One of the main things I wanted to experience while living in North Yorkshire was to attend Betty's Cookery School. I recently attended their Christmas Cakes and Puddings class - my England Bucket List is one item shorter!!
 |
| Action Shot making Christmas Cake |
The course is fairly expensive, but boy do you get your money's worth. The day started with a warm welcome, a new Betty's Cookery School Apron (yours to keep!), fresh croissants, butter, jam, and tea or coffee. I sat down with a bunch of ladies who quickly became my buddies. One gal in particular looked exactly like Bridget Jones, was a farmers wife from just outside of York, and was given this course by her husband for her birthday. She was a hoot! I confessed to my table that I may need help, as I didn't know what anything we were going to make should look like when completed, and had never measured ingredients by weight. One of my new friends said, "Oh, that's right - Americans use cups and stuff, right? Can you buy special measuring things to know how much a cup is?"
After breakfast we watched a demonstration from the professional Betty's Bakery staff and got started on the Christmas pudding. The pudding (which is not really a pudding at all) is comprised of mostly of dried fruit, candied citrus peel, eggs, and brandy, and has to steam in its pot for 5-1/2 hours. Once the primary steam is done, it has to age for one to three months. To serve the pudding, you re-steam for two hours or so, remove it from the pot, flambe the pudding with brandy, then drench each portion in a home-made rum sauce. What's not to love?!
 |
| Maturing Christmas Pudding |
Once the puddings were steaming away, we took a short tea & cookie break before starting on the Christmas Cakes. Step one of making the cake had us creaming our butter & brown sugar together by hand. It took ages. And then another age. The professional bakers said we can use our mixers when we make christmas cake at home, but they wanted us to experience all of the stages the butter and sugar go through and at what stage it was appropriate to start adding the eggs. We had to be very careful and add the eggs a bit at a time, beating them into the mix very well before adding more egg. If you add more egg before the batter is ready, the batter will curdle. Many of the students (including me!) had their batter slightly curdle at the very end... but thankfully adding the additional dry ingredients brought the batter back from the brink of disaster. I know I for one was getting antsy, and I'm not surprised I added the last bit of eggs too soon - I had been hand-beating batter for over a half-hour by that point!
After a Christmas Cake is baked, it has to mature for six to eight weeks. Every few weeks I have to "feed" the cake by brushing it with sherry. A week before Christmas, I am to cover the cake with rolled-out marzipan. The day before Christmas I cover it with rolled-out fondant and decorate it. I will be sure to post pictures of the cake once it's completed.
 |
| Maturing Christmas Cake |
All of the students were more than ready for lunch by the time we popped our cakes in the ovens. Lunch was delicious - a delicate chicken dish called Coronation Chicken, carrot salad, scalloped potatoes, fresh bread and a glass of wine. Dessert was a yummy chocolate bomb with a passion fruit ganache on the inside.
 |
| Chocolate Bomb |
After lunch I was filled with calories and ready to tackle the mincemeat strudel, jarred mincemeat, and rum sauce. Bring it on!! The mincemeat strudel was beautiful, and unlike the pudding and cake, was ready to take home and eat... needless to say, it was gone before I thought to take a photograph of it. The rum sauce has also been eaten, but a carton of beige sauce would have made a boring photo, anyway.
 |
| Maturing Mincemeat |
The last item we made was mincemeat, which contains apples, raisins, golden raisins (sultanas), spices, vegetable suet (whatever that is!), etc. The mincemeat has to mature for several weeks as well, and will be ready for me to make a fresh mincemeat strudel for Christmas. I will try to remember to photograph my strudel and add it to the blog post with my finished Christmas cake.
Before we left, we watch a short demo showing us how to finish and present the cake, pudding, and strudel. We got to try a few of the items as well. Thank goodness I liked everything I tried!
I had an amazing adventure at Betty's Cookery School and look forward to my next class... Which is Yorkshire Breads in February!! ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment