Christmas Cakes

 

Christmas cakes

Everyone is busy cleaning his or her homes and backyards, gardens. Some are busy shopping, buying cards, gifts, and decoration materials. Some are busy planning for parties, inviting people and making arrangements. You must have already guessed what this all excitement is about; it is for the arrival of Christmas. Christmas is celebrated in different forms and Christmas cakes are a very tradition and important aspect of celebration.

 

Christmas and cakes

The Christmas cakes come from two customs, which became one around the 1870 in Victorian England. Originally, there was a porridge, the origins of which go back to the initial stages of Christianity. Then there were fine backed cakes made up of finest milled wheat flour, the cakes were backed only in the royal houses, as most of the people did not own the ovens. The usage of the backing machine, the oven dates back to the fourteenth century.

 

History of Christmas cakes

Originally, people ate porridge on the Christmas Eve, prior to the Christmas cakes. It was a dish to line the stomach after a days fasting and the eve observed as Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve was also referred to as vigil, in the earlier times. Later on people started to add spices, dry fruits to the porridge to make the celebration of Christmas more special. Later this special porridge turned into puddings, as it has to be stiff with all the fruits and things, they tied it in a cloth, and drunk it in a large cauldron of boiling water and boiled it for many hours. Thus, this made the porridge into the Christmas puddings. Later on, around in sixteenth century. It became customary to adding butter, replacing the oatmeal with the wheat flour also added eggs for holding it better. So, there aroused the plum puddings and the fruitcakes. The big houses, rich, had proper oven to bake the cakes. The people belonging to castles and big houses would prepare a special cake for the Easter, rich fruitcakes with topping of almond paste.

A similar cake was baked for the Christmas, a cake full of dried fruits and spices unlike the Easter almond pasted cakes. These cakes represent the exotic spices of the East and the gifts of the wise men. Such things were brought by the Britain to Europe, long time back. In the smaller homes, the cake was a simple fruit cake with beans in it. The confectioners who made the cakes also started to bake fruitcakes decorating them with snowy scenes or even gardens to make them more beautiful. They sold these cakes for the Christmas parties. People in Britain began to make the boiled fruitcakes to send to their families who had gone to the new world colonies. The boiled cakes tasted much better than the backed ones.

 

Celebrations

Christmas is celebrated all over the world, today. The Christmas cake adds more enjoyment to the celebrations. Since olden times the tradition of baking cakes for Christmas is followed until today. Christmas cakes may be backed home or could be brought from a bakery on the Christmas Eve. Christmas cake adds to the celebrations of Christmas. The cakes today are prepared in different types and those old recepie cakes are prepared some times. At the Christmas Eve, in the party, the Christmas cake is cut and Jesus Christ is remembered, as Christmas symbolizes birth of Jesus Christ.