It is starting to look pretty bad out there in the world and I can see the conflict in Israel growing larger and pulling countries in the Middle East into a regional war. If you think this will not affect you, I wish you may be right.
As there is nothing I can do about it, I am going to tell you a cautionary tale about Christmas cake. I love the stuff myself. I love it when it is spread with apricot jam and enfolded in a layer of marzipan rolled out thin and draped over the cake and then slapped up with a deep covering of Royal icing. The only problem with a slice of Christmas cake got up in that manner is the diabetic shock which may well result.
My Grandmother, may she rest in peace, was a cultured French-Canadian lady from Montreal. She baked an excellent Christmas cake, probably because she had the misfortune to marry my Anglo-Irish Grandfather. He loved Christmas cake and desserts could not be too rich for that man. Some people tell me you have to be of British descent to enjoy Christmas cake. The way my Grandmother baked it was to decorated the tops with patterns of pecans and lay a piece of tin foil over the tops of the cakes to stop the nuts scorching.
This does away with the need to jam, marzipan and Royal icing the otherwise, fairly-innocent cake. I have made Christmas cake both ways and prefer the more restrained version of my Grandmother.
I think a lot of people will have a battered old copy of the Joy of Cooking somewhere about the house and I hope you read this story in time. The Joy’s recipe for Christmas cake, from the older editions, must be read right to the end before commencing any purchases or preparations.
I read a story, that I devoutly hope was made up, about a young lady who, in her first year as a young wife, decided to make Christmas cake and read the recipe in the Joy but she did not read it all the way through. She made a shopping list first and went out and filled a shopping cart with candied peel and dried fruit. She took her loot home and began to mix the cake up in her largest bowl. That didn’t last long. She had to transfer the batter to a stock pot and after a few more such moves, her husband came home to find his bride weeping and mixing the cake in their bathtub.
You see, back in the day, the Joy’s Christmas-cake recipe was made for that tough generation of Memsahibs that went out and fought World War Two no matter if their husbands and families liked it or not. The idea was to produce enough cake to send one to every maiden aunt, second cousin twice removed, all the girls who served with them in the Intelligence Unit, the Vicar and of course for all the servants working and retired that their family had ever employed. The recipe made about thirty cakes.
I just checked my copy of the Joy from 2006 and the horrendous recipe, that I am sure got many a young cook in a lot of trouble, has been replaced by a much wimpier version suited to modern folk who lack the grit, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness of that towering generation, now, sadly almost gone from us. I am sure they are looking down at us and shaking their heads in disbelief.
So, the moral of the story is to read every recipe three times all the way through before making a decision and starting to cook. If you do want to do some Christmas baking, I hope you will buy some organically-produced lemons, oranges and limes and make your own candied peel. You just put the sliced peels in a pot of water and boil them for 15 minutes. Drain and put 2 cups of sugar and one of water into the pot and boil it until the sugar has dissolved. Add the poached peels and simmer for about an hour. Drain, reserving the excellent citrus simple syrup to sweeten drinks, and roll the hot drained peels in sugar. Leave them out on a rack to dry for one or two days and then put them in a cookie tin in the freezer where they will keep very well.
I do not hold with buying candied fruit which is mostly unnatural green and red cherries steeped in pesticides an filthy with dyes. I use my own home-dried fruit such as apples, pears, figs and plums. Honestly, why bother to bake a cake if you are going to buy all the ingredients? You might just as well buy a loaf of ghastly, commercially-prepared, pseudo-Christmas cake and say you baked it. I hope you will try baking your own Christmas cake this year. It is a lovely tradition from a more civilized age.
