Chris Stoate
A month or more before Christmas, my Scottish-born mother would start baking. My earliest memories of this were in Perth, Western Australia, where there was no air-conditioning and December was the height of summer, temperatures reaching, as the Aussies would say, a hundred and ten in the water bag. The baking included of course a variety of shortbread cookies, and of course mince tarts, but the centrepiece of Christmas baking was the fruitcake, ultimately topped with marzipan and icing. It was a dense, rich, dark cake packed with fruit, raisins and nuts, redolent of butter and brown sugar, with brandy in the recipe. The smell as it baked was sweet and welcoming. More brandy was added every few days, so the smell was released again as the cake was unwrapped.
When I was eight, we moved to Canada, where the weather seemed even to my childish perception eminently more suited to this kind of baking…and eating. The brandy infused cake would keep forever, or so it seemed, and she made enough that there were slices still to cut until the snow began to melt.
She kept baking it until her very last Christmas, sending a cake to each of her children for more than forty years after we had all left home. In my house, my daughter and I took to having a thick slice as breakfast before skiing every winter weekend, and to packing a little extra for ski touring or big mountain skiing, as a sort of much better tasting and, we persuaded ourselves, more nutritious, granola bar. The energy would last for hours, and a quick bite now and then would let you skip lunch and ski hard to the end of the day. It worked for all the winter sports.
At some point in my business career, I became enamoured with Conn Smythe, who built Maple Leaf Gardens and a team that won many a Stanley Cup (in the much too distant past). For me he epitomized determination, honour, ethics, and I was delighted to read in Scott Young’s biography of Colonel Smythe that he rarely stopped for lunch…his wife kept him stocked with slices of the fruitcake she baked, and he would eat them whenever he needed an energy boost. If Conn Smythe, who literally transformed hockey, and with it, Toronto, could fuel himself with fruitcake, we were clearly on to something.
Once my mother died, I took over the business of baking the annual Christmas fruit cakes. They still fuel us on the slopes, and serve, like Proust’s madeleine, as a pathway to memories of Mum and Granny, and the act of love that is the making of food for family. If you want to try it yourself, here is the recipe. It’s one afternoon’s work start to finish, not counting brushing with brandy once a week or so until Christmas, and it’s fun to do.
We don’t ice it with hard icing and marzipan any more, but if you want to, here is a recipe for that too. Link: Christmas Cake Icing
Christmas Fruit Cake Recipe
This is a medium-dark fruitcake that has rich flavour and doesn’t need much aging to mellow.
Ingredients
2 lb (4 cups) mixed candied (glaced) fruit. Can be pineapples, cherries, peel. I usually use red and green cherries mix.
2 cups seedless sultana raisins
2 cups golden raisins
½ cup brandy (or fruit juice but alcohol dissipates with heat)
1 cup blanched almonds
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup butter
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp almond flavouring
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp each: cinnamon, allspice, mace
½ cup strawberry jam
Directions
Combine candied fruit and raisins, add the brandy and let stand at least 2 hours, stirring once or twice.
Prepare cake pan (10” round by 2-½” deep, or 8” square by 3-½” deep, or a 10” tube pan). Grease the pan, line with brown paper or parchment paper, and grease the paper.
Add almonds and pecans/walnuts to the fruit and toss with ½ cup flour.
Cream butter with granulated sugar. Add brown sugar and cream thoroughly. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in flavourings (vanilla and almond, not spices).
Combine remaining flour, soda and spices well then blend in. Blend in strawberry jam. Mix in floured fruit thoroughly.
Turn into prepared pan.
Bake in 275 degrees F oven for about 3-½ hours or until cake is firm to touch, and skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool 30 minutes before removing from pan. When cooled completely, wrap in foil or place in a cake tin and store at least a week before slicing. Can mellow 3 or 4 weeks or more before serving: unwrap periodically and brush with brandy. Can use cheesecloth as an underlayer and sprinkle brandy through it. Makes about a 6-lb cake.
