We are out of mincemeat and that set of a bigger chain of
events. By “out of mincemeat” I mean the 18th century recipe using
meat and suet and 2 cups of booze that we’ve been making for years. All the
ingredients are in the house so it will happen. Soon. Maybe today.
The rest of the chain is a romp down memory lane. I used to
bake on Christmas Eve; being a career person, that was the allotted moment for
items that might have been better with a bit of aging, like fruit cake. Never
mind. If all you’ve got is Christmas Eve, so be it.
Now that I have lots of time, I don’t do Christmas baking.
Costco and sugar concerns sidelined that activity until this year when we ran
out of mincemeat and I got nostalgic about some old recipes. I inherited a
couple of favourites from my mother except for the fruit cake recipe that I
begged from a neighbour sometime before I was 12. Which wasn’t recent!
I made the fruitcake yesterday and it has to be the most
expensive recipe in the universe. There isn’t really enough batter to call it a
cake, more like a fruit/nut bar that would sustain you on a serious hike. After
I’d made it I found a notation to double the batter but on second thought it
could easily be tripled and there would still be a LOT of fruit and nuts. And
it is delicious. I don’t care if you don’t like fruitcake, you would love this
one.
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| scotch cake with glace cherry bits |
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| check out the ancient 2 cup sifter! |
This afternoon I made dominoes and scotch cake, aka Nanaimo
bars and shortbread. Like so much of life there are rules. Scotch cake should
be made with brown sugar (who came up with the icing sugar version?) and three
ingredients: butter, brown sugar, and flour and cut out with Mum’s old cookie
cutters. Dominoes should be topped with unsweetened chocolate even though I
think Mum’s recipe originally might have said semi-sweet. If you don’t already do
those things, we need to talk, except for Mum’s cutters of course.
So Christmas dinner dessert is taken care of AND we have a precious
bottle of Kaye’s lemon curd for lemon
tarts, not that there is much room for dessert though, strangely, people
manage!
Speaking of baking, earlier today we went to the Ginger
Bread fundraiser event for Habitat for Humanity at the Parkside Hotel. Don’t
get me started on parking in the downtown core, but having circled a couple of
times we scored a place right outside our destination. We noticed that most of
the ginger bread entries are from “home chefs” now while a few years ago they
were mostly professionals. It doesn’t take more than a second to figure out
that for a professional chef to do one of these creations either they don’t
have a life or their employer is beyond generous. I didn’t pay a lot of
attention to the hours but one entry claimed 120. You get my point.
The entries have to be completely edible, like the Rose
Parade has to be all botanical, right down to any writing. Edible ink? Who
knew? This year's theme is Canada 150.
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| multi-cultural BC |
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| adorable elves |
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| my second choice |
Habitat is a terrific organization putting real people in
real housing and this event apparently generates a decent amount of money. Get
yourself down to Parkside on Humbolt, a seriously beautiful hotel lobby, and
hope that crazy bakers keep on wanting to support the event and cause. I voted for
the National Parks entry and Jim fell for the Mountie/beaver.
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| the iconic red serge |
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| celebrating national parks |
Walking up the street to Cora’s for lunch we came across
these beauties; mahonia japonica.
