Madeleines (updated)

While I love Ramsay's opium-flecked variant of this French cupcake, it's my gently almond-scented version that does it for me at the moment. It eliminates the clutter of seeds in the recipe, and without the muscular chef's influence, I'm happy to leave the strenuous egg-whisking to my new, and gorgeous, Kitchenaid stand mixer.
These make a delicious continental breakfast, and since you have to leave the batter to rest for at least 2 hours, it makes sense to grease the tin and make the mixture up the night before, then leave it covered in a batter jug in the fridge. The next morning you need only preheat the oven, pour the mixture into the shell-shaped cups and make a jug of coffee while they bake. Please know that I haven't renounced the recipe I fell back on over 18 months ago, and you'll find it in its original prose (where I harp on about the Madeleine's significance to Proust's literacy) underneath, but right now I'm drawn to where it's most simple, so see below.

2 eggs
75g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter (plus an extra tbsp for greasing)
100g plain flour (plus an extra tbsp for flouring)
1/2 tsp almond extract

Melt the unsalted butter in a diddy saucepan and allow to cool, although to be honest you could probably do this while the eggs are whipping- it can take a good 10 minutes for them to reach their volume. To grease the tin, take your madeleine tin or failing that a muffin or Yorkshire pudding tray and use the extra butter to grease it with a pastry brush. Sieve over the extra spoonful of flour then tap off the excess into the sink.
Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and add the sugar. Whisk them together for as long as it takes for them to become voluminous and thick- it resembles, oddly, mayonnaise when it's finished. Sieve the flour into the bowl and fold it in, followed by the melted butter and almond extract.
Leave the batter to rest for at least 2 hours, but if you're making this the night before cover with clingfilm and chill in the fridge.
Pour around 1 tbsp of mixture into each madeleine cup, before baking in a 180 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. You know you've succeeded if you have a small, slightly suggestive lump in the centre that the French refer to as the nipple. Leave to cool for a brief few minutes before tapping the edge of the tin to free the little cakes. Cool on a rack, or serve warm.

The great Gordon Ramsay has taken somewhat of a hold on my cooking. It's a shame that his extremely foul-mouthed and furious reputation has clouded what he truly is- a fantastic chef. Although his explanation is a bit more curt and frank than another celebrity chef like the great Nigel Slater, his episodes are comprehensive and provide easy recipes and slightly more challenging ones. This recipe, for me, is in the intermediate category, but for anyone who isn't as useless at cake baking these are an easy.

Madeleines are beautiful, shell-shaped cakes from France, usually eaten for breakfast with some coffee, although there's a case for eating these as an equivalent to a coffee and amaretti biscuits after an Italian meal (but of course, make it a French meal here). They're perhaps most famous for the role they played in Proust's epic novel exploring how memories are accidentally triggered- madeleines are a truly evocative cake as you will see. Ramsay used lemon and poppy seed, but I'm all about the blood oranges, which I'm stocking up on in the freezer before they go out of season because their flavour is just sublime, much better than a regular orange which are all water and no zestiness. If you don't have a madeleine tin, and why should you, they're not exactly the most versatile of tins, then just use a small muffin tin. I won't go near mine though, whenever I see it in the cupboard I scowl and telepathically tell it that it has no purpose in life.

1)You could do this with an electric mixer, but when I saw Gordon doing it in just a few minutes with a balloon whisk, I felt like my masculinity would be compromised if I didn't do the same. It took a bit longer to get three eggs and 80g caster sugar to a pale and very thick consistency, like a slightly tarnished soft meringue, about 20 minutes for me? But I swear my left bicep has increased in size since.
2)Sieve in 80g plain flour and 3/4 tsp baking powder, and fold in with the zest of one blood orange and 1 tbsp poppy seeds until smooth. Folding is a gentle process, but you must be forceful with your actions, don't fold it so lightly nothing combines well.
3)Down the side of the bowl, pour in 75g cooled melted butter (unsalted) and fold that in thoroughly.
4)Set this batter aside overnight in the fridge, so you get delicious light madeleines the following morning, although make them right away if you want, but make sure the next two steps are done in advance of baking them.
5)Spread melted butter throughout a madeleine tin, then sieve in some plain flour, tap the tin so any excess flour comes out.
6)Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
7)Decant the mixture into a jug and pour equal (well, equal-ish) blobs of batter (that has been allowed to come to room temperature) into the tin, then bake for 10 minutes or so, until golden and risen. If you've done well, then a good mound, 'nipple', should have formed on the top of the madeleine. Turn them out, and serve warm.

Cranberry Sauce

Whilst bought cranberry sauce from a jar is passable, and no one wants to add to someone's burden at Christmas, this condiment is the easiest sauce in the world to make and much better homemade.
What's fabulous about making this yourself is how you can personalise it- for me this means adding a good slug of a favourite Christmas tipple. Lots work here; namely port, cointreau, triple sec, grand marnier, ginger wine or ginger liqueur or cherry or apple brandy. Of course, however, you can leave the booze out all together (just up the sugar and water or orange juice to balance), I just happen to spend a lot of time with my hand grasped around those fabulously shaped glass bottles in the kitchen. Oh, and also, I know 90ml sounds like an awkward amount, all this volume means is a quarter cup measure filled full and then a half or 6 measuring tablespoons.
And just if this wasn't easy enough, you can make this sauce a week ahead well covered in the fridge. Just make sure you let it come back to room temperature on Christmas day. I tend to make it Christmas Eve.

450g fresh or frozen cranberries
225g caster sugar
90ml tipple of your choice (see above)
90ml water
Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 2 oranges
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice

Just throw all of these ingredients into a saucepan (and there's no need to thaw the berries first if they're frozen) and apply high heat and let the sauce simmer until the berries burst and the red liquid goes a bit syrupy.  This only takes around 7 minutes. Before decanting, give a final beating to make sure every last berry is squished.
Tip the scarlet puree into a serving jug or bowl and let it cool. The sour berries are so high in pectin the runny sauce will go very jellied, so give it another good beating before you serve it.

Roast Potatoes

Not only can you not have Christmas without these, but you can't have Christmas without them being perfect. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, while this may be a slightly panic-striking sentiment for a dinner which is already a very stressful ordeal, unlike most things in life that require perfection, great roast potatoes are easy to achieve. That's to say, sticky, jaw-achingly crunchy and gold on the outside and sweet, soft and fluffy within. It's all do-able, there are just three simple but crucial factors at play. Firstly, the tin; unlike almost everything else that can go in the oven at Christmas, even the turkey as long as you have a baking tray underneath, you can't use a throwaway foil tray for the spuds. You need a good, heavy roasting tin that holds the heat well- cast iron is good. Secondly, the fat which you cook them in their tin must be absolutely, frighteningly, scoldingly hot before the potatoes splutter into it- and go for a fat that corresponds roughly with the meat you're cooking: for turkey or chicken choose goose, beef go for dripping and lard for pork. The final thing is the parboil. Without this, the finished spud will chew and not shatter on the tongue; the idea is to blur and soften the edges by boiling them in water then bashing them around a bit which increases the surface area to absorb fat and catch gloriously in the heat.
This is all relatively straightforward, but it can get complicated with the heavy clatter of other dishes that you need at Christmas. You need to be brutal to yourself in planning and prioritising. So, if you have only the one oven or you're using your second one to heat up serving dishes and plates (otherwise use the microwave to warm them, checking the ceramic is safe), cook two out of the three parts of the 'meat' section in the oven as you wait for the good hour or more for the turkey or other meat to come to room temperature. This means cooking your chosen stuffing in a baking dish alongside the pigs in blankets until both are fully cooked. If you can, try and take them out before they brown too much so they won't burn as you reheat them. Then stash them away to forget about them covered in foil, far away from family foragers until just before you plate up. Remove the parsnips or squash or anything other than the crisping spuds from the oven and use this space for the 10 minutes whilst you get everything ready for the table to reheat the stuffing and sausages in the scorching potato oven. Consider roast potatoes like deep-fried food, they mustn't stand around and along with the gravy, which should be ferociously bubbling until the moment it hits its jug, should be the last thing to clang on the groaning table. Basically, the turkey needs to be fully cooked and rested for at least 30 minutes wrapped in foil, the gravy must be piping hot and the potatoes crunchy, and if you've got those under wrap you can work everything else around them.
Potatoes generally don't hold well to cooking or peeling in advance, and usually I do the whole cooking and peeling malarkey on the day, but there is a way you can get ahead here. You can parboil the potatoes and rough up the edges a day or more beforehand and turn them into a bowl or other container to store. Melt a few spoonfuls of goose fat (or just vegetable oil if you want) and toss the parboiled potatoes in this along with the salt and pepper if you'd like. Cover these and leave in a cool place for 1-2 days, such as a larder or cellar. These don't take too well to being in the fridge; it's this chilly place that gives potatoes that funny texture and taste when reheated so just go for somewhere slightly below room temperature. Or, go well below room temperature and freeze the fat-slicked potatoes firstly on a tray until solid then bagged up to keep for up to 3 months in the freezer. At fraught times such as Christmas this super-organisation is not to be scorned. I tend not to peel and leave the potatoes in the salted water the night before as the potatoes could go brown or take up too much liquid- a biologist could bring up arguments of osmosis here, but don't look at me.
So, with all this in mind I recommend you draw up a schedule, working backwards from when you serve the Christmas pudding to when you start preparing the dinner (Christmas Eve or earlier) and the following recipe should be a crucial consideration.
I should mention that this recipe certainly goes far beyond yuletide appeal. My perfect Sunday lunch any time of year is plain roast chicken, these potatoes and some marrowfat or plain frozen cooked peas, warmed in a saucepan and lightly mushed with some butter. Because the chicken will take up far less room in the oven than a turkey, the oven will be less steamy and you will have less potatoes to roast (unless you're doing a double chicken affair for a bigger crowd and are cooking 2 big tins of potatoes), and then I don't mind cooking the potatoes in a preheated tin beneath the chicken for 20 minutes or so as long as I can up the heat to 200 degrees and bring the potatoes higher up in the oven while the chicken rests. I often get impatient, or anxious perhaps, that the potatoes won't get golden in enough time in which case I will increase the heat of the oven in increments- this does no harm. I find in a more empty oven, the smaller amount of potatoes (and for a lunch for 4 I do around 1 kilo of potatoes- or 1 large one per person plus 1 or 2 for luck) burn before the whole carapace becomes gorgeously golden in the fierce 220 degrees heat from the start I suggest for the recipe below which is why you can get away with cooking chicken and potatoes together if there's relatively fewer of them. For any big crowd with the larger amount below I would cook the potatoes separately from the meat in the higher heat as generally more dishes appear in a big lunch and a steamier oven acts as a cooler one, and as mentioned before crispness remains the priority.

To serve 8-12 (approx, you could get away with more)
3 kilos floury potatoes such as maris piper or King Edwards
Approx. 600g goose fat or other fat
Salt and pepper

As soon as the turkey or other joint goes in the oven, divide the fat between two large and sturdy roasting tins and leave them under the meat on racks to get hot. If your oven only accommodates two racks, place the other tin on the base of the oven and swap them halfway through the turkey's cooking time. If you're cooking a goose, place the dry tins in and divide the goose fat the bird itself renders down after it roasts for a few hours between the two hot tins. If your oven only accommodates one tin (turkeys are huge) your final last resort is to heat the fat in the tin on the stove until it's screaming hot then transfer this tin into the oven whilst the heat's blasting up for the potatoes to roast in after the turkey comes out. If you plan on utilising a second oven, heat your separate oven with the tins in it.
Hand any passing family member a vegetable peeler and get going with the potatoes. Chop them into angular shapes by cutting triangles or diamonds. This isn't as geometrical as it sounds, imagine cutting a wonky 'Z' shape into each large potato, or if you have very small ones, cut in half at a steep diagonal. For medium-sized ones use Nigella's method of cutting into three with a triangle in the middle. As you chunk them, drop them in a huge pan of cold salted water. Bring the potatoes and water to the boil and cook for 8 minutes. This time can vary though- if you're dubious, remove one and fluff it up with a fork to check. For very small cut potatoes just go for 6 minutes. Drain them in one big colander or you may even have to use two and then tumble the potatoes back into the huge pan they parboiled in. Clamp on the lid and give the pan a really vigorous shake to roughen up and blur the potatoes edges so they take up more fat and crisp up more. Leave the potatoes in this pan with the lid off for a while so they can steam dry for as long as needed.
When the meat is cooked, take it out of the oven to rest and up the heat to 220 degrees if the oven will be very full, 200 degrees if you're cooking less potatoes and other things with them. Move the two tins up into the belly of the oven. Of course if you have a double oven you can rest the turkey for less time by cooking the roasts at 200 from the start in their own oven- you still have to preheat the tins mind.
Take the two tins of searing hot fat out of the oven and spoon the potatoes into them having a small flame under each tin as you do so to reserve heat and definitely avoid overcrowding as you carefully place each potato into the fat. Generously season the potatoes with salt and pepper (though there are schools of thought that suggest only salting- the choice is yours) and flip them over so both sides have been greased. Season the other side.
Place them back into the really hot oven for as long as it takes for them to get super crispy and golden- about 45-55 minutes. You will need to flip them halfway, and again have a flame under the tins as you do this and return the potatoes to the oven; it's at this point you can up the temperature to 220. If panic sets in and the potatoes are still blonde and wet in the tin as the clock ticks, up the heat to a dragon-breath blast of 240-250 degrees and continue the potatoes on their way.  The turkey or whatever will sit resting well covered without coming to any harm for this long, in fact, on the contrary. It makes the meat more succulent, which is the perfect foil for painful crunch of the roasties.

Christmas Creole Cake (and cupcakes)

Christmas is fraught with contradictions. It's a time that should be joyous, but the stresses and seasonal duties can make it miserable. It's a time when you want more time to spend with family, but have to set aside that time for other people's demands and pressures- perhaps for people that you care for less? And as for the Christmas cake, it's renowned for being dusty, desiccated and depressing, but you can't have Christmas without it!
This may seem a Scrooge-esque way to open my first festive post in two years, but I will defy this by saying that this recipe for dense, fruity Christmas cake will banish any hostility you have for the thing and what's more, is simply exquisite in its rich taste and rich symbolism. The problem with a real, real traditional English Christmas cake is that it has so much preparation; creaming, mixing, steeping, and standing, it sets itself up for disappointment, and can't help but gather dust when January comes. Not that this version is much less in terms of processes and does too need to be made at least a month or pushing it at three weeks like this year, ahead. Although it is gratifyingly simple to prepare, and the ingredients list alone will tell you that this darling is a big deal. Three different boozes (four if you count the bitters) may seem extravagant, but they're all bottles that will play a significant role in a Christmas cooking and cocktail repertoire so consider this cake a support. Anyway, isn't excess part of the spirit? Just avoid leaving the cake near a tealight during the feeding process. And if you're struggling somehow to find a use for these liqueurs, then just make a creole shot- simply pour port, cherry brandy and dark rum in equal measures into a shot glass, and knock back. Take it from me it will help you through the season.
The recipe itself is adapted from Delia Smith and is one of her most popular recipes around, so naturally I've offered my own suggestions here. The heritage behind it is almost as rich as the taste- it comes from the wife of a sugar plantation owner in Barbados; how Delia came across her must be a cracking story. The cake is essentially the Jamaican classic black fruit cake, and is just as dense and dark as the name suggests. In terms of Christmas symbolism it lends itself beautifully, whether you decorate with a white snowy blanket of fondant icing or bejewel it with fruit and nuts, it becomes a central beacon of light and hope in a Christmas kitchen, and all the little fruits imbued in the cake promise a fruitful and joyful year to come.
Now, before we get bogged down with too much fluffy cheer, I have to admit if you make this in one big tin, unless you have a huge family that all adore fruit cake coming over you may struggle to chow it all down before new year- true, the cake can keep for a month beyond Christmas, but it may be riddled with bad spirits by then and I would worry about it gathering dust. To rectify this, do as I do and make one small, 18-20cm diameter cake and 12 cupcakes. You can use these cupcakes as pick-me-ups through the season if you need a sweet bite to get away from it for a moment or as edible gifts, beribboned and wrapped for a hamper. If you wanted you could do 24 cupcakes, or do a very small whole cake and 18 cupcakes. There are lots of options here. I'll go over decorations later, but for now give yourself a week for the fruit's pre-soaking. Over to you:

For the pre-soaking:
450g sultanas
225g currants
125g prunes, chopped
125g whole mixed peel, chopped
100g chopped glace cherries (why not go camp and get some green ones as well as Rudolph-nose red)
50g flaked almonds(plus more for the cupcake's topping), and I like to chop blanched ones myself as they keep their crunch better
50g coarsely chopped hazelnuts
4 tbsp rum (plus extra for feeding)
4 tbsp cherry brandy
4 tbsp port
1 1/2 tsp Angostura bitters
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp black treacle
Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 2 oranges

Pile all of these ingredients into a large saucepan. It helps to write all of these in a list and tick them off as you go. Just like at the table on the big day, no one wants to be left out. Give it a really good stir and bring it up to simmering point on the hob, then turn the heat down to as low as possible and allow it to simmer with the lid off for 15 minutes, stirring to make sure nothing sticks. Remove from the heat, clamp on a lid and let this mixture cool completely before transferring the dense sticky mess into a Tupperware container or jar (you can't really leave it in the saucepan if you were wondering) and leaving it for around 7 days in the fridge.

For the cake:
250g self-raising flour
250g soft unsalted butter
250g demarara sugar
5 large eggs

Take the fruits out of the fridge to come to room temperature for a while. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius.
Preparing the tin is the hardest part of this whole exercise, so get ready with a pair of sharp scissors and a focused head. Brush oil all over the inside of an 18-20cm deep cake tin, preferably with a loose base but this is perfectly easy without. Cut two strips of greaseproof or parchment paper cut a little bit taller than the height of the tin. Fold a little rim about an inch tall up on these strips and take your scissors and cut into this fold, as if making a frill. Using the sticky oil, line the tin with the two strips having the frills line the bottom. Draw around the base of the tin and cut around to make a circle. Place the circle over the frilly hem on the bottom of the tin. Fold another bit of greaseproof that fits on top of the pieces of parchment that come above the side of the tin. Or, if you make fruitcakes and use the 18cm deep tin a lot, you can cut reusable baking parchment to size, one strip to go around the cake and come up higher than the sides, and one 18cm circle to go in the base. These can just live in the tin so you needn't do any oiling, cutting or whatever before you start- this erodes a big, daunting step.
Line a 12 muffin tin with foil cupcake cases (the paper ones don't insulate the cakes enough, unfortunately). If you have a double oven, it's best to bake the cupcakes in one and the cake in the other so you don't disturb the large cake as it cooks, but it's not the end of the world. My second oven doesn't accommodate the cupcakes, so I can say first-hand that it isn't an issue to cook both at once.
Crack the eggs into a large bowl and follow with the flour, sugar and butter and beat them all together with an electric mixer or a wooden spoon if you're feeling particularly athletic until completely smooth and light. Gradually fold in the fruits- when the mixture gets very tough, I use my hands to help incorporate the fruit.
Use two spoons to fill the cupcake cases, aim for about 1 heaped tablespoon of mixture per cupcake case and then use the rest of the mixture to fill the lined tin. Press 5 flaked almonds in a star like pattern on the surface of each cupcake. Cover the cupcake tin loosely with foil to insulate them.
Baking these cakes can be complicated. They take a long time for sure but they can vary greatly- I find the cupcakes take around 1 1/4 hours and the large cake around 2 1/2 hours but ovens can be so different. Either way the cakes should spring back with a light finger touch in the centre when cooked. After the cake's first hour, be sure to pop the folded bit of parchment on top.
When the big cake is done immediately whip off its parchment lid and wrap foil all around it, not worrying about crushing the bits of overgrowing paper, to trap steam and keep the top from drying as it cools. If you're using reusable parchment you don't want to crush and crease it so press foil right onto the surface of the cake within the silicon parchment crown.
When the cakes have completely cooled, take the cupcakes out of the tin and pop them, of course still in their case, into a storage tin. Unwrap the large cake and wrap it in parchment paper and then a layer of foil tightly. I just scrunch a piece of paper around the cake- I think we've done enough folding and snipping in one recipe, don't you? To feed the cake and cupcakes, make a few holes in the surface with a fine skewer or stick of uncooked spaghetti and spoon rum into them. I use about a teaspoon per cupcake. You can do this before you pack the cakes in their storage container and once every week or whenever you want until you decorate it for Christmas.

To decorate:
A jar of apricot jam
200g marzipan
250g fondant icing
Icing sugar to dust
or
Apricot jam
Assorted nuts, dried fruit, and glace fruit

My lot of cakes for this year are actually under a bed waiting for the icing, but these are the instructions I'll come to later.
To do the traditional icing, which I use for the big cake, use icing sugar like flour when you're making pastry and roll the marzipan then use the cake tin like a large cutter to make a circle the shape of the rum-soaked surface of the cake. Warm the apricot jam in a small saucepan and brush it all over the top of the cake. Place the marzipan over the top. Roll out the icing in the same way, using the cake tin as a cutter again, and then top this over the marzipan, brushing off any excess icing sugar. Use the excess to cut a Christmassy shape, such as a star or angel, and use a little water to stick this to the icing. If you wanted to cover the whole cake with icing, which is useful if you want to keep this cake iced for a long period before cutting and eating, roll the icing out fully, slip your arms underneath the sheet and drop it on top of the marzipan-topped cake and smooth it down with your hands. Cut off the excess before topping with shapes cut with the excess icing. If you wanted to ice the whole thing far before you would plan on cutting it, you need to leave the marzipan on top of the cake without the icing to dry for about a week or the brown oils of the fruit will seep into the icing and stain it. There's no need to do this if you ice the cake the night before you plan on bringing it festively to the family table, though. When decorating with just a round lid of icing you can wrap the sides of the cake with some Christmassy ribbon, as I have below. And I'd never want to forget my little trinkets that I stick to the top of the cake with a dab of water. And it's easiest to stick with water by dabbing a drop with your finger tip and gently rubbing which sort of melts a small area of icing and makes it sticky enough to work as glue.
For the alternative, brush the cake with apricot jam again and simply stick with fruits and nuts, either randomly like a jigsaw or in concentric circles and brush these with apricot jam to look shiny.
For the cupcakes, if I've pressed nuts onto the surface all I do is brush with apricot jam to make them look glossy, but you can play more if you like. Cut individual circles of marzipan and icing and top each one with one star, or play with some paste food dye and make holly berries and leaves. You could also do baby versions of the fruit and nut glaze.