Recipe: Spiced Christmas Clementine Cake

Big thanks to Becky at English Mum - Family food, travel & lifestyle blog for this wonderful festive recipe!

Spiced Christmas Clementine Cake

For the cakes:

4 large free range eggs, weighed (Becky’s were about 260g)
260g caster sugar
260g salted butter (room temp)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
260g self raising flour
1 clementine, zest only

For the clementine Swiss meringue buttercream:

3 large egg whites
150g caster sugar
200g butter at room temperature
1 clementine, zest and juice

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4

Firstly, assemble all your ingredients. Weigh the eggs, then weigh out the same amount of butter and sugar. Sift the flour with the spices. It’s best if your eggs and butter are room temperature.

Cream the butter until it’s soft, then whip in the sugar until the whole lot is light and fluffy and looks pale in colour.

Then, mix in the eggs. Becky cracks them all into a bowl to make sure there’s no shell in there, then lightly mix them with a fork – this way you can dribble them in a bit at a time. If your mixture starts to separate, don’t worry, just mix in a tablespoon of the flour. Lastly, stir in the clementine zest.

Once all the eggs are in, gently stir in the flour and butter. Line two medium round cake tins and put half the mixture in each one, roughly levelling it off.

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For the clementine Swiss meringue buttercream

This is a lovely, silky smooth icing to decorate a cake with. Imagine that meringue and buttercream had a cute, fluffy baby and you’re just about there.  It does take patience, though, firstly with the heating, and then with the cooling, otherwise you’re going to get a soupy mess instead of lovely fluffy frosting.

Put the egg whites and sugar in a large heatproof bowl (Becky uses her mixer bowl, because it can then go straight on the mixer) then put the bowl on top of a saucepan of gently simmering water.  Now, you need to be patient.  Stir until the sugar has completely melted into the egg white.  To check, just rub a little between your thumb and finger (without burning yourself, clearly). There shouldn’t be any grit – this can take five or six minutes.

More patience, now.  You need to make sure that the liquid is cooled right back down to room temperature before the next stage. At this time of year, you can pop the bowl out into the garage, or somewhere else cool to speed up the process.

Now attach the bowl to the mixer and whip the cooled mixture on high until the meringue reaches the soft peaks stage.

Lastly, whisk in the butter, a little at a time (it will look curdled before it finally comes together). Then just add in the clementine zest and juice and give it a final mix.

Sandwich the two cake layers together with a layer of the clementine Swiss buttercream, the skim a really fine layer around the sides and across the top.

Decorate however you like. I used rosemary sprigs and a batch of my Christmas gingerbread stars.

Enjoy!