If like us, you are always looking for a new recipe to try, here is one that we rather liked and of course it has honey in it. And it can be made beforehand and stored up to a month (if you can resist that long)
Ingredients
100g (3 ½ oz) each of Walnuts, whole blanched Hazelnuts and Almonds
125g (2 ½ oz) each of dried Figs and dried Apricots – chopped
50g (1 ¾ oz) chopped mixed peel
50g (1 ¾ oz) plain flour
¼ teaspoon each of ground Nutmeg and Cinnamon
100g (3 ½ oz) Caster Sugar
225g (8 oz) runny Honey
Icing sugar for decoration
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/ Gas 4
Lightly butter a 20cm round loose-bottomed tin and line with edible rice paper or baking parchment
Roast the nuts on a tray in the oven for about 15 minutes, until golden. Roughly chop the figs and apricots, then place in a food processor with the peel and blend for a few seconds to make a soft rubble. Add the nuts and blitz until very roughly chopped.
Tip into a bowl and sift in the flour and spices.
At this stage you can turn the oven down to 150°C/fan 130°/Gas 2
Heat the sugar and honey in a pan until melted, then bring to the boil until the temperature reaches 115°C on a sugar thermometer (or until it forms a soft ball when a little of the mixture is dropped into a cup of cold water)
Quickly stir in the nut mixture, pour into the prepared baking tin and smooth the surface with the back of a wet spoon.
Bake for 35 – 40 minutes.
Leave to cool and firm up, then remove from the tin, remove the baking parchment if used.
Sieve some icing sugar over the top. If you are feeling artistic you can design a snowflake stencil with baking parchment to create a pretty pattern.
Have a Merry Christmas
