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34 THE RURAL VOICE
everyone in the household must take
turns to stir the pudding and make a
wish. The mixture should be stirred
from east to west, in honour of the
three wise men.
Christmas cake has become a
source of ridicule and derision for
modern comics on television but it
has a proud tradition in Ontario rural
homes. In his book Mostly In Clover,
Harry J. Boyle recalls the excitement
of Christmas cake making in the days
leading up to the holidays in his
Huron County home in the 1920s.
"Was there an event like that of
the annual baking of the Christmas
cake? Women seemed to wait, like
navigators of old, for good omens or
signs before undertaking the task. It
could come any time from September
until the middle of the week before
Christmas.
"I always knew the fateful day
had arrived when Mother sat at the
kitchen table, pencil poised over a
flattened -out envelope, perusing the
old scribbler. The scribbler contained
Mother's secrets and some of them
were more precious than life.- She
kept her recipes in it ...
"On the day of Christmas -cake
baking, I always made an excuse to
stay in the house... Wild horses
couldn't keep me away, when hours
later the cake was taken gingerly
from the oven.
"...the cake was reverently turned
over on a sheet of brown paper.
Mother tapped the cake with a
forefinger to see if it had any hollow
spots. While the intoxicating aroma
of spices, nuts and fruit was driving
me hungry -mad she pondered over
the cake. I could always tell it was a
gond one when she looked up and
said, 'Dear me, I wish my Christmas
cakes would turn out as well as they
used to.—
The Oxford Companion for Food
says that fruit cake is a British
speciality that can't date back beyond
the Middle Ages. "It was only in the
13th century that dried fruits began to
arrive in Britain from Portugal and
the eastern Mediterranean. Lightly
fruited breads were probably more
common than anything resembling
the modern fruit cake during the
Middle Ages. Early versions of the
rich fruit cake, such as Scottish Black
Bun, dating from the Middle Ages,
were luxuries for special occasions.
Fruit cakes have been used for
celebrations since at least the early
18th century when bride cakes and
plumb cakes, descended from
enriched bread recipes, became
cookery standards...
"Making a rich fruit cake in the
early 18th century was a major
undertaking. The ingredients had to
be carefully prepared. Fruit was
washed, dried and stoned (pitted) if
necessary; sugar, cut from loaves,
had to be pounded and sieved; butter
washed in water and rinsed in
rosewater. Eggs were beaten for a
long time, half an hour being
commonly directed. Yeast, or barm
from fermenting beer, had to be
coaxed to life. Finally, the cook had
to cope with the temperamental
wood -fired baking ovens of that time.
No wonder these cakes acquired such
mystique ..."
Gingerbread has also come to be
associated with the Christmas
holiday. According to Karen S.
Edwards and Sharon Antle in a 1988
article in Americana magazine, the
first gingerbread man originated in
the court of Queen Elizabeth I who
favoured important visitors with
"charming gingerbread likenesses of
themselves".
G1ngerbread got an even bigger
boost from the Grimm
Brothers' tale of Hansel and
Gretel where the youngsters
discovered a house "made of bread"
with a roof of cake and windows of
barley. German bakeries began
offering elaborate gingerbread houses
with icing snow on the roofs, along
with edible gingerbread Christmas
cards and finely detailed molded
cookies.
Tinsmiths got into the act
fashioning cookie cutters into all
imaginable forms and every woman
wanted one shape that was different .
from anybody else's.
"Most of the cookies that hung on
19th century Christmas trees were are
least half an inch thick and cut into
animal shapes or gingerbread men."
The heavy Scottish influence in
Canada has also created an
association between Christmas and
shortbread. Scottish in origin, this
rich, tender and crumbly straw
colored biscuit (cookie) was once
only served during Christmas and
New Year's Eve (Hogmanay). The