Spiced Christmas Wreath Bundt

After years of pining, I recently joined the Women's Institute. I need to get a few things clear before I continue:

• They welcomed us with open arms, despite many of them being old enough to be our grandmothers
• They were very excited about younger ladies joining
• They are not all superb bakers
• They don't really make jam
• They like to make a difference to our community
• They raise money for charity
• They are not fascists
• Yes, we do sing Jerusalem
• They love a knees up

This month's meeting was a Jacob's Feast. If you've never heard of this notion, it basically means everyone brings some food and we all make pigs of ourselves! Not one to put myself under pressure... I decided to make a cake. For the WI. Of whom I have only been a member for three months. Nutter.

I decided to make a festive wreath cake packed with spices and Christmas cheer! I'm delighted to say that they loved it! You have no idea what the internal sigh of relief was like! Although, one lady did get in trouble for cutting it into lots of slices before they had all had chance to look at it...

Again, this can be made in any standard sized bundt tin.

Ingredients:

• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 650g golden caster sugar
• 5 medium free range eggs - beaten
• 250ml milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp lemon extract
• 400g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Grease and flour a standard sized bundt tin (10 inches, 10 cups or 2.4 litres). I used a lovely Nordic Ware festive wreath!
2. Mix the butter and sugar until it is well combined. It might not look fluffy as there is so much sugar in it. Oops. This does mean it gets a fantastic sugar crust though...
3. Add the eggs one at a time
4. Add the extracts to the milk.
5. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, spices, salt and bicarbonate of soda. 
6. Fold 1/3 of the dry mix to the main bowl, followed by 1/2 of the liquid. Repeat until all the ingredients are used up.
7. Give the whole thing a quick whizz until it is all combined.
8. Pour the mix into the tin and give a sharp whack on the worktop to rid it of bubbles! 
9. Bake for 1 hour 20 minutes at gas 3/160 C, turning after an hour.
10. The cake should be shrinking from the sides of the tin, dark brown in appearance and a skewer should come out clean.
11. Once cooked through leave the cake to cool in the tin fully. I mean fully. It sometimes needs a quick loosen with a knife to ease it out. 
12. When cooled dust with icing sugar to decorate.

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page. 

Please see my Creative Commons Copyright information for more details. Thank you.

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