Making a Christmas Cake

Christmas is still a month-and-a-half away, but we have had to start making plans because this year it's our turn to host Mutti. This will almost certainly be a bit of trial, since she expects things to be done Just So, even when she's not in her own house, but it does provide me with a magnificent opportunity to nag Judith into Massively Tidying Up Her Clutter -- as well as providing me with one or two deadlines for the completion of various tasks before Mutti arrives.

Perhaps because we'll be hosting Mutti, however, Judith decided that she should make a traditional Christmas cake -- something which to my knowledge she has never done before, at least not in the thirty years we've been together. So I took a few photographs of the process -- you will note the CWA cookery book, from which the recipe was taken, in the foreground of the first! The final photograph shows the cake minutes after its removal from the oven, left to cool down before icing and whatnot can be applied.

We'll have to see if was can locate some appropriate Christmas cake decorations, to recreate the scene that Mutti used to do decades ago, when I was very young: Father Christmas on his sleigh, coming down through the trees to Pooh's house. Ah -- nostalgia!