Labour of Christmas Love

If you don't like Christmas cake (aka fruit cake) you might not understand the following, so let me frame it in different terms. There is always one dish in every cook's repertoire that requires a stupid amount of expensive ingredients, unlimited amounts of time, patience, research and something close to obsession EVEN THOUGH THE RESULTS ARE NOT APPRECIATED even close to enough to make the preparation of said dish "worthwhile". Perhaps it's hand-rolled pasta, or 23-step stuffed mushrooms which guests pop down like salted nuts. You question yourself.

My own particular Waterloo is Christmas cake. Much maligned by jokesters and children, it is definitely one of those foods that you only come around to liking in adulthood. Donny and I were at a whiskey tutored tasting many years ago when it happened for me: the master blender described the flavour characteristic of whiskey X (I think it was Cragganmore -- anyone?) as "fruitcake". The heavens parted, angels sang the Hallelujah chorus, and I fell in love with fruitcake. And so began the years of recipe research, extended phone calls with Mom and Auntie, poring through old books, purchasing of special pans: the annual labour of Christmas love. [Someone in my family will be upset if I don't point out that they have been making fruitcake for ages, I just didn't like it then. Fine. Take it.]

Well 2007 was a mould-breaker for me: I made the blinking cakes in OCTOBER. Once a week I brought them out of the cellar (read: cold closet where I keep the recycling box), unwrapped the foil and bathed the little darlings in whiskey, brandy or whatever I was drinking that night. They were universally acknowledged as The Best Christmas Cakes Ever. How could I ever meet that standard again? Particularly this Fall, when I've been working 2 jobs, falling for my lovely fellow and still figuring out my new dwelling.

I finally got around to the cakes in ....shame of shames...December. It seems logical that extra booze would solve the lack of proper maturation time so I soaked all $65.94 worth of dried fruit in $15.16 of brandy for 5 days. I nibbled on those tipsy raisins all week and finally came to the baking on Saturday.

The sheer volume of cakes (based on an old heritage recipe) means that the entire kitchen gets involved in the creaming of 2 lbs butter, separating and various treatments of a dozen eggs, zesting of a half-dozen oranges, and combining of all the flour, sugar, spices and other secret ingredients. But with the fruit already occupying every inch of my biggest mixing bowl, I had this funny feeling that when the time came to combine the batter with the fruit I might need to use the sink. Ah, the wisdom of the ages: there's this line in the old recipe that recommends using your best PRESERVING KETTLE for the Big Mix. They don't mention that the bloody batter is so heavy you have to mix it with your hands. Yup, I did the old James Herriot sleeves up-scrubbed hands and plunged my whole arm into the vat of batter. Works marvelously well.

It takes almost as long to bake the cakes as it does to clean up the mess. And so after all this work, expense and time, only the Very Best People who really truly appreciate the glory of Christmas Cake will get to have any.