Christmas Cake and a recipe

I have not been a grerat fan of Christmas, at least since I was a child when it had some magic. If one talks of the food side of things, Christmas cakes usually look as silly as this. Yet preparing one can be a long and complex process that used to be started around this time of the year, in order to allow the stuff to mature before being consumed a month or so later. The same went for Christmas pudding, which uses a similar base but is even heavier on the stomach, if that can be imagined.

I can remember, when at my first boarding school in England, all the boys in the school (there were 70 of us) queuing up into the school kitchen for the priviledge of strirring, with a huge wooden spoon and in a gigantic stoneware basin, the ingredients for one or other of these ritualised stomach bombs.

Here is a recipe that sheds another light on the process (you will need some mastery of the English language and of the effects of alcohol to be able to follow it)

Christmas Cake Recipe 

Ingredients:
A cup of waterA cup of sugar
4 large brown eggs
two cups of dried fruit
a tablespoon of salt
a cup of brown sugar
lemon juice
nuts
a bottle of whisky

1). Sample the whisky for quality
2). Take a large bowl. Check the whisky again to be sure that the quality is still of the highest order, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.
3). Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar and beat all again.
4). Make sure that the whisky is still ok. Cry another tup.
5). Turn off the mixall. Beat two leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Mix on the turner. If the fired druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry it loosh with a drewscriver.
6). Sample the whisky to check for tonsisticity. Nest, sift two cups of salty. Throw one away. Or something. Who cares anyway?
7). Scheck the visky
8). Now sift most of the menon's juice and strain your nuts
9 ? Add one table. Spoon. Of sugar or somehting. Whatever.
10 (or more). Grease your oven. Burn the cake tin to 360 degree. Remembering to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out the window.
Then whack the whusky again and go to bed.


Thanks to New Zealand for this fine recipe (and for the All Blacks)