Baking the Christmas cake

It’s nearly October half term so I’ve been making Christmas cakes and puddings. That’s my traditional date, ever since I started to make myown. For the first couple of years we were married, my mother used to make us a cake, and then I started to feel guilty because really, she had enough to do. But I use her recipe, which goes back to my great grandmother Nock – my mother’s mother’s mother. It involves one and a half pounds of butter and a dozen eggs. I cut it back to one pound of butter, which still makes a very substantial cake.

I remember my gran making the cakes and puddings. The currants had to be picked over for twiggy bits and then washed, and then, to make sure they didn’t sink, they were dried in bowls in front of the coal fire all day, being turned over by hand regularly. So even getting the currants ready for use was a major task. The almonds were put into a bowl and boiling water poured over and then when the water had cooled, they were slipped out of their brown skins. After  that, they were chopped. When I first started making my own cake, I felt I ought to buy almonds in their skins and do the hot water bit, but after a lot of years, I decided that nostalgia is all very well, but you can indulge in it too much. So now I buy the almonds already skinned. Actually, the chopping takes ages because you don’t want the pieces too small, so it has to be done almond by almond – no food processing. 

My granny used to have to chop the mixed peel, too. Of course nowadays, one uses mixed peel and currants straight from the packet. You have to add a little mace, and it can be quite hard to find nowadays. It isn’t a fashionable spice. How you can make a béchamel without mace beats me, though. Probably everyone’s too busy making Thai curries badly, instead of traditional British food well.

I do use the food processor for beating the sugar and butter and the eggs. My gran used to do it all by hand with a wooden spoon, in a very big earthenware bowl, just like the ones they have in National Trust dairies.  It’s jolly hard work – we all used to take a hand, although I don’t know how much help I was really.  We all got to make a wish with the puddings. I tried to get the kids to have a stir and make a wish on our pudding when they were young, but it didn’t really take – I’m not sure they make a wish on cutting birthday cakes any more, even. Perhaps they are all too cynical, or too scientific, to believe in wishes any more. I remember making a wish on the first star at night, and the new moon, and avoiding seeing the new moon through glass, throwing spilt salt over my shoulder, and loads of other superstitious stuff that the kids have never done. I’m not sure if it’s good that they aren’t superstitious, or whether they’ve missed some sort of folk culture.

I digress. After all the chopping and mixing and beating, the mixture is put into a well buttered and lined cake tin which is still marked  on the bottom “2 shillings and 7 pence”, and cooked in a slow oven for about 8 to 10 hours. (My modern oven switches itself off after about seven hours – it seems to think it knows better than I do. I know about this now, but it still makes me swear.)  As soon as it comes out of the oven, I pour several generous slugs of brown rum over it, and the smell is out of this world. If it doesn’t make your mouth water, you’re probably dead.

Then the cake is wrapped up and put away until Christmas Eve, when it is covered with marzipan (NO white icing!) and decorated with marzipan balls, glace cherries, a Father Christmas driving a sled which predates me, a robin made by my daughter out of Fimo, and a plaque saying “Merry Christmas” which came from Sainsbury’s about twenty years ago. Then it’s served with proper Wensleydale, brought from North Yorkshire.  Merry Christmas!