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Christmas dinner? It’s a piece of cake. How to turn the turkey and ALL the trimmings into an eye-catching gateau
Everybody loves Christmas dinner: the turkey, the spuds and all the trimmings. But the trouble is by the time you’ve Hoovered up everything on your plate there’s never room for any delicious Christmas cake.
Fear not: I believe I have come up with the perfect, albeit somewhat unconventional, solution to this festive quandary. Combine the two!
That’s right — serve your Christmas meal in the form of a gateau.
When I told my wife of my brilliant plan, she replied with a very unsupportive, ‘Please don’t. It sounds vile.’
Cheers! A proud Vincent Graff with his unconventional Christmas Dinner Cake
Is she mad? Christmas dinner and cake — what’s not to like?
Genius idea though it is, I can’t claim credit for it. It probably won’t surprise you to hear it originated in America.
A few weeks ago, a California-based website, Chow.com, published a recipe for Thanksgiving Turkey Cake.
In no time, newspapers across the States were marvelling at the idea and the recipe received 53,000 recommendations on Facebook.
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Ever the enthusiastic chef, I decided to create my own version — in the hope that I would force my wife to eat her words (and the cake, of course).
Taking the American recipe, I left out Thanksgiving ingredients such as sweet potatoes and marshmallows (yuk, those Americans really will eat anything) and substituted some more Christmassy ones.
Quite simply, if it’s on your plate on December 25, it goes into the cake: turkey, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sage and onion stuffing, bread sauce and cranberry sauce.
And, just like the typical Christmas dinner, you need a handful of Brussels sprouts — which can be picked out and discarded in the traditional manner.
All of the ingredients are arranged in layers like a Black Forest gateau, and the cake is ‘iced’ with mashed potato and served with gravy.
But just how easy is it to make?
As long as you’re reasonably neat assembling the layers, it’s not difficult at all. Realistically, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.
The key is to ensure the alternate layers of turkey, vegetables, cranberry and bread sauce are neat, because the end result is really worth it.
Savoury feast: The eye-catching Christmas dinner cake was created in the U.S., and tastes surprisingly good (once you’ve picked off the sprouts)
It’s immodest of me to say so, but mine looked fabulous, like something you’d see in the window of one of those pretentious French patisseries. And despite my wife’s misgivings, it tasted truly delicious. Seriously.
The herbs, soy and Worcestershire sauce in the turkey layers gave the cake an aromatic tinge and there’s an unexpected and totally welcome crunch, provided by the carrots and onion.
But most of all, once the gravy has soaked into the meat, the mash and all the other trimmings, there’s the reassurance of a traditional Christmas roast.
After all, what’s the fundamental difference between piling up a piece of turkey breast, stuffing, carrot and gravy on to a fork from your plate of roast dinner — or loading the ingredients on top of each other in a cake tin before the meal goes into the oven?
And my wife’s reaction? Helen returned home an hour after the cake left the oven. She’d evidently forgotten what I’d been doing all day. She breathed in deeply, taking in the marvellous smell of my cooking and pronounced herself starving.
‘But it still looks so wrong,’ she said as she bit into her first mouthful. Then silence as she devoured the rest.
‘I tell you what,’ she finally said. ‘This is amazing.’
It seemed I had signed up the first member of my Christmas Dinner Cake Club.
But my confidence was premature. Basking in glory, I suggested we serve my cake at an upcoming dinner party.
The answer was a firm ‘no’. ‘Despite the taste, the idea alone will put people off,’ she said.
I’m offended. If I were Heston Blumenthal, people would be queuing up to pay a small fortune to eat my wonderful concoction.
If you’re feeling ambitious and fancy a slice of the action yourself, here’s how to put a truly unique spin on your Christmas dinner. Serves six.
HOW TO MAKE A CHRISTMAS DINNER CAKE
FOR THE TURKEY LAYERS
- 500g turkey breast, minced
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
- 1 teaspoon fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 medium garlic clove, chopped
- 1.5kg potatoes (keep a third aside for the parsnip and mashed potato layer)
- 3 large carrots
- Cranberry sauce
- Parsnips
- Sage and onion stuffing, 1 packet
- Pot of ready-made bread sauce, 300g
- Unsalted butter for coating the pans
Heat the oven to 175c. Coat two 8-inch cake pans with butter.
Place all the turkey layer ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Divide the mixture evenly between the pans.
Bake until cooked through and the cakes begin to pull away from the edges of the pans.
Make your mashed potato and boil and mash your parsnips. Mix the two.
Remove turkey from oven but leave the oven on. Let turkey cool for 10 minutes.
- Remove one of the layers from its case and place it bottom-side up on an overturned cake pan or in an oven-proof serving dish.
- Evenly spread a 1cm layer of your potato and parsnip mash on top of the turkey layer, leaving a 1cm border.
- Spread a generous layer of cranberry sauce.
- Make up the stuffing and spread a layer 1cm thick.
- Carefully place a layer of carrot pieces.
- Add a 1cm layer of bread sauce, again remembering to leave a space at the edge so that it does not spill out when the final meat layer is added.
- Now take the second turkey layer out of its cake mould and place it bottom-side up on top of the bread sauce.
- Transfer the cake pan with the partially assembled cake to a baking sheet and bake for a further 20 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and set aside. With a long knife or spatula, evenly coat the outside and top with mashed potato. Serve with warm, meaty gravy. and tuck in.
