Christmas Cake

The kitchen smells permanently of citrus and spices this week, that's how I know it's  nearly Christmas, that and lots of dried fruit has been invested in human food.

At least the cake was made weeks ago (and has been getting 'fed' on a weekly basis since then).

It got iced on Sunday. The holly isn't real.  It turned up on a gift delivered to our door last week.

F decided this year to make a  Christmas traditional food from each place she has lived. England is probably over represented because New Zealand (despite Christmas being in summer there) shares many of the same Christmas food traditions. The cake is from F's Mum's recipe and was her Dad's favourite Christmas treat. So cake to represent family.

Despite the summer heat in NZ her Narna used to make boiled Christmas pudding (with a silver sixpence - like Vasilopita here, or the Three Kings Day pie in France). One year F and her cousin Ewan had a pudding eating competition to polish off the left-overs - the 2 skinny rats of the family stuffing themselves with heavy rich boiled pudding.

One pudding batter made into several 2-4 person Puddings

Only Narna made rich pudding. Everyone else always seemed to produce a Pavlova, with cream and seasonal fruit (strawberries or raspberries usually) and brandy snaps.

Mince pies joined the team in England. F might actually be addicted to mince pies - commercial ones with really buttery crusts.  She's going to have make her own this year, and has already made enough of the fruit mince to make a gross of pies. (Someone is going to be seriously sick of mince pies!)

Half a batch of fruit mince

In Denmark it was peberkager and we have hung some on the tree in previous years. Peberkager need treacle, a difficult thing to source in Greece so this year we are going to have Musner (mice).  I like the sound of mice.

Musner (a kind of spiced shortbread)

Our Greek experience has added melomakarona to the line-up. F has found something else to be addicted to. I expect to get up one  morning to find her passed out on the dining room floor surrounded by the packaging and remnants of a week's supply of melomakarona for a family of 12.  Her hairdresser insists that she should make them rather than buying them......if she is going to go down that road then she also needs go start growing catnip in a pot on the balcony...

....we all have our vices.