A Taste of Nostalgia

Our Christmas cake

traditional Christmas cake

This may seem an unusual and lets be honest a bit of a tacky Christmas cake design for a cake maker to create but i’m proud to say it’s our family Christmas cake this year. At a very difficult time of the year for our family this little cake holds a very special meaning and gives us time to reflect and remember loved ones who are no longer with us.

My much loved step father and the best Grandad to our children very suddenly passed away just before Christmas two years ago and at the time I honestly thought we could never feel happiness at this time of the year again, but with time we can look back at some amazing memories and traditions my dad started and our family Christmas cake gives us a laugh every time we talk about it.

So my dad, it’s fair to say was a traditional ‘men go to work, women look after the family’ kinda of man and never stepped foot in the kitchen. If my mum was ill our go to meals came from the fish and chip shop in the village. However the decoration of our Christmas cake was his job. Armed with a bowl of royal icing and a palette knife he went about covering our cake (working in the building trade he had the skills to coat a cake, he always said it was like plastering. trowel it on and smooth it off) Once coated he created the most magnificent snowy peaks then after waiting very patiently came the best part.

Me and my sister would place all the plastic decorations on the cake, the bottle brush Christmas tree, silver or gold Christmas greeting and plastic Christmas figures. These figures were used year after year and such an important symbol of Christmas to us all. We still have the original plastic figures which must be around 40 years old, we dug them out of my mums cupboard recently and they are still in a J S Sainsbury’s biscuit tin with the original price of  12 1/2p on.

This year I decorated my cake with my daughter, letting her make the snowy peaks and place the plastic decorations on and told her the story of Grandad and his cake decorating skills, and after Christmas our new plastic cake decorations will go in a tin and be bought out every year for years to come.

Christmas without loved ones is the hardest time of the year, but also a time to remember them, have a laugh and reminisce about the things they did and most importantly to keep their memory alive. I know my dad will be with us in spirit on Christmas Day.

Happy Christmas to you all.

Love

Sadie x