Christmas cake

"a traditionally iced and comfortingly decorative Christmas cake is a lovely thing, and if efficiency allows, should be embraced." Nigella Lawson

A quickie as I don't have a lot of time. I have to go and slice up some Christmas cakes for our film society end of year.

Well they call them Christmas cakes, but they're not really. They are just fruit cakes - very nice, but not to my mind a Christmas cake. A Christmas cake - like those of my youth have to have marzipan (do we ever have marzipan these days?), white royal icing and some sort of Christmas decoration - like the one above. Otherwise it's just fruit cake isn't it?

I'm not going to make one, or even buy one as basically my family doesn't like them. No Christmas pudding either for the same reason. The only traditional foods that we shall have at Christmas are the turkey (of course) and mince pies - not that many of my family like them either - but some of us do. And only home-made ones, with Robertsons mincemeat will do.

Christmas cake originated as a kind of porridge eaten on Christmas Eve to line stomachs after a day of fasting. Over time it evolved through yeasty things to the cake we know today which basically - like most of the things we do at Christmas originated in the Victorian era. And no doubt it continues to evolve.

"The Christmas cake is constantly evolving, and has come a long way since someone first added butter and wheat flour to the sloppy oatmeal and dried fruit porridge (a sort of festive muesli) with which Christians had long celebrated." Nigel Slater

I guess celebratory occasions have been celebrated with cakes since forever. They're an indulgence not for every day - or they should be. And Christmas is celebratory because of the birth of Jesus and the turning of winter towards spring - in the Northern hemisphere anyway. I guess a good solid fruit cake is a good way to do it - in the Northern hemisphere anyway where it is cold and dark.

These days in Australia we seem to be turning towards panettone - an Italian Christmas cake tradition - but I personally think they are much overrated. Too dry for my taste. No give me a rich boozy Christmas cake, loaded with fruit and spice and encased in a rock hard shell of icing that conceals the almost sickenly sweet marzipan underneath. You only need a little bit of it. The spices by the way (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg) - are representative of the gifts of the Three Kings - gold, frankincense and myrrh). I didn't know that so that's something I learnt today.

Like I said this was a quickie.