night. It really is that simple!

The other recipes are exactly the same but with some substitutions. Instead of the chocolate oranges use 300g of white chocolate and add some cranberries (although it's amazing without, cranberries just make it more christmassy, ooh or you can dust it with cinnamon!). For the Bailey's one use 300g of white chocolate and substitute the cream for baileys. It's so easy to play around with. My neighbour used mint chocolate and that was really good too.

[Tinkerisdead]

Im stealing that!!! I made a choc orange terrine but it looked like a cat turd in clingfilm. Cheesecake is better.

[Tinkerisdead]

Do you use dark or milk choc oranges?

[ToriaPumpkinPasty]

Can second the cheesecake idea, I do one every year as I don't do Christmas cake and everyone else likes cheesecake. One of my greatest triumphs was the After Eight one (made with cheap ASDA own brand mint chocolates)

I've also been known to do a plain chocolate cake, cover the top in chocolate buttercream and then add white chocolate shards so it looks like ice.

[chirpchirp]

Oooh love the after eight idea!

TDW, you can use which ever you prefer the taste of. I used milk chocolate.

[Tinkerisdead]

Hmmm i ask as the turd terrine called for dark, i used milk and the flavour wasnt very strong. Maybe its an excuse for me to make one or each to try first. Yum.

[OriginalPoster]

I always make a jam cream sponge the day before and put ready roll white icing on top, with snow man made out of icing, tinsel round base, and write Christmas and the year on it.

It looks nice on Xmas eve, and we have it with champagne/juice when we open presents mid morning.

[zipzap]

I always make a dark choc brandy fridge cake in the shape of a log. My mum used to make it when I was little (and still does, she'll sometimes make one for me at the same time if I'm very lucky ) and it was my favourite thing to eat at Xmas, along with the oranges in mandarin napoleon liqueur - the two go together surprisingly well on fact! Yum. And only another 100 days or so until Xmas and time to eat it again..

[Tinkerisdead]

Can we have the fridge cake recipe too please? Last year we were so skint i made hampers for everyone. I spent so long on them i didnt get to cook scrummy stuff for me! So this year im going all out!

[zipzap]

Ok will dig it out when the dc are in bed. It's a 70's classic complete with glace cherries, back from when puddings were allowed to be seriously boozy. Don't think it's pc to even use that word any more!

Not that I care, it's my favourite and I love it. And will still be making it in a 100 years time!

[olibeansmummy]

Thanks chirpchirp :) I'll be making that for our Christmas tea buffet at my mum's :)

[zipzap]

Brandy cake...

1/2 lb digestive biscuits
1/2 lb good chocolate (this recipe is from the days when Bournville was considered to be good choc - I usually use it or something similar, don't usually bother to go for the expensive 70% stuff)
1/2lb butter
2 eggs
3 oz castor sugar
2 oz glace cherries - chopped
2 oz walnuts - choppped
small glass of brandy (or rum if you must)

(I've got a feeling that I tend to add at least double the amount of cherries and walnuts plus a good extra sploosh of brandy at the end when you can see how liquid the mixture is - don't want it to be too runny obviously! But also you don't want it not to have enough...)

1. crush biscuits coarsely
   
2. melt choc and butter gently together then take off heat and leave to cool a little so no longer really hot
   
3. meanwhile beat eggs and sugar together until really creamy
   
4. Add choc mixture to the eggs and gently start to fold in
   
5. Add the nuts, cherries, crushed biscuits and brandy. Check that it is packed with all the nice bits and tastes strongly enough of brandy - add more if necessary (see above!)
   
6. Put into a buttered loose bottomed tin, put into the fridge and leave to set.
   
7. Keep in the fridge
   
8. Serve dusted with icing sugar
   

To serve it as a log rather than as a square or circular cake you need a cylinder tin, which is quite difficult to come by.

Over the years our solution has been:

1. Find one of those fancy canisters that whiskey/rum/etc bottles come in for gift packages sometimes
   
2. Find a jar that fits it in really well (my mum keeps her canister from year to year, with the ancient nescafe jar in that fits it just right!)
   
3. Cut the canister down to be just a bit bigger than the jar
   

get some foil and roll it several times around the jar, loosely enough that it will slide off. use sellotape to seal up the outside and fold up the bottom over the bottom of the jar and again use sellotape to seal it. Leave the foil at the top standing up tall

1. then wrap a couple of layers of clingfilm around the outside of the foil, again sealing the side and bottom with sello if needed, but leaving the top open
   
2. carefully put the cling and foil wrapped jar into the canister then carefully extract the jar leaving the foil and cling behind. This means that you should hopefully have a nicely lined container to put your mix into.
   

(It sounds complicated but over the years we have found that it is much easier and safer to make a lining on the outside of the jar and then drop it into the container rather than try to line the inside of the container - it can be done but is a real fiddle!)

1. Pour the mix into the lined container, tapping occasionally to get rid of any air bubbles
   
2. When all the mix is in, gently fold the remaining foil and cling at the top of the container over the mix to act as a lid or cover at that end
   
3. Pop in the fridge and leave to set
   

1. To serve - get a board or platter to put it on out.
   

10 - carefully extract the entire log from the container and unroll from its foil and cling wrappings
11 - slice off a small sliver all the way down the side of the log, then sit the log on the board or platter on this cut side (stops it from rolling around) Sliver becomes chef's perks :)
12 - Slice off each end to neaten it up (more chef's perks!) , then dust with a little icing sugar and decorate with suitably naff robin, 2" christmas trees, happy christmas plaque, dancing snowman etc

[HazeltheMcWitch]

How has no one mentioned Choc Yule Log? Of course, in our house we ponce it up and so call it Buche de Noel. Always, always have this, hate fruit cake. But of course would be brave and eat it if there were no other cakey options.

[zipzap]

Hazel - my brandy cake recipe is what we use as our Christmas log - hence the complicated instructions at the bottom for making a tin for it to be log shaped...

It is absolutely the nicest possible chocolate log cake in the whole wide world (and I know it is not a traditional log cake recipe - but it is lots yummier!)

[LordOfTheFlies]

what about a nice gingerbread/gingercake?

Festive lovely smell, keeps ages and you can ice/decorate it.

Chirp I am definately stealing your cheesecake idea. Years ago I did a baked one with pecans and chopped up toffee- but can't find recipie.
would do yours with white chocolate, nuts and toffee. Nom Nom Nom.

[ToriaPumpkinPasty]

Ooooh, thanks Zipzap!

[Tinkerisdead]

Oooh thankyou for that recipe too.

[JoyceBarnaby]

LordoftheFlies - how would you ice the ginger cake? With normal marzipan etc? I'm thinking of doing a ginger cake this year as none of us are very fussed about a full-on Christmas cake. However, I LOVE icing. Do you think it would also help the cake to last longer?

[chirpchirp]

I usually do ginger cakes with cream cheese frosting (probably because they look a bit like carrot cake so my brain just demands it).

zipzap Love the brandy cake recipe, it's a bit like rocky road but with added boozyness!