Baking a Christmas cake

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

Kings County Register



Once served year-round in English households, plum pudding is now a much cherished Wolfville Christmas tradition.

The St. John's Anglican Church Women held a recent work party preparing about 200 puddings.

Two women spent a morning cutting up carrots and other ingredients.

Then, 14 volunteers gathered in the parish hall to do the hands-on preparation.

Another crew, says Vicky Harris, volunteered their time to steam the puddings in water for four-and-a-half-hours. Mary's husband, Jerry, contributes his stove to the effort.

The traditional recipe - in bulk size - was created by the late Mary Porter. She was a dietician at Acadia University and worked with a cook there to create the recipe in 1972. They made 97 puddings the first year and raked in $154.20. Costs were $40. The puddings sold for $1.20.

It wasn't long before a church tradition started.

In 1980, the kitchen at the parish hall was enlarged, so the preparation process transferred out of home kitchens and the work party was born.

Vicky Harris buys the ingredients in bulk, including cases of raisins and dates and other fruit. They sell off the excess for other seasonal baking.

Sobeys contributes the bread crumbs, she says, and Jimmy Daigle acts as a good Samaritan when it comes to the vegetables.

The pudding project involves many church members.

"People just sign up," says Harris. Of course, there is "a good deal of fellowship included in the morning work party. It's a chance to get together."

The puddings sell readily at the church's annual coffee party. They generally raise about $1,000 and "they're tasty," adds Elizabeth Brown.

"I've met people who come up from Halifax to get them," points out Judy Amos.

Harris has a collection of photos documenting a host of creative coffee party themes in recent years - everything from fur to bells. Decorating is time intensive and satisfying, she says.

The puddings generally disappear at Cratchit's coffee party. This year it will be held Nov. 25 at 10 a.m. in the hall on Main St.

This year's event marks 100 years the Wolfville ACW has been in existence.



What’s in a plum pudding?



Plum puddings actually do not contain plums. In the 17th Century, “plum� referred to raisins or other fruits.

John Ayto, writing in A Gourmet's Guide, says, "Dried plums, or prunes, were popular in pies in medieval times, but gradually in the 16th and 17th centuries, they began to be replaced by raisins. The dishes made with them, however, retained the term plum, and to this day the plum pudding, plum cake, plum duff etc. remind us of their former ingredients."

During the Puritan reign in England, plum pudding was outlawed as "sinfully rich."

The name Christmas pudding is first recorded in 1858 in a novel by Anthony Trollope.

Traditionally in England, small silver charms were baked in the plum pudding. A silver coin would bring wealth in the coming year; a tiny wishbone, good luck; a silver thimble, thrift; an anchor, safe harbor. By Victorian times, only the silver coin remained. In England these tiny charms can still be bought by families who make their own puddings.