Christmas Cake
So it's that time of the year. Except this year I want to beat the shit out of the Christmas cake. Yes, really. It's a tradition that doesn't fit with me anymore, and yet I feel compelled. Compelled! Freaking compelled to make a Christmas cake.Overloaded. Time to take out all these thoughts. - Cassette, AI.
As I write the fruit mixture is boiling, the oven is ready for the three hour bake-a-thon, the ingredients are gathered. The search for bicarbonate of soda took me half an hour only to find the package staring me in the face.
Fruitcake for Christmas is a redundant tradition, having been overtaken by the Kerststol and it's cousins the Paasstol, the anytime-I-feel-like-it-stol and other assorted continental treats.
Why am I baking this cake? Can anyone tell me? Do I sound angry? I'm not really angry at the cake you understand.
I'm angry at the tradition that keeps me making something that no-one really wants while I try to hold onto a little bit of the past. The same tradition that kept my mom making Christmas cake and mince pies in the scorching heat of an African summer, while we melted on the verandah.
The same compulsion to hold a little bit of my past intact pushes me, forces me, into the kitchen. My memory serves up heady reminders of the past. The taste of brandy, fruit and nuts, gathered all year from wherever, usually South Africa, in times when it was sometimes impossible to find a fresh fruit, let alone dried ones.
I try to recapture that, try to force the memory, but reality, in it's bleak dust-coated pyjamas, pushes my recollections further away from me.
After all that,you still want the recipe? I have to admit it's an excellent one.
Christmas Fruitcake Recipe
450g mixed raisins and sultanas
50g finely chopped candied peel
100g dried cranberries
200g coarsely chopped Medjool dates
100 ml cognac
100 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
15 ml bicarbonate of soda
5 ml mixed spice
200g unsalted butter
150g roasted almonds
200g dark brown sugar
4 medium eggs
100g plain flour
- Soak the fruit overnight or for a couple of days in the fridge with the cognac and orange juice.
- Preheat the oven to 150C. Grease a 20cm (8 inch round tin and line the bottom and sides with oiled baking paper. Note: if your tin is bigger than 20 cm your cooking time will be shortened!
- Make a collar of brown paper for the outside of the pan using a double layer of brown paper and tie it in place with string.
- Tip the soaked fruit into a heavy based saucepan, add the butter, half a tablespoon of the bicarbonate of soda and the mixed spice to the mixture and simmer for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Allow to cool.
- Beat the eggs until frothy in a large mixing bowl.
- Using the food processor process the almonds until coarsely chopped, tip out half and continue to process the remainder into ground almonds.
- Sift the flour and remaining bicarbonate of soda together in a large bowl and add the almonds to the mixture.
- Add the cooled fruit and the beaten eggs to the flour and nut mixture and mix evenly.
- Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface.
- Bake for 3 and a half hours or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin and then remove it from the tin.
- Using a skewer lightly poke the surface and sprinkle the cake with brandy.
- Wrap firmly in greaseproof paper and then wrap in foil and keep in a cool dark place until ready to decorate.
- You can feed the cake every week with a few drops of brandy or sherry.
I can't get this new site to let me comment otherwise -- just know that I am so happy you are back and I think venting is healthy! Yay for you Ash!
Ah the tradition of Christmas cake. You hit the nail on the head.
We’re lucky enough to have an aunt who bakes the Christmas cake every year. Not sure when this tradition started but we haven’t plucked up the courage yet to tell her that nobody actually likes it…
Do people eat it in your family? If it’s still untouched by January 6th just store it away with the rest of the Christmas decorations and keep it for next year. It will save you a lot of time and effort next year.
mike :)
Kelli, the commenting through movable type is weird, you have to be anonymous if you're not registered, except you're not anonymous at all because you have to put your details in. I wonder who thought of that! Thanks for commenting :)
Mike, well there's always the odd hungry occasion in March/April.
The first time I got married there was a fruit cake, and months later we had a bit of a cash-flow problem.
That cake came in reeeeeeeal handy! Maybe that's really why they have all those layers of cake at weddings.
I was just wondering if I'm going to turn out like your aunt? ;)
We changed it to trifle, trying to build our own tradition - but I still buy a tiny little christmascake for the husband ;)
Ahh I finally found the 'anonymous comment' link. :)
I am sure it wasn't there before, and it refused to let me sign in using my LJ details... *shrug*
Anyway I am one of the last remaining people who LOVE Christmas cake, mince pies and Christmas pudding... but no one else does so most years I have to go without :(
I have made a Christmas cake once, when I was 16. I was a lot of work and I nearly got murdered for using my days 15 year old VS KWV brandy ;) and then I over cooked it a bit and it was rather dry... so I wouldn't bother again. I just buy a small one if I feel strongly enough inclined.
If I have any advice for you it would be to find your own way of doing things and your own happiness and follow that. NOt what used to be, or what you think you should be.
I hope that makes sense and helps.
*hugs*
Jane
Oh and I wanted to mention that I have started my own tradition with my boys and we make Christmas cinnamon cookies. We hang some of them in the tree and keep some to leave out for Father Christmas on Christmas Eve. This works for us and it's a fun activity for us all.
I started this about 5 years ago and we do it every year :)
J
Yay! I got in!
I would love to make fruitcake, but I'd be the only one eating it so I don't. One thing I made last year at Christmas that might turn into a family tradition was a chestnut cheesecake. Everyone loved it and the damn thing did not have to be finished by me.
Well done, Ash, for persevering. I'm sure your cake will be delicious.
Jane, the commenting wasn't working before - the site still has some hiccups :) Not least the layout! Christmas cinnamon cookies sound fab. We made cupcakes for a while. We'll do that for the Christmas dinner at school this year.
Marjolein, this year let me send you some of my fruitcake :)
Charlotte, chestnut cheesecake!
OH MY GOD! I need the recipe!
I have fond memories of making fruit cake as a kid. You just can´t buy anything that tastes as good, but it´s always so much work...
Sorry I´ve been a bit slow to show up here, I´ve had computer and internet troubles...
I love fruitcake - especially the one my grandmother makes with dark rum and Angostura Bitters.
Here's a particularly boozy recipe: http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/RECIPES/RECIPES/Desserts/Trinidadblackcake.html
Euphoria.
Pakora, I love that cake! My mom used to make a similar one, very boozy. Which reminds me, we ran out of brandy :)
Patrick, I'll keep you some of mine, how's that? It'll save me from having to eat it all on my own.