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
:)


5 comments:

  1. How wonderful that you have your mother's recipes. After four years, you can enjoy them! The cakes look delicious!

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  2. Fruitcake or whatever you want to call it isn't my fave but both Sue and my mother would definitely approve.

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  3. the cakes looks wonderful Kathleen!!! I have never made a fruit a cake. I feel intimidated by it. It looks complicated! Your mother sounds like my mother-in-law. She attaches new recipes on the cover of her cookbooks and that is a great thing. Sweet memories you have of your mom. Have a marvelous advent season!!

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  4. My 86 yr old Mother made both her cherry cake and boiled fruitcake, a NL staple. But as we speak, she is in hospital and recovery made not come. Hearing how after 4 years you've revived the cakes makes me think warm fuzzy thoughts of my Mom at this gloomy time. Thank you.

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  5. How wonderful it must have been to see these again. To see your moms handwriting and those small stains on the recipes!! It looks yummy, not all traditions have to be followed. 😉

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