transparency

My mother made these every year from a hand-written card in her recipe box. I don’t know if it’s the best, but it’s what christmas cookies mean to me. Missing are the instructions to cut the cookies out with a cookie-cutter after rolling out the dough, and to decorate the cookies with a bit of red or green glacé cherry in the middle before baking. Personally my favourite cookie-cutter is a small tomato paste tin with both ends cut out.

I used to use “cultured unsalted butter” thinking it would add a delicate sour-cream flavour, but people complained the cookies tasted cheesy. I think plain (sweet) unsalted butter would suit the sophisticated palate best though my mother used ordinary salted butter.

225 g/ 1 c butter
125 mL/ ½ c icing sugar
500 mL/ 2 c all-purpose flour OR
      500 mL all-purpose flour + 50 mL rice flour
      (2 c – 3 T all-purpose flour) + (3 T rice flour)

¼ t baking powder
¼ t salt

Work butter, add sugar.
Sift dry ingredients. Add. Work together. Roll out.
Grease sheet lightly. Bake at 150°C/ 300°F 15–20 min till brown on bottom only.

This recipe is for a traditional holiday dish from the american side of the family. I don’t know what their recipe is — it’s unlikely to be as fussy as this one — but this is mine adapted from the Joy of Cooking.

Steam 600g/ 20 oz pearl onions in a single layer for 30 minutes or until done. Peel. (If you live in the States where you are lucky enough to be able to get pearl onions frozen, go for it! Follow the instructions on the package.)

Melt in the top of a double boiler:
30 mL/ 2 T butter

Stir in:
30 mL/ 2 T flour

When blended, add gradually:
500 mL/ 2 c stock at 1.5 concentration By which I mean:

Stir over low heat until well combined and thickened. Add:
60 mL/ ¼ c mushroom peelings

Place in the double boiler and simmer over — not in — hot water for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Strain through a fine sieve, then add:
A pinch of nutmeg
1 egg yolk mixed with 30 mL/ 2 T cream

Stir the sauce until it is slightly thickened. Just before serving, stir in:
15 mL/ 1 T lemon juice
15 mL/ 1 T butter

Cook the onions and the sauce together for 1 minute. Add:
60 mL/ ¼ c chopped parsley
A dash of cloves
1 mL/ ¼ t paprika
30 mL/ 2 T dry sherry

Wonderful additions are:
125 mL/ ½ c sautéed mushrooms
or:
Minced celery

My mother and I used to make fruitcake together every Thanksgiving so it could sit and ripen six weeks until Christmas. The recipe we used was her mother’s, which we assumed was a long-cherished family recipe from England. In fact my grandmother clipped it from a magazine in Saskatoon in the late ’40s.

Since Vivian died I’ve been having trouble locating the most important ingredient — seeded muscat raisins. One year I skipped making the cake entirely. Other years I made different recipes but they just weren’t the same. This year I was more persistent.

Seeded muscat raisins are special because seeding the grapes before drying them punctures the skin. The raisins dry with grape juice both inside and out and they are soft and sticky. It turns out that they are no longer being distributed by Sun-Maid which left me with the alternatives of ordering them online or substituting. Since shipping would bring the price of internet raisins to over $50, and paying that kind of money would go against everything Vivian stood for, I substituted. Just as Vivian would have. This is the 2013 adapted recipe. (The other change I made is to use ginger instead of cloves because this recipe is the only use I have for cloves and they go rancid from one year to the next.)

Cake

Line sides and bottoms of baking tins with parchment.

1½ c shortening
2 c sugar
⅓ c sherry or brandy
9 eggs

675 mL (2½ c) molasses
750 g (1½ lb, 4½ c) Thompson raisins

3 c flour
1 t baking soda
1 t ground ginger
1 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
1¼ c chopped dates

¾ c drained maraschino cherries, halved
750 g (1½ lb, 4½ c) sultana raisins
1½ c currants
500g (1 lb, 3 cups) mixed cut fruits (glacé fruits and/or candied citrus peel, dried apricots, golden or green raisins and dried cranberries)
200 g (½ lb, ¾ c) slivered almonds

Mix Thompson raisins with molasses. Heat in microwave, let cool.

Lightly toast the almonds on low heat in a cast iron pan.

Sift dry ingredients. Stir in chopped dates and break them up with your fingers.

Combine remaining fruit and toasted almonds. Combine with sifted dry ingredients and dates.

Beat shortening until fluffy. Beat in sugar and sherry or brandy. Separate eggs and beat in the yolks one at a time, reserving the whites in a tall, clean glass or metal bowl.

Fold molasses and Thompson raisins into creamed mixture.

Add the dry mixture and mix thoroughly.

Wash and dry beaters well and beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold a third of them into the batter to lighten it before folding in the rest.

Bake at 300°F for 2½ hours.

Take strips of old cotton sheets, wet them in water and wring them out well. Sprinkle with sherry or brandy. When cakes are cooled, wrap them in the prepared cotton strips, wrap again in plastic bags and put them away for six weeks. While the cakes are aging you can take them out a few times to sprinkle with more sherry or brandy if you want.

Makes 7½ lbs fruit cake.

*** *** ***
Bring out the Christmas cakes at least a day before serving. Invert onto a serving plate. Protect the serving plate with strips of waxed paper under the edges of the cake.

Roll out marzipan or almond paste thinly like pastry dough and lay it over the cakes, covering the top and sides. Cover thinly with Christmas Cake Icing, below. You may decorate with bits of cut fruit at this point. Let the icing harden at least overnight.

Christmas Cake Icing

½ lb icing sugar
1 egg white
pinch cream of tartar

Beat til shiny.
Enough for one medium cake

*** *** ***
Granny’s original version, clipped from a magazine in Sakatoon in the 1940s, exactly as she passed it on to my mother Vivian in the 1980s.

I don’t think any of the quantities are critical — I tend to add & subtract depending on what I have but in general follow the rules.