Fruit and nut Yule slice (2 colours)

The first Christmassy cake I made this year was the yule slice from the BBC Good Food website. I added a couple of ingredients and changed the quantities a bit and it was lovely. It's also dairy free.

There's a reason that it's sliced thinly in the photo on their website - this cake is deceptively filling because of all the nuts.

Ingredients
Nuts - 310 g (I used 150g walnuts, 100g hazelnuts, 60g blanched almonds)
Dried fruit - 680g (I used 200g dried apricots, 200g raisins, 100g stoned dates, 40g dried cranberries, 140g glace cherries, halved)
Plain flour - 100 g
Mixed spice - 2 tsp
Baking powder - 0.5 tsp
Dark muscovado sugar - 175 g
Eggs - 3
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Icing sugar for dusting

Methods
1) Mix together the fruit and nuts in a large bowl.

2) Sieve the flour, baking powder, sugar and mixed spice into the bowl and stir well.
3) Mix the eggs together with the vanilla essence in a bowl and add to the fruit and nut mixture. Stir until well combined and no dry ingredients are visible.
4) Line a loaf tin with grease-proof paper and pour in the mixture. Cover loosely with foil and bake at 150°C for 1.5 hours. Remove the foil and cook for a further 15 minutes. Leave to cool for 15 minutes before removing from the tin.
5) When cool, dust with icing sugar. Serves 16.

Orange and cranberry muffins (2 colours)

I've finally got round to buying a muffin tin - something I've been meaning to do for several weeks. There are so many muffins I'm looking forward to making - blueberry and lime, blueberry, lemon and raspberry, raspberry and nectarine...

Thanks to Mark at cookbook for this recipe. I used frozen cranberries (defrosted) for this as we can't buy fresh ones at any time of year other than Christmas. The recipe actually makes about 15 muffins (the holes in my tin are 7cm wide by 4cm deep), so I poured the excess mixture into a small pyrex dish to make one large muffin:

Ingredients
Cranberries - 140 g
Orange juice - 175 ml
Unsalted butter - 170 g, warmed to room temperature
Granulated sugar - 170 g
finely grated rind of 1.5 oranges
Eggs - 3 large
Plain flour - 300 g
Salt - pinch
Baking powder - 3 tsp
Milk - 175 ml

Methods
1) Place the cranberries in a small pan with the orange juice and heat gently until the juice just starts to simmer. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
2) Cream the butter with the sugar and grated orange rind. Beat the eggs into the butter. Sieve the plain flour, salt and baking powder and fold in to the mixture along with the milk. Fold in the cooled cranberries and orange juice to form a batter.
3) Grease a 12 cup muffin pan. Divide the batter into 12 cups and bake in the oven at 190°C for about 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Serves 12.