Thursday 3 December 2009

Stir once, stir twice, stir again....

I finally managed to put the fruit together for Christmas cakes. I need to make multiple cakes. There is a large one for my sister and her family. (Supposedly this is for the visitors who drop in about this time of the year. I suspect they actually eat most of it themselves.) There is a middle size one for us. That does get used for visitors. There are small cakes, mostly for various oldies who no longer make their own or no longer have partners to make them.
The recipe I use these days belongs to a friend. It was her grandmother's recipe. It is relatively simple. The fruit is sitting there with the contents of a bottle of cheap sherry over the top. It gets stirred several times a day. Things get added. The mixture goes into a variety of tins. It gets cooked. Cake, hopefully, comes out at the other end.
I will dutifully add a few mince pies (for my father) and shortbread. I am not cooking turkey or Christmas pudding. I do not care for either and neither does my father. Pudding belongs to winter, if we eat it at all. Both of us prefer fresh fruit.
"There will just be the three of us," an elderly friend told me. She has an invalid husband and still cares for a psychotic and sometimes violent son. I give her a small cake with the excuse that it is what will not fit into the tin I make ours in. It is a convention that allows her to accept it. She does not have the time or energy to make cakes of any sort.
A father and his young daughter will take one small cake with them when they head off for a week at the beach. They go over Christmas and New Year. It is important for them to get away because Christmas in the city has too many reminders of things past and what might have been. There will just be the two of them. I will get my young friend to help with the last stages of the cake making. She can ice their cake herself.
This sort of thing makes me feel a bit better about Christmas. I do not like the excess which surrounds Christmas. I like to stir in a little TLC but I do not want to smother.
It was very warm first thing this morning. When I collected the papers from the front I could smell Christmas. It was sweet and delicate. It was the 'barely there and not quite ready yet' scent of the peach tree. It was the way Christmas should be.
I went inside and stirred once, stirred twice and then stirred again.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note to self: must make cake ths weekend.

Thanks for the bloggly reminder!

catdownunder said...

Just review the list of ingredients first Donna. I had to discipline myself and make a shopping list this morning...usually I just remember whatever it is we need but I did not want to face the supermarket twice because I had forgotten something!

Adelaide Dupont said...

Your Christmas cake sounds very nice (and I'm sure it tastes delicious).

Glad you're avoiding the pudding.

And peach as the smell of Christmas...

Great to hear about the people as well.

Rachel Fenton said...

I can't shake off the feeling that Christmas belongs to the Northern hemisphere! I'm too hot to cook anything....
..I hope your young friend and her father get through this Chrismas with more than a little happiness...

catdownunder said...

I tend to agree - and I was born here but I felt more physically comfortable with Christmas in England! Who wants pudding in 30+' heat?