Sunday 25 December 2016

Monday 12 December 2016

Christmas Memories

It's amazing how things trigger certain memories.  I find that my biggest trigger is definitely smells.  Some of my most treasured memories of Christmas flood back to me when I smell a spicy fruitcake being baked.

Yesterday, for the first time in about five years, I made a boiled raisin cake.  That was one of my mom's favorites and she baked them often, not only at Christmas.

This Christmas will mark the four year anniversary since we lost our mother, on December 27.  I didn't make cakes that Christmas, or any Christmas since, but yesterday I was overwhelmed with the urge to pull out mom's old cookbooks and do some "Christmas baking".

Her cookbooks were all well-used and she loved to clip recipes from newspapers and magazines, and tape them inside the covers of all of her cookbooks, wherever she could find space!

 


I mixed up the Cherry Cake recipe, and baked it in two 6 inch round pans.........

and the famous Boiled Raisin Cake........



I then performed the ultimate "no-no" in mom's books, and cut it as soon as it cooled.  Mom always made her cakes weeks before Christmas and let them age in beautiful old tins, wrapped in waxed paper.  I just couldn't wait.

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas!!!

CHEERS
:)