Boiled Ulster Fruit Cake
Boiled Fruit Cake is a Northern Irish recipe where some of the ingredients are boiled before adding to the mix. This keeps it very moist.
Ingredients:
225g / 8oz butter
225g / 8oz demerara sugar
285ml / ½ pint Guiness
330g/ 12 oz mixed dried fruit
450g / 1lb Self Raising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
3 eggs
Method:
Heat a saucepan on a medium flame and add the butter, sugar and stout. Stir gently to melt the butter but do not let it bubble. Add the fruit. Simmer for five minutes and leave to cool. Heat the oven to 180°C / 350F / Gas Mark 4. Grease a cake tin. Add the flour and spices to the cooled liquid mixture and mix.. Pour into cake and bake for two hours. Insert a knife in the centre of the cake and if it is dry when removed, the cake is baked.
Brandy Butter
Ingredients:
4 tbsp softened, unsalted butter
4 ozs of castor sugar
5 tbsp brandy
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Put all the ingredients into a bowl. Beat with an electric beater until the mixture is smooth and well integrated. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours until the mixture is firm.
Irish Christmas Ham
Ingredients:
2kg / 4lb 6oz ham joint, boned
1 onion, sliced
2 bay leaves
10 whole black peppercorns
large pan of water
To make the glaze:
3 tbsp. orange marmalade
2 tsp dried chilli flakes
Method:
Boil the ham in water and herbs and spices and simmer for one hour thirty minutes
Remove the ham from the pan and leave to cool. Preheat oven to 180°C / 325F / Gas Mark 4. Remove rind from the ham and cover with the mixture of marmalade and chills With the glazed top upwards, place the ham in a roasting tin and bake for 45 minutes.
Comments
Oct 2020
Time to update my Christmas pages .
I have found anoher Irish Christmas tradition and added it above.
Here are some lovely Irish Christmas things to try .
Happy Christmas to our wonderful Wizzley Community. YOu are simply the most civilised, respectful, intelligent community on the entire web.
Thanks to you all for a great site.
Thank you
Nollaig shona Duit [pronounced dvich] is used when you are speaking to one person. When speaking to more than one replace duit with dibh [pronounced dcheev. ]
I have added the Irish Christmas Greeting above
Nollaig Shona Duit
I have added a hyperlink above to Christmas Eve / Midnight Masses in Ireland for those who would like to join in from lands afar.
Exactly.... you've talked yourself in to that one !..... it is because it is a family tradition that we always did these things BECAUSE we come from the Irish tradition. The Irish do these things without thinking "we do this because we're Irish" .
Irish culture and heritage is richly endowed.
I think that in our family the Irish tradition was partly subconscious, a cultural legacy. For example I don't think that we kept up the candle in the window on Christmas Eve because it was an Irish custom, but because we, notably mother and I, liked it and had inherited the practice from previous generations. You are right about the decorations only being put up a few days ere Christmas, but as with the candle, we did this as a cultural heritage, not out of an awareness that it came from Irish cultural tradition.
Irish traditions are fascinating that's for sure.
Note the addition of dried fruit to the soda bread at Christmas in Ireland
Loved all the recipes and history! Mumping and begging for Christmas Day very interesting.