With the Festive Season well and truly here and summer holidays ahead, it’s a time for entertaining and sharing with friends.
A time that many bake and for some, it’s only time of year they do.
For me, that used to be the case. I would hunt through my little-worn folder of recipes torn from magazines and handwritten by friends, to look for my favourite fruitcake recipe that I use every year.
It’s a recipe I know works every time.
My cherished version of Christmas cake is from my friend Lindy. It is a boiled fruit cake. My family and I are not lovers of dark fruit cakes, plus I was always baking it only a few days before Christmas so I needed a cake that required not long maturing.
Do you have a treasure cake recipe that you bake for the Festive Season?
Whatever its heritage, your Festive Season recipe is usually valued as you know it works and tastes delicious.
It produces a cake that instantly reminds you of Festive Seasons past, and the smell can trigger excitement of celebrations to come
Even that simple, often handwritten, loved recipe on a piece of scrap paper is part of the very fabric of your celebration.
The challenge in today’s world
Sadly, my treasure fruit cake recipe made a very large cake, wonderful when I had a great crowd to feed. But in more recent times I found it too large for what I needed. So, I stopped making it, telling myself I don’t need a cake for Christmas.
I realised however in truth that was a big humbug!
Christmas cake was very much part of my festive season Christmas. When I stopped and thought about it my Christmas and summer holidays had lots of memories Christmas cake that my Nanna made and presented on her square glass cake stand tide-up with a red and green ribbon. Cups of tea with a side of Christmas fruitcake on a hot afternoon listening to the cricket, how could I lose that link with my past but not having cake at Christmas!
I needed a Christmas cake recipe that was sized for me and my small household lifestyle, yet had all the taste and warm memories of Christmas’ past.
Needless-to-say I created a just4Me sized version of Lindy’s boiled fruit cake. Plus, a just4Me sized version of the simple fruit cake my Nanna made.
I know the importance of recipes that you can trust
In the busy Festive Season, if you’re like me, you want a reliable, tried and tested recipe, not only easy to follow and delicious to eat but also sized for a small household.
I’ve spent the last three years trialling and developing a collection of over 30 trusted cake recipes in the perfect size for small households. Then a group of fellow just4Me household bakers and I triple-tested them. To support each recipe, I’ve created over 5 hours of entertaining and informative television style videos to show exactly how to make and decorate the cakes.
This collection has now become “my little cake book”, in a modern format – the just4Me Bake Club Collection. Available online with downloadable recipe cards for both conventional and Thermomix methods, for the one-off price of $60. Learn more here
What are my favourite recipes for the Festive Season?
Here’s my Festive Season hit list from the Library Collection:
Traditional 4 Ingredient Fruit Cake
Boiled Fruit Cake
5 Treasures Panforte
Classic Sponge
Chocolate Pear and Pistachio Cake
Swedish favourite, Toscatarta Cake.
Curious to learn more about the just4Me Bake Club Library Collection?
Click here to see the full list of cakes and to view a sample episode.
Wishing you a joyous Festive Season.
Happy baking just4you, ’cause you’re worth it.
x
Caroline