Christmas Cake

Today in between all the emailing and fiddling with attachments I was also mixing up and baking Christmas cake. It took forever to cook in the oven. I mixed up two different kinds of cake One of the recipes I got from Canlit food book for a bourbon Christmas cake by Margaret Atwood. Not knowing what bourbon was I went to the liquor store to find out. It turned out to be a type of Whiskey. You let the fruit, white sultanas and glace cherries, soak in it overnight. I have never seen white sultanas. Eventually I settled for golden raisins, they were the lightest in colour.

The butter was straight from the fridge so I chopped it up a bit to hasten it softening. After breakfast I mashed it around with a wooden spatula, my favourite utensil for baking. I added two cups of white sugar and two cups of brown sugar. Eventually it was all creamed, light and fluffy. Next I separated eight eggs and beat the yolks into the mixture.

I drained the booze from the fruit into another bowl, measured out the four cups of flour, some salt and baking powder into a third bowl. Then using my favourite spoon I mixed first some flour then some booze into the creamed mixture until everything was mixed up in one bowl. Next, beat the egg whites until they become a dense, solid white and have almost filled the bowl. Stir the whites into the creamed mixture.

Make sure you used a very big bowl because now you must throw in all the booze soaked fruit and four cups of pecan halves. While stirring this lot into the mixture my wooden spatula suddenly snapped in two. Luckily I had a wooden , not nearly so nice, spoon I could use to finish off the job.

I poured the cake mixture into well lined tins, first with brown paper then wax paper and put then into a warm oven, 275F for a long time. The cakes are cooked when a knife comes out clean.

After they had cooled I wrapped the cakes in wax paper and tinfoil. Tomorrow I will put them in the pantry.