Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes

Subject: Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 18 Dec 14 - 05:30 PM

Wassail night by firelight & candlelight at Lewes Saturday Folk Club
Saturday 10th. January
Elephant & Castle, White Hill, Lewes, Sussex, UK BN7 2DJ

We light the log fire and the candles tonight. Bring songs and tunes for winter and wassailing.

Bring a long twig from your own apple tree for our indoor wassailing ceremony to share in any blessing it might give.

We'll be serving Twelfth Cake, (orange peel, crystallised ginger, honey, spices, rum) and a wassail bowl of hot spiced old ale.

Everyone is welcome, especially if you'd like to sing or play. We mostly sing and play traditional music from the British Isles, but we enjoy other styles as well. We always start off with some English dance tunes for anyone with an instrument to join in.

We have a loyalty card. Six visits earn you £5 off an evening when admission is £5 or more. It's £4 tonight.

Subject: RE: Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 10:30 AM

My recipe for Twelfth Cake:

Twelfth Cake

I couldn't find a specific recipe, but the descriptions were of a rich cake containing ginger and honey. This is what I came up with. I made it at Halloween and served it on 8th. January. It's also traditional to bake a dried bean until hard and add it to the mixture; whoever gets the bean in their slice is chosen as the Lord of Misrule and is supposed to decide what games will be played on Twelfth Night, but I haven't tried doing that myself.

Makes a 9-inch / 23 cm cake

900 g crystallised ginger
900 g good crystallised peel
375 g plain flour
375 g butter
350 g dark brown sugar
generous tablespoon runny honey
6 eggs
heaped teaspoon ground nutmeg
heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
grated rind of one lemon & one orange

After baking
rum or brandy
2 tablespoons marmalade & the juice of half a lemon
1 packet marzipan
500 g royal icing sugar

Grease tin and double-line with greaseproof paper. Heat oven to 150 deg C / gas mark 2.
Rinse crystallised ginger in plenty of hot water to remove surface sugar, then pat it dry or leave it to drain. Dice ginger.and peel; mix and sprinkle thoroughly with flour from the measured amount.

Cream butter, sugar, honey & grated rind. Beat eggs together thoroughly with fork and beat into creamed mixture a little at a time. Sift flour with spices, beat into mixture; add ginger & peel. If you're using an electric mixer you may need to transfer the mixture to a larger bowl and use a wooden spoon to add the ginger & peel.

Spoon mixture into prepared tin and bake for a good 3 hours just below the middle of the oven. Test to check that it's done. A skewer stuck deep in will come out clean without traces of uncooked mixture.

Cool, then turn out of tin. When cool, wrap loosely in fresh greaseproof paper and store in an airtight plastic box rather than a metal tin which may rust. Pierce the cake with a skewer here and there and sprinkle with a couple of tablespoons of rum once a fortnight or so (you could leave a label on the outside of the box noting each time this is done). The aim is to soften the cake rather than dissolve it.

About four days before you need the cake, put marmalade and lemon juice together in a cup in the microwave for half a minute. Stand the cake on more greaseproof paper; brush its top and sides with the mixture, leaving any large lumps of orange peel behind in the cup.

Measure the height of the cake and its diameter: dust work surface with ordinary icing sugar and roll out the marzipan to a circle an inch wider than the diameter plus twice the height. Apply the rolled marzipan to the cake - you'll have to make a few tucks or trim it here and there along the sides. Its main function is to prevent the body fluids of the cake leaking into the icing. Leave it 24-48 hours to dry, then make up the royal icing following the instructions on the packet and leave it at least a day to dry before cutting the cake.

I decorate it with red and gold ribbons.

Subject: RE: Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 12:20 PM

Please consider me there in spirit! (Or in spirits...)

#thewateriswide

Subject: RE: Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:04 PM

Never having been a huge fan of classic 'brown' dried fruit saturated Xmas fare, Twelfth Cake looks like my kind of cake! Ginger, booze & citrus = yumyumyum, though I may try for a less eggy / buttery version.

Good wishes for the wassail and all apple trees involved too!

Subject: RE: Wassail, firelight & candlelight, Lewes
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 22 Dec 14 - 01:30 PM

WASSAIL BOWL as served annually at Lewes Saturday Folk Club's Wassail night

5 pints Harveys Old Ale
3 large dry sherries
1 pint apple juice

2 oranges, with the peel removed in a single strip and the juice squeezed out
5 thin slices fresh root ginger
3 x 10 cm sticks of cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg, freshly grated
4 baby clementines cut in half, with 8-10 whole cloves stuck in the peel of each one, or 8 kumquats with a few whole cloves stuck in each
3 heaped tablespoons of soft dark brown sugar

Put all the flavouring ingredients in a plastic lidded box about 12 hours before you want the wassail, so that the sugar and orange juice start to draw the flavour out of the fresh spices and the juice out of the clementines.

Add them to the old ale, sherry and apple juice in a large pan, heat steadily and start serving when piping hot. This keeps the flavours fresh and not stewed.