Written By Carol Small, Middlesex Centre Archives
It is December already! Time to turn our thoughts to Christmas preparations. The coming days will be filled with finding just the right gift for everyone and decorating the house. In some homes, baking all sorts of goodies, a tradition from the past, may still be a part of the preparations. Items such Christmas cakes, Christmas puddings, squares, cookies, candy – all very rich and decadent!
Christmas cake is usually the first item to be made. In late October or early November, the many ingredients are assembled. In early days, the items were often prepared from the garden or orchard. Candied cherries, various fruits and peels along with dried currants and nuts were accompanied with purchased raisins and dates and spices. Christmas cake requires a low, constant baking temperature for a long period of time. In today’s kitchen a gas or electric stove provides that constant even heat for as long as needed. In the past, a wood stove’s fire box supplied the heat. To keep that constant, even heat was a challenge. The kitchen stove served multi-purposes, with meals being cooked on it and providing heat for the house too. But baking a Christmas cake took precedence because of the time and expense involved. Once baked, the cakes were stored in sealed containers to moisten, with maybe a little help from brandy.
Christmas puddings were often plum or carrot and made with suet. After all ingredients were assembled, the pudding had to be steamed on that same wood stove some time before the “Big Day”. Served with a rich sauce after a sumptuous roast turkey or goose at Christmas dinner, no one complained about being hungry.
Christmas cookies and squares were always a great gift or a treat to take to a gathering of any kind. Often the varieties were made only once a year at Christmas. The richer, the better! Shortbread remains a favourite. Sugar cookies, date squares, dried fruit squares and chocolate in anything are just a few to mention. Egg nog was a must at gatherings! It may have had brandy or rum added. No wonder people made New Years’ resolutions to diet in January.
Fudge was often a favourite Christmas treat. White, chocolate or Divinity fudge all required stove heat and lots of beating. While that seems easy in today’s kitchen with microwave ovens and electric beaters, it was not so in past days. To heat sugars and syrups hot enough on that wood stove was tricky. Many an attempt was burned beyond use. Using hand beaters to try to get the fudge to stiffen was often another failure.
Of course, the biggest issue with keeping Christmas baking on hand for guests is finding enough hiding places to keep it safe from the “sweet” detectives in the house.
If you have memories of favourite Christmas treats and cannot find a recipe, come and browse MCA’s collection of local cookbooks. Churches and organisations gathered favourite recipes from members and published them in cookbooks. Chances are you will find a favourite recipe that you can share with your family and create some new memories and traditions. You might even find recipes for Idiot’s Delight, Whackey Cake and others with very different titles.
