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Fruit cake for weddings and Christmas

54

Bruno and I were married in our favorite village in southern England. It was a traditional affair in the old Town Hall.

The town crier announced our marriage in front of the Town Hall with his voice like a clock and his hand bell ringing

for the villagers and all who had gathered. After the wedding ceremony he guided us to the pub for our wedding toast,

via a path that was hidden between the cobblestone streets.

After the toast we left for our honeymoon in Cornwall, and on the way back home we picked up our wedding cake in

the seaside town of Brighton. The cake was, according to British wedding tradition, a rich fruit cake, the very best I

had ever tasted. Baker Becky Colletti made the cake three months in advance and fed it cognac every few weeks. The

ripened fruit cake was then covered with a layer of marzipan and finished with white fondant icing. When we crossed

the border, we were picked out by border control because of the large box in the back seat. The man asked us, after the

explosives check, whether there was perhaps a fruit cake in the box, to which I replied that we were transporting our

wedding cake. If this had been the French border control, we might have had to leave our wedding cake behind.

Fortunately, the British know their cake!

When I wrote this book, I wanted to share a fruit cake recipe that was special, so I asked my friends for their family

recipes. They were all tasty, but none were like my wedding cake. Maybe it was the special moment that made the cake

taste extra sweet, but probably it was because it is the very best recipe that exists. I would never be able to match it.

I decided to ask Becky for her recipe. She had followed my adventures over all the years since my wedding and agreed

with pleasure. She told me that the cake was a family recipe and that her father was a master baker who swore by mixing

the batter by hand to keep the fruit intact. She also gave me expert instructions on how to protect the cake from the

heat during the long baking process. I think this is one of the reasons why I love this cake – it is dense and juicy, not

dry and hard as a brick like many other Christmas cakes.

The Christmas cake is a fruit cake that is usually just a little more richly filled. The Dundee cake (see page 60) is

closely related to this cake and is often eaten as a lighter version of a Christmas cake. Early Christmas cakes or fruit

cakes were called plum cakes, just as the Christmas pudding was first called plum pudding. “Plum” refers to the raisins

and currants, and not to plums or prunes. The tradition of eating this cake at Christmas stems from the Twelfth cake

(see page 58) that was eaten on Twelfth Night, the twelfth night of Christmas (or, Epiphany eve). This custom has

moved to Christmas because the British haven’t celebrated twelve days of Christmas for many years.

So hereby I pass on the recipe for my wedding cake – which we now enjoy every year for Christmas – to you.

Hopefully it will also be your Christmas cake, or maybe even your typical British wedding cake someday.

This cake, when stored properly, will keep for months. It won’t even go moldy for over a century, as we know from a

commemorative boxed piece of Queen Victoria’s wedding cake that was recently sold at auction. It would be a nice

choice for wedding favors even if you aren’t a member of the royal family. I kept a piece of my wedding cake for

many years until it finally got lost when we moved house last year.