The Little Lady Agency

Every year since I was nine, I’ve dutifully made a Christmas cake for my parents. Baked in November, fed through December, marzipanned the week before Christmas, iced lavishly on Christmas Eve… and still kicking around the house in mid July. Humph.

However, I stumbled upon this excellent recipe to use up stale Christmas cake, and leftover Christmas pudding. It also works well if you cut into your cake and discover that maybe seven hours WAS a bit long to bake it for.

mini Christmas Pudding truffles
makes about 25-30

400g fruit cake or Christmas pudding
big tablespoon of syrup
big slug of sherry - or whatever alcohol you soaked your cake in
150g good dark chocolate

to decorate:
100g white chocolate
glace cherries
angelica

Crumble the cake into crumbs, then stir in the syrup and the large slug of booze. It should start to stick together nicely. Melt the dark chocolate, then stir into the mixture. Pinch into small balls the size of a walnut, then place on a greaseproof-paper-lined tray, to firm up in the fridge. I used little green petit four cases, which had the added advantage of keeping them all more or less the same size.

When they’re cold, melt the white chocolate, and drop it over the tops so it looks like ‘white sauce’. Then chop up the cherries and angelica into little pieces, and arrange a ‘holly berry’ and a couple of ‘holly leaves’ on each one. Pop back into the fridge to chill. You could, if you were a sucker for fiddly cooking, melt more dark chocolate and roll each truffle in it to form a crisp chocolate shell before you embark on the decoration but unless you want to hide in the kitchen and avoid the fourth round of charades/Wii Tennis/family recriminations, who has time at Christmas?

Bring out with coffee and liqueurs on Boxing Day, or pack into little boxes and give as New Year hostess gifts. They keep for about a week in the fridge, but honestly, I doubt they’ll last that long…