Christmas Cake Made Easy

 

Christmas Cake Without Tears, or Indeed, Trouble of Any Kind. Here is the secret...

First, spend years putting up with children in the kitchen, breaking eggs all over the floor, splattering the walls with chocolate mixture from the beaters, and inadvertantly leaving the lid off the blender...

Then say, 'Oh yes please!' when they want to make the Christmas Cake by themselves. Well, what actually happened is that The Girl weighed all the dried fruit, zested and juiced the lemon and mixed in the sherry while Posy and Rosy ate the raisins.


 



Then the next day The Girl creamed the butter and sugar and mixed in the flour and spices while the little girls watched TV. Then it was time to mix in the fruit and make a wish. At that point, Rosy and Posy were very helpful. Also with the licking out the bowl part. Meanwhile The Girl lined a baking tin with paper and baked the cake for three hours.



Now it is my turn. I get to pour brandy over the cold cake every evening for several days. I am quite good at this. Then I shall wrap it up in baking paper and foil, and store it in the wardrobe until Christmas.

Here is my grandma's recipe if you would like to try it. This is one of my first posts. The children are small and cute, the kitchen slummy..

Comments

GretchenJoanna said…
Does the brandy discourage insects? I make a non-alcoholic "California Fruitcake" every year, which needs to age for at least a week. The one time I put the foil-wrapped loaves in the garage to age they were infested with ants by Christmas. :-( The ants hadn't eaten much, so we did get our Christmas cake...
Jo said…
Not sure whether insects are teetotal or dipsomaniacs.. brandy is a preservative, and makes the cake divinely moist and fragrant, and I store the cake in my wardrobe where there are (hopefully)no insects...
Loved seeing the pictures of you and yours! This Christmas cake of yours, as far as I can tell, contains no chocolate. So that's not a problem for you? Hmmm ...

frances
you are so ahead of me, i haven;t even thought of xmas cakes yet! well done. and how fabulous to have a family recipe - the best.
narf7 said…
Just saw this apparently "random" post under your mostest up to date post. I think the universe is trying to tell me something...trying to detect what it is trying to tell me...can't quite get it...closing my eyes (makes typing more difficult but whatchagonnadoeh?)...it's coming to me...slowly...slowly... "Eureka I have it!" The universe wants me to eat raisins! :)

Popular Posts