Christmas cake: Why we eat it and when to bake it!

Childhood memories are often the most vivid and evoke emotions which otherwise lay dormant.

It is in this context that I start my discussion on Christmas cake, a cake most definitely from my childhood, made each year by my mother using a recipe from the Dairy Book of Home Cookery, a book now celebrating its 50^th anniversary. It is the memory of fruit soaking for days in whiskey, a drink my mother most definitely would never have drunk herself; a memory of her mixing the ingredients in a special washing up bowl as her Mason Cash bowl (which I still use today) was not big enough; and a memory of the royal icing used to decorate, in the days before shop-bought fondant icing became available.

It is the memory of cutting a slice (always lengthwise, never in a triangle) and wondering if you would slice through the middle of a glacé cherry and would that slice end up being yours, the slice with the cherry!

I still have that anticipation today and have passed this wonder on to my own children.  It is the same feeling when eating a pork pie with a beautiful egg in the middle. We all want the slice with the golden yolk. If not, we feel cheated, that life will not be quite as sunny, that fortune does not favour us!

So, when recipes give instructions to chop the glacé cherries, I rebel and leave them whole, looking forward to the day, in the distance, when the cake will be sliced, and fortune will favour the brave!

But why do we eat fruit cake at Christmas?

It seems that the tradition of using dried fruit in cakes dates back to 1700 BC and Mesopotamia, today’s Iran, Iraq, Syria and Kuwait. Traditionally fruit was placed on redwood trays and dried by the heat of the sun until all the moisture was removed. The by-product, date juice, was used a syrup, and raisins were used as a sweetener in cakes and breads. Fruit in this region, especially dates and figs, were plentiful with a single tree annually producing over 50kg of fruit. Fruit was also affordable and nourishing, acting as a staple ingredient, adding texture and depth to meat pies while simultaneously prescribed as a stimulant to cure weariness.

There is further evidence of the transformation of grapes into dried fruit (raisins, currants and sultanas) in Armenia from 400BC and spreading across northern Africa into Israel, and it is here that we find biblical references for fruit cakes.

In the Old Testament, God instructed Hosea to take back an adulterous wife and to love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the raisin cakes. Abigail, in 1 Samuel hurried and took… 200 cakes of fig and loaded them on a donkey. She gave Samuel a piece of fig cake and two clusters of raisins, and he ate; then his spirits were revived.

And so it was in Medieval times that fruit was added to porridge which broke the fast on Christmas Eve, making the porridge a little more special

By the time of the C16th, this oatmeal was gradually replaced with wheat flour, resulting in a cake made with eggs and butter, which the rich would adorn with an almond sugar paste (now known as marzipan) and icing made from newly refined sugar, later known as royal icing, a fashion established by the Royal family. The final ingredient: spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, cloves and ginger were added to symbolise the spices brought by the Three Wise Men who followed the star.

This traditionally circular shaped cake came to symbolize the cyclical nature of life, and increasingly cakes were eaten on other important dates to symbolize, in the words of Elton John and Tim Rice in The Lion King, The Circle of Life.

Which cake to bake and when do I bake it?

There are so many recipes for Christmas cake, we really are spoilt for choice. Over the years I have tried Nigella’s Christmas Cake recipe, and her Black Cake – a West Indian cake made using dark muscovado sugar and quite a lot of treacle. I have also tried Mary Berry’s Classic Rich Christmas Cake, her Dundee cake and even a stollen, but year after year, I turn to Delia Smith and her recipe for a Rich Fruit Cake from Delia Smith’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course, first published in 1978, but still very much in print.

Of course, some variations on the original recipe are allowed, for instance last year, mixed peel was not available here in the Netherlands, so I used a dark vintage marmalade instead. My girls also dislike the taste of brandy, so I use tea to soak the fruit; this year I used Lapsang Souchong.

Making the cake is the easy bit. It is lining the tin which takes the time, but it is well worth making the effort

I usually try to complete this task in advance as sometimes it takes longer than expected and requires team work to tie that final knot securing the brown paper cloaking the outside of the tin. I also soak the fruit for much longer than the recipe indicates, checking it each day and adding a little extra black tea. This really does make a much moister cake and frankly is less hassle than feeding the finished product, a task I always forget to do!

As to when to bake the cake, the earlier the better

The lovely lady who made my wedding cake many years ago always used to say that a fruit cake needs eight months to mature however, I usually aim for about now, the first half of November and am not usually disappointed.

So, all that remains is for me to wish you well in your baking, and to look forward to slicing through and finding that little circle of happiness. Fortune really will favour the brave!

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Further Reading:

Hammiehoeve – a local egg producer and so much more!

My Love Affair with the Egg: How food writers and chefs have guided and inspired our cooking of this humble ingredient