Ladies, a Plate - four recipes from Alexa Johnston for last minute gifts or family baking

Here are four recipes for last minute gifts or family baking – two Middle Eastern fruitand nut based sweets, some anise-flavoured Italian biscuits and a 17th Christmas fruit bread. The Middle Eastern recipes are subtly flavoured with cinnamon and cardamom, orange blossom water and rose water, they look pretty and make an elegant alternative to sugary fudge or rich chocolate. Cavallucci are small, dryish biscuits made with no fat of any kind, but bursting with toasted walnuts and candied peel and mixed spices, with aniseed predominating. For a different kind of Christmas cake this year I turned to Elizabeth David’s ‘English Bread and Yeast Cookery’. After researching the history of British fruit breads she described them as ‘confections of remarkable distinction and delicacy’ against which modern heavy fruit cakes loaded with sugar and dried fruit seem ‘crude and out of date’. This spice and currant cake/ bread keeps very well, but can be made the day before Christmas if you wish. It comes from the wonderfully-titled book ‘A True Gentlewoman’s Delight’, by the Countess of Kent, first published in 1653. All these recipes are from a time when sugar was an expensive ingredient, used sparingly for special occasion cooking. They are not spectacularly sweet, but they are all festive and all delightful.