Christmas Countdown 2 : Christmas Cake

from http://dodocanspell.blogspot.com.au/

Fast coming to an end of the Christmas Countdown... It is Christmas Eve and we do like fruit cake! The Christmas Cake, traditionally a fruit cake, will be cut tonight so that a piece or two can be left as snack for Santa.

My mother's Christmas cake

I am very lucky - my mother makes my Christmas cake. My mother is close to 90 years old -but her cake this year is fantastic. It is now a tradition of the Simmons family Christmas gathering that we have this moist rich cake. We sometimes also have stollen,a German fruit cake which has more of a bread texture. I love it - the mixture of fruit, marzipan and spices! I am also partial to Panettone, an Italian version of Christmas fruit cake, also more like a bread...so many versions of Christmas cake, but

the earliest recipe from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast. Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the ‘Butter Letter' or Butterbrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruit cakes. . from Wikipedia.

I am guessing that the original Christmas fruit cakes were not highly decorated, but in more modern times, cakes are decorated with icing and have become works of art - traditional and contemporary designs.

This snippet of information does not flow, but it seems so ludicrous I need to add it here.... In Japan, when traditionally women married very young, unmarried Japanese girls over the age of 25 were called "Christmas cakes" - past their prime after the age of 25, as a Christmas cake would be after the 25th.( In Japan, a sponge cake with cream is the popular version of a Christmas cake.) With that bit of trivia and it being too late to bake a cake, there is nothing left to do but to enjoy a cuppa ( or something stronger) and some cake ....

#SeptTextileLove Day 12

#SeptTextileLove #STL26Day12 ‘Friendship’ … This is a story of friendship based on the love of textiles and fibre art . Gallerist and artist, Anne Kempton and I have been friends for 15 years , meeting when we had both retired from ‘ top’ jobs in a government department and a high school respectively. Neither of us were the retiring types - Anne was establishing the first commercial textile art gallery in Australia and I was looking for a creative direction. We discovered we were both driven by a sense of social justice and community and shared similar artistic aspirations . Since then, we have co- curated exhibitions, collaborated on many projects. supported community art and women’s causes, and grown in our individual artistic expression - Anne includes more stitching in her work and she has had a more painterly influence on mine . Moreover, this friendship is multifaceted, deep and personal and one I value and treasure . Thank you, Anne.

#SeptTextileLove26 Day11

#SeptTextileLove #STL26Day11 ‘Language’ …when symbols in stitch say more than words … my wonderful Wednesday Makers group has undertaken a community peace project ‘Petals for Peace’ - stitched prayer flags depicting flowers , symbolic of peace. . We have stitched many ourselves and other stitchers from all over Australia have also been contributing as an impactful counter to the hate speech which seems to have pervaded our world currently - the powerful language of stitch.

#SeptTextileLove Day 13

#SeptTextileLove #STL26Day13 ‘Rethink ’ … Rethinking a work is not unusual for me …sometimes because things just don’t work, but in one recent example , it was because I miscalculated‘ time and the deadline loomed . These small stitched pieces in my head were going to be an archipelago but time beat me before I could stitch the ocean to allow these islands to float.. They ended up in an exhibitions as ‘Meditations on Mercator’ depicting the size distortion of the Mercator cylindrical map projection ! What do you think of the ‘rethink’ ?

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Search This Blog