I have quite a thing for Christmas, baking, decorations, giving gifts, pretty wrapping paper, eating, more eating, more baking and more eating! It's the season for me and I try and start it as early as possible, chomping at the bit to get my tree up however this year with the craziness of my first year of a new job and moving house I've gotten around to things a lot later than normal.
My favourite ritual to engage in in the lead up to Christmas is baking my Nana's Christmas cake recipe and her mother's pudding recipe. It has become a really special tradition for me as I connect to these women in my family, one who I know so little about, one who I see infrequently because of geographic distance, by following their recipes. A culinary following in their footsteps (to be disgustingly corny).
A really special moment in my life was the day I sat down with my nana as she went through all her old recipes translating (the handwriting that is) them for me, and especially the stained brown fragile Christmas pudding recipe in her mother's handwriting. Food and baking is something we have always connected over that my mother and her sister have never really had much interest in. I perhaps over romantically imagine that Great Grandma Green's recipe probably came from her mother as well, and it's journey has been long and colourful down into my hands but you never know, perhaps it's just a great one she saw in women's weekly (slightly less romantic)!
For the last few years I put aside a day, put all four of Sufjan Steven's Christmas albums on shuffle, don an apron and immerse myself in these old recipes, (still in pounds!). This year was an interesting adventure in my tiny new kitchen with very little bench space, but out came the babushka doll measuring cups and mint green kitchen scales and somehow I managed to not turn my house into a cinnamon spiced disaster zone. One thing I did prepare for early was my fruit! I have these high aspirations of soaking my fruit from easter, but it's hard to get excited about fruit in brandy when your head is in chocolate land. This year I started soaking in July, still so much longer than I've done it in the past, I'm hoping for a massive flavour payoff (it won't be boozey, all the alcohol burns off - though licking the bowl....hello!). I can't wait to taste and see if it has made a difference, but the pudding and cake must sit (damit!). Probably a week before I carve into the cake I think.
This year living on my own and with family interstate I decided to do 4 smaller puddings and give them as gifts, and will probably do the same with chunks of the cake. I can't resist that cake when it's in my fridge though, the rich brown sugary, boozey fruity, spicy flavours that are so nostalgic. So sorry, no recipes this time, i'm keeping these a family secret and my special tradition. Now off to dream up Christmas ice cream flavours!
ps how awesome are the tiles on my new kitchen!
