• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
You are here: Home / Dishes / Desserts / Cakes / Christmas Cakes

Christmas Cakes

This page first published: Jan 11, 2004 · Updated: Dec 10, 2019 · by CooksInfo. Copyright © 2021 · This web site may contain affiliate links · This web site generates income via ads · Information on this site is copyrighted. Taking whole pages for your website is theft and will be DCMA'd. See re-use information.
Iced Christmas cake

Iced Christmas cake. James Petts / flickr / 2012 / CC BY-SA 2.0


Christmas cakes can be either light or dark cakes with fruit in them that may or may not be iced or glazed.

Most English Christmas Cakes are first covered in marzipan, and then iced with royal icing on top of that. Most North American cakes tend to be just left plain.

Christmas cakes are a lot of work, with a lot of chopping and some very heavy stirring to be got through.

Australians devised a method of boiling the fruit first before baking the cake. Given that Christmas comes at high summer in Australia, women wanted to reduce the amount of time the oven was on during sweltering temperatures.

During the Second World War in Britain, many resourceful people made their Christmas cakes with carrots to sweeten them, as sugar was of course rationed.

Many other cultures also make Christmas cakes, but if it’s anything other than a North American or British style cake, it will usually be described as such: e.g. “German” Christmas cake, etc.

Christmas cake cooling from oven

Christmas cake cooling from oven. James Petts / wikimedia / 2012 / CC BY-SA 2.0

History Notes

Christmas cakes are quite recent.

Up until the end of the 1800s, puddings were made for Christmas, and the cakes were made for Twelfth Night.

The transition to the cakes being for Christmas began sometime around 1870 or 1880.

Christmas cake slice

Christmas cake slice. James Petts / flickr / 2017 / CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Tagged With: British Food

Primary Sidebar

Search

Home canning resources

Vist our satellite site Healthy Canning for Home Food Preservation Advice

www.hotairfrying.com

Visit our Hot Air Frying Site

Random Quote

‘Grilling, broiling, barbecuing — whatever you want to call it — is an art, not just a matter of building a pyre and throwing on a piece of meat as a sacrifice to the gods of the stomach.’ — James Beard (5 May 1903 – 21 January 1985)

Food Calendar

food-calendar-icon
What happens when in the world of food.

NEWSLETTER

Subscribe for updates on new content added.

Footer

Copyright © 2021 · Copyright & Reprint · Privacy · Terms of use ·Foodie Pro ·
Funding to enable continued research and updating on this web site comes via ads and some affiliate links