Marie Cookpad

  It was a really gloomy day around here today (Wednesday as I write this) and I thought I would decorate my cake for Christmas.  I have been diligently feeding it since I baked it and I was afraid that if I left it any longer it wouldn't get done.  Christmas is less than a week away after all!   This year I took the easy route and didn't do anything complicated.  I am not the most skilled person in the world when it comes to sugar craft.  I ordered a cake topper and ribbon from an on line cake supply company back in October.  Easy peasy and I love the rustic look of a red vehicle with a tree on top! The first step in decorating/icing your Christmas cake is filling in the holes that inevitably show up, being left behind from raisins, etc. that drop out of the cake. I just pinch off little pieces of marzipan and stuff them into the holes.  This results in a much smoother finish for the fondant you will be adding at the end.  Once you have...

  Christmas fruit cake. It is a "love it" or "loathe it" kind of a thing.  I am from the "love it" camp myself.  All the Christmas's of my childhood contained at least two fruit cakes, a light one and a dark one.   The Christmas Catalogue used to have options where you could buy a ready-made fruit cake, the tops of them highly decorated with nuts and glace fruit, decoratively placed and beautifully glazed.   My mom would often buy a slab of fruit cake and make us a delicious War Cake to enjoy as well.   We loved both.  Mom's War Cake was lovely and moist and filled with large sticky raisins. You can find the recipe for that here .   Most of the department stores had their own versions of fruitcake as well, with the most popular one being the ones offered at S. S. Kresge.  Kresge's was an American department store, at one time being the largest discount retail stores in America.  It was renamed Kmart in 1977 and later evolved into th...

  Growing up in the 1950's and 60's I had a most wonderful childhood.  Christmas was an especially wonderful time of year for me, filled with abundance . . .  faith, love, family . . . it truly was a season of light. We didn't get a lot of treats the rest of the year, with perhaps the exception of Easter, along with the occasional pie or birthday cake . . .  but at Christmas my mom would pull out the stops and our family kitchen was filled with lovely smells and tastes.  Some of those special bakes came from a Robin Hood Baking Leaflet.  All of the flour companies used to put out special baking leaflets at Christmas time.  You could pick them up free at the grocery stores, or in magazines, etc. This little booklet is filled with the Christmas flavours of my childhood.    I wanted to give you all something special for Christmas, something I thought you would use and so I scanned the whole booklet and it is my gift to you.  It is fill...

Well, we are now full swing into the Christmas Holidays.  When my children were growing up I was kept busy day and night baking up all sorts of treats for the upcoming celebrations.  Cookies for the most part with the odd cake and tart thrown in for good measure.  I also use to make Cookie Trays as gifts for family and friends.  Everyone lives so far apart now and there are only two of us at home, so I no longer do the baking that I used to do, but I thought it would be fun today to put together a compendium of all of my tried and true Christmas Favourites!   You still have plenty of time to bake them.  You can buy inexpensive cookie trays/platters at the pound/dollar shop which are perfect for presentation.  All can be baked and then frozen, ready to pop onto a tray or in a basket on the day you want to gift them. Holiday Linzer Cookies always go down a real treat.   These ones are special, with a buttery nutty and lightly spiced dough...