The first one is out of the oven! Only two to go. Slight dread of re-enacting mistimed baking events, staying up half the night in Dean Hall [ah, student life, where did it all go wrong?], waiting for hefty puddings to cook, and waiting and waiting and waiting. Going back to bed, putting the alarm on, heading down to the basement kitchen to check again, and again, and again... Greenwich raised millions selling those glorious, grand Halls of Residence off, and no wonder.
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Poring over diverse cookbooks for decorating suggestions. Fanny Cradock (OK, I won't go there, but I did love her biography, she was some girl) suggests a little rose water and noyau (had to look that one up) plus an entire coffeespoon of cloves. She was notorious for getting her quantities wrong, according to her detractors, who may have had a point. Meanwhile Delia tells me I can make poinsettia leaves out of almond paste - but doesn't everyone think poinsettias are just a tad ugly? Having said that, this is rather a cute crochet poinsettia, after all.. Not my doing, needless to say..
Plenty of time to make my mind up. If I resort to ready made Santas from Sainsbury's you'll know I gave in.
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The last Christmas cake I made was one autumn term, in Cookery, at school. Every Wednesday, we fed it (stingily) or decorated it (clumsily), and the one thing I have no memory of, is eating it. Hateful Cookery classes: for a start, Wednesday was a really bad day - Biology homework meant carrying a heavyweight hardbacked textbook, not to mention a packed lunch, and all the ingredients for Cookery. I can remember one particularly large red nylon roll-shaped bag with a solitary canvas strap, that would roll from one side of my body to another, and the tins would smack into my legs. It was all too clumsy, too heavy, too miserable.
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Every Cookery class recipe seemed to start with 'Take equal quantities of lard and Stork margerine' (always ruddy Stork; I do believe we were conned into paying that school for copies of the Stork Recipe Book). Being a nice, Jewish girl, we had neither of these mysterious fats in the house. I used to cut up and pointlessly, individually wrap, (Ok, be honest, my mother used to ...) 1 ounce each of Tomor kosher margerine (convincingly white) and President French butter (spectacularly yellow). This seemed to keep the system quiet. God knows why I didn't take two ounces of butter and be done with it. Apologies if you were looking for a quick resume of my health issues. Not this evening.
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