I'll admit, I’ve found it hard to get properly into Christmas mood this year.

It’s most perplexing, as I adore this time of year. Normally, I officially allow myself to become excited around the start of December, especially if, as in most years, I’ve taken care of most of the Christmas shopping through the year, leaving only a few precision retail assaults to take care of at opportune moments.

That leaves all the good stuff to enjoy; making up the mincemeat, brandy butter, and stuffings, or putting pen to paper and planning dinners and shopping lists.

Food shopping is never a chore for me, especially now as one can saunter into an almost deserted supermarket at six in the morning.

But, this year, for some unaccountable reason, I haven’t caught the bug quite yet. I’m sure something will spark me into life, and one thing I made this week certainly helped nudge me that way, so I thought I’d share it with you in the hope that it might help any other slowcoaches out there get festive.

It’s just a very simple cake, but it’s so incredibly Christmassy and just looking at it on its stand, dusted with sugar, sent a little festive ripple through the old soul.

I’m indebted for the basic cake recipe to the wonderful Trine Hahnemann, a terrific Danish cook and writer, and whose book ‘Scandinavian Christmas’ is an essential, delightful read, full of gorgeous wintery dishes absolutely bursting with flavour and comforting warmth.

The Scandinavians adore spices, especially when baking. Almost every one of their myriad cakes, teabreads and cookies contains one or more of the essential warm baking spices.

The countries’ rich seafaring and exploratory traditions meant that their ports were constantly filled with boats returning from tropical climes, loaded with exotic spices, and, naturally, they began to inveigle their way into the national cuisines of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

The seasonings I always refer to as the ‘cake’ spices – comprising ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and mace, are incredible in the baking kitchen, bestowing a lovely warmth and roundness of flavour to all they touch, from crisp, fiery gingerbread to warm, chewy marzipan cakes.

This particular cake is a traditional winter staple all over Scandinavia, and is a nice easy cake to bake when friends and relatives announce a visit rather too quickly for comfort.

It can be mixed and baked in just over an hour, and takes very little effort. It’s also one of the lightest cakes I think I’ve ever made, but still has that amazing, rich, scented flavour and buttery crumb that satisfies completely.

I made rather too much mixture, so ended up making two cakes, and thought that I’d try to cobble together a sandwich cake by introducing a cream of some sort. I had plenty of cream cheese lying around, so I sweetened it with some honey (another Scandi staple for the baker) and then ground in some black pepper to add a touch of heat. Pepper is also popular in Nordic baking.

The mixture was a little thick, so I used the juice from the oranges I’d zested for the cake to loosen the cream cheese to a nice spreadable consistency, and the cake was ready to sandwich together.

All that remained was to quickly pipe out some white chocolate hearts for the traditional decoration, and give the whole thing a hefty dusting of icing sugar. I’m almost there. As it’s the list time we’ll meet before Christmas, may I take this opportunity to wish you and yours a wonderful holiday.

Merry Christmas!

For the cake:

225g salted butter, plus a little extra

4 large fresh free-range eggs

225g unrefined dark muscovado sugar

330g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

100ml milk

The finely-grated zest of a large orange (save the juice for the filling)

For the filling:

300g cream cheese

4 tablespoons honey

A little fresh orange juice

Freshly-ground black pepper

For the decoration:

250g good-quality white chocolate

A little icing sugar

Extras:

A piping bag

1 x 22cm cake tin

Baking parchment

Method:

First, make the white chocolate hearts. In a bowl over barely simmering water, melt the white chocolate until smooth, allow to cool a little, then spoon into a small piping bag (the disposable ones are perfect for this). Set out a large sheet of baking parchment. Carefully pipe out heart shapes of varying sizes, and allow them to set completely. You could do other shapes, but hearts are traditional.

Now for the cake; butter the cake tin well, lining the base if possible with a buttered disc of baking parchment. Melt the 225g of salted butter and allow it to cool a little. Heat the oven to 175ºC / Gas 4. Whisk the eggs and muscovado sugar for about 20 minutes, until the mixture holds its shape very well. It should be nicely mousse-y. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices together into a bowl.

Transfer the sugar mixture to a wide bowl, and sift in one-third of the flour, folding in carefully with a large metal spoon. Add a third of the milk and repeat the folding. Do this with the remaining flour and milk in two batches, then add the melted butter and bring the mixture together quickly to form a smooth batter. Pour this into your cake tin, leaving a centimetre or so for expansion. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a skewer thrust into the heart of the cake comes out oily but clean.

Remove the cake from the oven and cool completely before unmoulding, and removing the paper. Carefully divide the cake into two even discs.

To make the filling, whisk the honey and cream cheese together, loosen the mixture to a dolloping consistency with the orange juice, and add a few good grinds of pepper. Spoon carefully over the bottom disc of cake, and work to the edges with a palette knife.

Carefully place the top of the cake over the filling and press gently to adhere.

To garnish, distribute chocolate hearts all over the cake according to your artistic sensibilities, and dust with a little icing sugar for the true Christmas feeling.

Serve with lashings of hot, strong coffee.