. . . about my Christmas cake. This was a headfit I took late last night to make a Christmas cake. Reason being: I looked at them in the shops and didn't fancy them. Furthermore, they were full of E-numbers.
But why should I suddenly want a cake when we've not had one in the house for about 20 years? -- although we always have loads of chocolates and mince pies and stuff. It must be because I know that Mother loves cake and she'll be here for four days, as will everyone else this year.
So I looked on the internet and saw the fab recipe in the Cottage Smallholder site (see my links; they are a lovely site). I had nearly everything in the house (though only two eggs), and I just thought I'd make a tiny one with about half the ingredients. I simply had Mother in mind, and I thought that if I made a trip to the shops in the morning I'd never get it done.
The great thing was the soaking of my ancient dried out old raisins and currants and sultanas in some Guiness that I've had in the house for months -- in case Matty comes by again (see September: The Call of the Bittern (2)).
So there I was at about 2.00 in the morning stirring up this great mixture; the big problem was that I only had about 8 dried out old cherries, but they went, halved, into the soak, which, having been on top of the Rayburn all night, had swelled up completely and was lovely and warm in the morning.
To cut a long story short, this cake, baked in the Rayburn which is always about 220F at the best of times, is just wonderful. It is so pale (yes, I did have some extremely pale runny honey in the house), and yet it's permeated with calvados -- the only spirit I had in the house.
Now I have just covered it in marzipan. It looks wonderful. I might take a photo when I've iced it. Delia (whose last minute cake I also looked up last night) says that one can usually find some ancient Santa or snowman to decorate a last minute cake with -- some little thing that has been passed on down the family for generations. How right she is. My grandmother used to make snow scenes for me when I was a child -- a child full of wonder. She laid a piece of mirror on the sideboard and surrounded it with cottonwool on which she placed little plaster figures, fir cones and such. I was enthralled. I certainly have a Santa, and I think a snowman.
Last night I looked through this blog and thought it had rather a depressive, plaintive tone. And that's not me at all. I'm a jolly soul; and never more than tonight when I am just so excited about my cake. This, you see, is because I've been creative!! Yes, Polly, you do know that you ought to give up the day job and live on your wits and BE CREATIVE. Life is so short, and just look at the happiness it gives you.
One of the best elements of my creativity was suddenly remembering that I have a load of morello cherry jam, so in went a dozen wonderful halved sticky cherries out of that. And I also had my own home made apricot jam from 2006 to go under the marzipan. Clever me! Indeed, the self satisfaction is enough to compensate for the sore thumb that I hammered while putting up the Christmas decorations.
This Morello Cherry is from Clifton's Nurseries.
I'm sure they won't mind me using it,
as they might sell one. It looks just like mine.
Labels: Christmas Cake, Cottage Smallholder, Morello Cherries
