Traditional Christmas Cake

I’ve been thinking a lot about traditions over the last few days.  I’m not generally a ‘traditional’ sort of person, but the traditions I have chosen to follow are important to me.  They provide me with a sense of where I come from and how that has contributed to who I am.

Late November is the time to bake a traditional English Christmas cake.  This allows enough time to add alcohol to the baked cake, and then to finish it with marzipan and icing.  So two days ago I gathered together all the ingredients for my cakes – two of them – and baked.  Before I started I took this photograph, but it’s far more than a description of the ingredients.  In this photograph is a complete family history of my Christmas cake traditions!

The mixing bowl at the centre of this image actually belonged to my great grandmother.  It is the very bowl that she would have used for her own baking, and it’s from her that the recipe I use originates.  I never met her – she died in the 1940s, but I do have a photograph of her.  From her daughter – my grandma – comes the little nutmeg grinder.  I would hate to damage it so we don’t use it, but it does still contain the remnants of nutmegs ground over the decades.  The alcohol is my granddad’s contribution.  When he first tasted the cake back in 1921 he thought it needed a little something extra, so the recipe now calls for the addition of rum or whisky when the cake is still hot.  I hate whisky, so I’ve made my own amendment – I add rum or brandy.  This year’s cake has been plied with this cognac.

From my late mother I have the recipe itself, written in her own hand.  And my father’s contribution?  Well, he borrowed the mixing bowl to collect tomatoes and left it in the greenhouse where the glaze became chipped by gardening tools!  

My mum gave me the bowl some years ago, and of course I’ve never been able to use it for baking.  Instead I honour the women of my family who have used it through many decades by filling it with the most expensive pot pourri I can afford and giving the bowl pride of place in the sitting room.

So – would you like to see the completed Christmas cakes?  Ha! You’ll have to wait!  They’re under wraps… 

This is my contribution to Wordfull Wednesday, hosted by Angie at her Seven Clown Circus blog:

Also to You Capture, this week with the prompt of Food, hosted by Beth at her blog: I should be Folding Laundry:

And finally, it also seemed appropriate this week to link, for the first time, to Remember Whensday, hosted by Sally:

Please go visit one or more of these to see what others have been showing and talking about this week.

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