How to Bake a Twelfth-cake for a Dickens of a Christmas

At long last, here is my twelfth-cake. It's probably not far from Dicken's imaginary cake that he teases as being way too small in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (see my post about Dickens and twelfth-cakes), because, at only 10 inches across, it's about one-quarter the size of a respectable Victorian cake.

If the giant Victorian cake seems excessive, remember two things: first, it's meant to keep for as much as a year, so the festive celebratory cake could still have been turning up for teatime the following September. Second, in some big households like that of the Dickenses, I have no doubt that the servants would have been given shares to send home to their families. So it's all good.

I went with the recipe from William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle, which dates from the 1820s and uses eggs as a leavening agent. After doing some arithmatic to quarter the batch, I decided to use as a guide the proportions for an exactly similar cake in Helen Edden’s Country Recipes of Old England (Country Life, 1929). However, I added back the spices, which she omits (her recipe only calls for nutmeg). I was curious about the coriander, and it adds a subtle lemony quality to the scent of the finished cake. ( I was most pleased to get to use some of the coriander I grew in my garden this year.)

There's not very much brandy in the recipe, and I find it does what vanillla does in more recent cake recipes: the alcohol carries the aromatic essence of the spices, making their bouquet much more subtle and delicate. I used cubes of citrus peel because I didn't have time to find anything else, but I'd love to make this cake with homemade strips of peel.

In the end, this is a relatively simple cake recipe that produces a light, delicious whitish cake chock-full of currants. In Victorian times, though, producing a cake four times this size would not only have been expensive, but would have required prodigious muscle, since it calls for beating large quantities of butter and eggs by hand for 20 minutes or more.

Ingredients

• 1¾ cups sugar
• ½ lb butter
• ½ tsp each of grated nutmeg and allspice
• ¼ tsp each of cinnamon, mace, ground ginger and coriander
• 4 eggs
• ¼ cup brandy
• 1½ cups flour
• 1 lb currants (Because the Victorian cookbooks mention rinsing the currants, I soaked mine in a couple of changes of water, until the water ran clear. They plumped up a bit; this will probably add moisture to the cake.)
• 2 oz blanched almonds, sliced thin
• 3 oz mixed candied peel
• ¼ cup milk

Instructions

1. Before you start, allow all ingredients to come to room temperature.
2. Preheat oven to 300.
3. Grease and flour a 10-inch springform pan.
4. Cream the butter, sugar and spices together until they are very light and fluffy.
5. Beat in the eggs one at a time. You almost can't overbeat them; lots of air in the batter is a good thing.
6. Stir in the brandy, and then lightly sift in and combine the flour.
7. Add the fruit and nuts and combine well, then pour into the pan (adding a dried pea and a bean halfway, if you want to follow the old tradition of choosing a Twelfth Night king and queen).
8. Smooth out the top, using your hand dipped in a little milk.
9. Bake for 2 hours and 45 minutes, or until a toothpick poked into the top comes out clean. (Check a couple of times in the last hour of baking; if the top seems to be browning too fast, place a layer of parchment paper or tinfoil over the top.)
10. Cool on a rack before removing from the pan.

If you are not going to ice it immediately, wrap the cake tightly when it is still barely warm to keep it from going stale. (By the way; mine isn't that dark; it's just that my camera is ill. Imagine the photos were taken by firelight.) It would be delicious plain, or with a very light dusting of icing sugar sifted over the top. If you want to go for Victorian-style decoration, you can ice it with fondant or royal glaze. If you use royal glaze, spread a thin crumb coat on first, allow it to dry, and then add a second layer. As an alternative, you could spread a layer of almond jam over the cake, then cover it over with marzipan, then ice it with buttercream or royal glaze.

To save time (because this project has become a crazy labour of love), I simply covered my cake with store-bought fondant and cut-out holly and oak leaves made from store-bought gumpaste. In honour of the pitiful twelfth-cake described in Edwin Drood, I did take the time to sculpt a Victorian Harlequin based on images from stage shows of the period. It's my first effort with gumpaste and I'm feeling rather good about it. I am still resisting the urge to buy a dremel to add some really fine detail and smooth out the rough patches. Also, he has a Columbine friend, but she's not finished and I think she needs a cake of her own.

If you want to know the full story of twelfth-cake, read on:

• What the Dickens is a Twelfth-Cake?
• Charles Dickens and the Victorian Twelfth-Cake
• Recipe for a Dickensian Twelfth-Cake

And don't forget to click the Linky links below to read more chapters of A Dickens of A Christmas, which will tell you all you need to know about the Christmas goose, Victorian millinery, Dickensian knitting, hot toddies, plum puddings, gin punch... in short, as much Christmas cheer as the good old day ever inspired, in Dickens' time or our own. And while I'm at it, let me just add, "God bless us, every one!"

Recipe for a Dickensian Twelfth-cake

What's the recipe for a Dickensian twelfth-cake? Dickens lived from 1812 to 1870, and he published A Christmas Carol in 1843, when he was 31. The cake he was imagining when he wrote the book might have been a cake remembered from his boyhood; however, that recipe from the early 1800s would have differed from the immense and expensive cakes that Dickens and his family enjoyed through the 1840s and '50s, when his children were growing up.

One of the things that would have changed was the leavening agent. In the early 19th century, yeast derived from the beer-brewing process would have been added to make the cake rise. The earliest known written source specifically named as a twelfth-cake recipe is an 1803 version by English cook John Mollard in his The Art of Cookery. It uses ¾ of a cup of yeast to leaven seven pounds of flour.

Later in the 19th-century, beaten eggs were used as the leavening agent, and still later, as standardized ingredients became commonly available, baking powder was substituted. One might guess that by the time A Christmas Carol appeared, a professional baker might have used eggs, whereas a home cook using an old family recipe might still have been using yeast.

What is common among twelfth-cake recipes is that they are always very large fruitcakes containing currants and citrus peel that require long baking at a low temperature to cook right through. They are designed to be decorated elaborately with royal glaze, almond paste and/or fondant, with lots of piped and sculpted sugar embellishments. In fact, they exactly resemble our traditional wedding cakes, to which they are a close relation.


Some antique cookbooks, like The Experienced English Housekeeper by Elizabeth Raffald (1769), offer no recipe for a twelfth-cake, but discuss a bride cake or wedding cake; their authors probably expected readers to use one recipe for both occasions. The Jane Austen Centre offers a modern interpretation of the Raffald bride cake recipe to fit a 10-inch springform pan – decorated as a twelfth-cake and pictured above.

The popular doctor and cookbook author William Kitchiner (1775–1827) explains in his Apicius Redivivus, or the Cook's Oracle that "the only difference" between a twelfth-cake and a bride cake was, for a bride cake, "the addition of one pound of Raisins, stoned and mixed with the other fruit." He also mentions that, as with our modern wedding cake, "a good Twelfth Cake, not baked too much, and kept in a cool dry place, will retain its moisture and eat well, if Twelve months old."

So here's a selection of twelfth-cake recipes. When reading old cookbooks, it's useful to know that a gill is equal to ½ cup, 4 fluid ounces, 8 tablespoons or 118 mL. The "hoops" referred to were what was once used used in place of a modern cake pan; they would be lined with paper, filled with batter and set into the oven.



From John Mollard, The Art of Cookery

Both the site Austen Only and food historian Ivan Day's Historic Food site document a recent experiment in baking Mollard's cake, with wonderful photos like the one above of their crown-topped, cochineal-coloured cake and the antique sugar-molds used to create the decoration. The recipe is as follows:

Take seven pounds of flour, make a cavity in the centre, set a sponge with a gill and a half of yeast and a little warm milk; then put round it one pound of fresh butter broke into small lumps, one pound and a quarter of sifted sugar, four pounds and a half of currants washed and picked, half an ounce of sifted cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of pounded cloves, mace, and nutmeg mixed, sliced candied orange or lemon peel and citron. When the sponge is risen, mix all the ingredients together with a little warm milk; let the hoops be well papered and buttered, then fill them with the mixture and bake them, and when nearly cold ice them over with sugar prepared for that purpose as per receipt; or they may be plain.

This makes an absolutely enormous cake; a modern cook would likely want to quarter it. Also, since yeast has become standardized, I would guess that you could get away with perhaps two 8-gram packages in a reduced version of this cake. To "set a sponge" is to allow the yeast to start to grow in warm water or milk mixed with the flour.

From William Kitchiner, The Cook's Oracle (numerous editions from the 1820s onwards)

Two pounds of sifted Flour, two pounds of sifted Loaf Sugar, two pounds of Butter, eighteen eggs, four pounds of Currants, one half pound of Almonds, blanched and chopped, one half pound Citron, one pound of Candied Orange and Lemon Peel, cut into thin slices, a large Nutmeg grated, half an ounce ground Allspice: ground Cinnamon, Mace, Ginger, and Corianders, a quarter of an ounce of each, and a gill of Brandy. Put the Butter into a stewpan, in a warm place, and work it into a smooth cream with the hand, and mix it with the Sugar and Spice in a pan (or on your paste board) for some time ; then break in the Eggs by degrees, and beat it at least twenty minutes; stir in the Brandy, and then the Flour, and work it a little—add the Fruit, Sweetmeats, and Almonds, and mix all together lightly, have ready a hoop cased with paper, on a baking plate, put in the mixture, smooth it on the top with your hand dipped in milk—put the plate on another, with sawdust between, to prevent the bottom from colouring too much, bake it in a slow oven four hours or more, and when nearly cold, ice it... This mixture would make a handsome cake, full twelve or fourteen inches over.

He observes that "In making Butter Cakes ... too much attention cannot be paid to have the Butter well creamed, for should it be made too warm, it would cause the mixture to be the same, and when put to bake, the Fruit, Sweetmeats, &c., would in that event fall to the bottom." He adds that all ingredients should be warmed to room temperature, lest they should "cause the cake to be heavy".

His icing recipe, what we would call a royal glaze, is as follows: Take one pound of double refined Sugar, pounded and sifted through a lawn sieve; put into a pan quite free from grease, break in the whites of six eggs, and as much powder Blue as will lie on a sixpence; beat it well ... for ten minutes, then squeeze in the juice of a Lemon, and beat it till it becomes thick and transparent. Set the cake you intend to Ice, in an oven or warm place, five minutes, then spread over the top and sides with the mixture as smooth as possible; if for a Wedding Cake only, plain ice it; if for a Twelfth Cake, ornament it with Gum Paste, or fancy articles of any description. (I'm not sure exactly what "powder blue" is, but in modern recipes some cream of tartar is added to this type of royal glaze.)

Martha Washington's Twelfth-cake

Martha Washington (wife of US President George Washington) left a collection of recipes, including a "Great Cake" that could have been served on Twelfth Night, which was also her wedding anniversary. The Mount Vernon historic site has released the original version of the recipe, along with an appropriate icing recipe, also from Mrs. Washington's cookbooks, and modern adaptations originally published in Louise Conway Belden's The Festive Tradition: Table Decoration and Desserts in America, 1650-1900 (W.W. Norton & Company, 1983). The modern recipe calls for only ten eggs, and will fit a 10-inch springform pan. Leela of the blog She Simmers also posts about testing a different adaptation by Jeff Smith.



Other Antique and Modern Adaptations of Twelfth-cake Recipes

The site Homemade Dessert Recipes includes several more 19th-century recipes for twelfth-cakes and icing, including a "Rich Twelfth Night Cake Recipe" published by English confectionery cook Robert Wells in his The Bread and Biscuit Baker's and Sugar-Boiler's Assistant (Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1890); a "Traditional Twelfth Night Cake Recipe" from The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker by Eleanor Parkinson (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864), and an "Old-Time Twelfth Night Cake Recipe" from Mrs. Goodfellow's Cookery As It Should Be by Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow (T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, 1865).

The site Historical Foods provides a modern version of the Eleanor Parkinson cake mentioned above, which is meant to be spread with apricot preserves, covered with marzipan or almond paste, and then iced with royal glaze.

A very workable-looking and fairly modern recipe appears in Country Recipes of Old England by Helen Edden (Country Life, 1929). In fact, it looks a lot like a simplified, quartered version of the William Kitchiner recipe, down to the icing:

• ½ lb flour
• ½ lb castor sugar
• ½ lb butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 lb currants
• 2 oz blanched almonds
• 3 oz mixed candied peel
• A little grated nutmeg
• ½ gill (¼ cup) brandy

Cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the eggs separately for two minutes, next stir in the brandy, and then lightly sift in the flour by degrees, add the washed currants, shredded peel and almonds. Put into a large cake tin lined with buttered paper, and bake slowly for about three hours. When cold decorate with royal icing...

• 1 lb icing sugar
• juice of one lemon
• whites of 2 eggs

Sift the icing sugar ... place the whites of the eggs in a separate basin with the strained lemon juice. Add a little of this to the icing sugar, working and beating well with a wooden spoon, then a little more, until the whole is mixed and is smooth and creamy. Spread a very thin layer over the cake, dipping the knife in cold water; let this dry and it will keep the cake crumbs in place; then put on a thick coating of the icing, decorate with the rest of the icing through a forcer to ornament the edges, and place ... crystalized fruits on top.

Finally, on the blog Baking for Britain, there's a post about twelfth-cakes, with a recipe from Julie Duff's Cakes from Around the World that makes two eight-inch cakes.

Images: The image at the top is a Victorian engraving of the cake and fantasy characters associated with Twelfth Night, from the website Wilson's Almanac. The last image is a modern-day twelfth-cake that illustrates the article "Ten Ages of Christmas" by Christine Lalumia at BBC.com.

Dorothy Duncan Book Launch for Feasting and Fasting: Canada's Heritage Celebrations

On Monday, December 6, from 7 to 9 p.m., food history writer Dorothy Duncan will be honoured at Fort York at the launch of her latest book, Feasting and Fasting: Canada's Heritage Celebrations (Dundurn Press). Duncan is the author of Nothing More Comforting: Canada's Heritage Food (2003) and Canadians at the Table: Food, Fellowship and Folklore (2007).

The newest book is a cycle through the seasons beginning with New Year's celebrations (both lunar and solar), and Robbie Burns Day, and ending with Christmastime traditions. The chatty style belies the solidly researched grounding; within the first few chapters I had learned about the founding of the first Chinese restaurant in my mother's home town of Brockville, and how to make mock oysters for a landlocked Valentine's Day. There's also a recipe for twelfth-cake!

Admission to the launch is $10, which includes free refreshments. The Volunteer Historic Cooks of Fort York will be on hand to offer a cooking demonstration (with tastings) of some historic Canadian holiday recipes. Call 416-392-6907 ext. 221 for further information or to reserve tickets.

Charles Dickens and the Victorian Twelfth-Night Cake

Have you been reading along with A Dickens of a Christmas? If not, it's a blog hop dedicated to things Dickensian and Christmassy, from sugarplums to fingerless mitts to Smoking Bishop to a downloadable reading of the entire text of A Christmas Carol. You can click on the Linky links below to find out what's already been posted, and more installments will keep appearing until the end of this month.

My first piece explored the "immense twelfth-cakes" that the Ghost of Christmas Present conjured up in Scrooge's rooms. It turns out that they have a long and complicated history. In this post, some elucidation of how Charles Dickens felt about twelfth-cakes, and how they figured in Victorian Christmas observances and the Dickens family festivities.

Even those who have never read a word by Dickens associate him with everything cheerful about Christmas, although they may not know that, apart from A Christmas Carol, he wrote enough Christmas books and stories to fill two volumes of his collected works. They were the blockbusters of his day; A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies on its first day in print, and to the end of his life Dickens toured with public readings of A Christmas Carol and other Christmas books like The Chimes and Cricket on the Hearth (as per the image above).

Christmas was profoundly important to Dickens, as it addressed his most deeply felt emotional, spiritual and intellectual motivations. To understand Dickens' enthusiasm for Christmas in general, and Twelfth Night parties in particular, it's important to know something about his childhood. As a young boy, he was happily enrolled in a boys' school run by an inspiring teacher named William Giles, who provided his students not only with good instruction, but also with plenty of fun, including "Twelfth Night festivities, with twelfth-cakes and dancing till midnight" (Johnson, p. 20).

But his father's financial incompetence brought about a family crisis that sent him as a child labourer to a factory, a miserable period that horrified and depressed Dickens so much that he seems to have spent the rest of his life trying to recapture the joys of his early childhood, and to endow every child around him with friendly attention and nonstop rounds of delightful activities.

But Christmas also spoke to Dickens' political and ethical views. He saw it as a time that exemplified the responsibility of those of means to show charity in the best sense to those less fortunate than themselves. Angus Wilson writes that "he was always a moralist, and never more so than at Christmas. His favourite moral was that in an increasingly utilitarian, industrial world, we needed to cultivate the imagination, that fancy of childhood." (p. 14)

Dickens' approach to Christianity was far from Puritanical, and very contemporary in feeling. He describes, in Sketches by Boz ("A Christmas Dinner"), an ideal family Christmas party, which is celebrated "in a strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and doing more to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies [church sermons] that have ever been written..."

As one might guess, the Dickens family celebrated Twelfth Night with enormously elaborate parties featuring a huge cake and numerous entertainments. Dickens would arrange for a magic lantern show, or else he would himself perform feats of conjuring (a skill at which he was fairly adept). Eventually, Twelfth-Night observances became full-fledged theatrical presentations in the nursery, with lavish trappings and hilarious scripts especially adapted by Dickens for the occasion. His colleagues like authors William Makepeace Thackeray and Wilkie Collins were among the guests, and apparently as much delighted with the proceedings as any of the children.

In 1892, Dickens' daughter Mamie wrote a series of family reminiscences in the Ladies Home Journal. She recalls that "My father was again in his element at the Twelfth Night parties... He would have something droll to say to every one, and under his attentions the shyest child would brighten and become merry. No one was overlooked or forgotten by him; like the young Cratchits, he was 'ubiquitous.' Supper was followed by songs and recitations from the various members of the company, my father acting always as master of ceremonies, and calling upon first one child, then another for his or her contribution to the festivity. I can see now the anxious faces turned toward the beaming, laughing eyes of their host. How attentively he would listen, with his head thrown slightly back, and a little to one side, a happy smile on his lips. O, those merry, happy times, never to be forgotten by any of his own children, or by any of their guests. Those merry, happy times!"

The Twelfth-Night cake seems to have held a special fascination for Charles Dickens, and indeed by Victorian times the twelfth-cake was supposed to be enormous and amazingly ornate, often covered with sugar decorations in the form of the satirical characters who were portrayed at the parties.

In the 1870s, Queen Victoria would ban rowdy Twelfth-Night festivities on the grounds that they were becoming a threat to civil peace (forcing the Twelfth-Night cake to evolve into the "Christmas" fruitcake and the ornate white wedding cake). However, she and her husband Albert were also responsible for importing German Christmas customs like the Christmas tree into England, and, along with Dickens, helping to transform what had previously been a much more austere religious observance into the festival we now know.

In 1849 (six years after the release of A Christmas Carol), the Illustrated London News reported that Victoria and the royal family themselves celebrated Twelfth Night with an evening at the theatre and a prodigious twelfth cake. It was "designed and carried out by her Majesty's confectioner, Mr. Mawditt. The Cake was of regal dimensions, being about 30 inches in diameter, and tall in proportion: round the side the decorations consisted of strips of gilded paper, bowing outwards near the top, issuing from an elegant gold bordering. The figures, of which there were sixteen, on the top of the Cake, represented a party of beaux and belles of the last century enjoying a repast al fresco, under some trees; whilst others, and some children, were dancing to minstrel strains.

"The repast, spread on the ground, with its full complemens [sic] of comestibles, decanters, and wine-glasses (the latter, by the way, not sugar glasses, but real brittle ware), was admirably modelled, as were also the figures, servants being represented handing refreshments to some of the gentlemen and ladies, whilst some of the companions of the latter were dancing. The violinist and harpist seemed to be thoroughly impressed with the importance of their functions, and their characteristic attitudes were cleverly given. As a specimen of fancy workmanship, the ornaments to the cake do credit to the skill of Mr. Mawditt, the Royal confiseur."

This image shows a crowd gathering around a Victorian pastrycook and confectioner's shop window displaying a monstrous twelfth-cake that seems to be topped with figures of a king and queen. Some troublemakers have tied the clothes of two onlookers together – a clue as to the kind of mischief that caused Queen Victoria to end Twelfth-Night celebrations. A similar image by George Cruikshank may be viewed at fotoLIBRA.

Victorian confectioners vied to show off their creations in shop windows to tempt those who could afford to buy them; those who could not might try to win one. In his last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens describes the somewhat doleful Christmas preparations in the cathedral town of "Cloisterham": "Lavish profusion is in the shops: particularly in the articles of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar. An unusual air of gallantry and dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe hanging in the greengrocer's shop doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, culminating in the figure of a Harlequin – such a very poor little Twelfth Cake, that one would rather called it a Twenty-fourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake – to be raffled for at the pastrycook's, terms one shilling per member."

Mamie Dickens wrote that "For many consecutive years, Miss Coutts, now the Baroness Burdett Coutts, was in the habit of sending my brother on this his birthday anniversary [young Charlie Dickens' birthday fell on Twelfth Night], the most gorgeous of Twelfth-cakes, with an accompanying box of bonbons and Twelfth Night characters. The cake was cut, and the favors and bonbons distributed at the birthday supper, and it was then that my father's kindly, genial nature overflowed in merriment."

The cake was such an essential part of the family's holiday observances that on a trip to Italy, Dickens arranged for a cake "weighing ninety pounds, magnificently decorated" to be delivered from England; it was displayed at a Swiss pastrycook's establishment "where it was sent to have some of its sugar ornaments repaired after its voyage. No Twelfth-Night confection had ever been seen in Genoa before, and the customers wondered mightily at its bonbons, crackers, and Twelfth-Night characters, all wrought in a marvel of confectionery." (Johnson, p. 539)

The innocent revelry and indulgence, the opportunity for laughter and camaraderie with friends and family, and the childlike delights that the Twelfth-Night cake and its attendant ceremonies offered were clearly dear to Dickens' heart, and represented for him the best of Christmas, as described by Scrooge's irrepressibly cheerful nephew: "a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Top image: Dickens at his last reading. It was originally published in the Supplement of March 19, 1870 to the Illustrated London News.

Sources and further reading:

• Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson (Simon and Schuster, 1952).
• Dickens of London by Wolf Mankowitz (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976).
• The Hymns and Carols of Christmas: "January 6: Epiphany".
• Scandal and Hysteria (Diary of a Mad Bodiceripper): "Victorian Christmas week: part seven - Twelfth Night".
• Victorian Christmas: "Christmas with Charles Dickens".
• The Victorian Web: "The Queen's Twelfth-Cake", as reported in The Illustrated London News, 13 January 1849, p. 21.
• The World of Charles Dickens by Angus Wilson (Penuin Books, 1972).

Ribbons from the Fair

These arrived today, along with my cash winnings ($35!) I can't imagine being more pleased about anything, really.

I'm hoping to convince lots more people to enter next year. This was really fun for me!

What the Dickens is a Twelfth-Cake?

As I mentioned earlier this month, I've signed up to be part of a blog hop called A Dickens of a Christmas. You'll see by the Linky links below that it's about everything you need to know to "keep Christmas" in the style of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Whilst many of my co-bloggers are focusing on the elements of the Cratchit family dinner, I thought I'd take a look at the fascinating pile of festive edibles upon which the Ghost of Christmas Present sits enthroned when he materializes in Scrooge's rooms (see the illustration above).

Dickens list the components: "crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy ... turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch." Most of these items might turn up on a contemporary dinner menu ("brawn" is roast boar)... except twelfth-cakes. Rashly, I decided to write about them. But it turns out that it's such a huge topic that I'm going to need to write more than one post. So, to begin: what exactly is a twelfth-cake?

Most simply put, a twelfth-cake, or twelfth-night cake, is a fruitcake, and it has a history going back many centuries, at least into the medieval period, when dried fruits and nuts were luxurious treats for important celebrations. It's designed to be served on Twelfth Night, or the night of the twelfth day of Christmas (January 5) and the eve of Epiphany, the date upon which the Three Kings were supposed to have arrived at cradle of the baby Jesus.

So far so good. But to really understand what a twelfth-cake is, you must understand that many of the holiday festivals still celebrated in the modern world, including Hallowe'en, Christmas and pre-Lenten carnivals such as Mardi Gras, were once seen as part of a whole season of holidays designed to get people in northern countries through the dark, cold, lean days from the end of one harvest to the beginning of the next year's planting season.

How old are these traditions? I'd guess that they're as old as the earliest agricultural societies, and certainly older than Christianity, although by the Middle Ages in Europe, they had bonded inextricably into the church calendar.

Above: A Regency Twelfth Night party for the upper middle class, with cake, by Isaac Cruikshank. The partygoers represent satirical types. Visit the blog austenonly for more about this image and Twelfth Night in Jane Austen's day.

Here's the gist: imagine a festival season that extends right from the end of harvest at Hallowe'en (October 31) to Twelfth Night (January 5). Then there's a bleak indeterminate period until the beginning of the Easter season, which starts with the Carnival (Mardi Gras) before Ash Wednesday that may fall anywhere between February 4 and March 10. A six-week fast follows (which makes sense, because it would help stretch out the stores of preserved food) until Easter, the beginning of the spring growing season.

In the Middle Ages, the pre-Christmas festival was governed by the Lord of Misrule, and was a time when a peasant could be a king, a prince could be a beggar, a man could be a woman, and so on. Our Hallowe'en disguises are partly a holdover from that; and so may be the custom of dressing up for Purim.


Victorian Twelfth Night masquerade party for farm folk in the illustration "Twelfth Night Merry-making in Farmer Shakeshaft's Barn" by "Phiz", aka Hablot Knight Browne, from the book Mervyn Clithroe by William Harrison Ainsworth (1898).

Costumes became part of Twelfth Night, and it became the custom for guests at a Twelfth Night party to impersonate satirical characters like the figures from the Commedia dell'Arte. Shakespeare knew all about this, and the low comedy figures in his play Twelfth Night (Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby Belch and Feste the clown) are the same types of comic figures. The festivities migrated to the Americas in colonial days, but have pretty much died out in North America (except in New Orleans, about which more later).


19th-century Twelfth Night party cards showing satirical characters. Visit Puzzle Museum for more illustrations of these cards.

In England, by the time of Jane Austen (the early 1800s), party guests would choose a picture card that told them what character they would play for the evening. When the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on his tour, one of their stops is a children's Twelfth Night party, but in the 1870s Queen Victoria outlawed adults' masquerades because, like so many similar carnivalesque celebrations (such as mumming), they threatened to get out of hand and facilitate civil unrest.

But back to the twelfth-cake... It is known in France, where it is an un-iced almond cake called a Galette des Rois, and a King Cake (right) is still served up in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, where it is generally embellished with garish purple, green and gold sugar in honour of the Three Kings. In Spain, it's a "King's Ring" – Roscón de reyes in Spanish and Tortell de Reis in Catalan (pictured below) – a ring-shaped cake studded with candied fruit. The cake Dickens would have known, however, was a fruitcake in the sense of our Christmas cake, often covered in fondant, and ornately decorated. (I believe the ghost in the picture at the top has one foot on a Christmas pudding and the other on a twelfth-cake.)

In 18th- and 19th-century England, the cakes were a chance for confectioners to show off their art, much like a modern wedding cake (and in fact the two sometimes doubled up, since many weddings were celebrated over the Christmas season). They were expensive and ornate, and, as William Hones' The Every Day Book (1825, 1827) tells us, they were decorated with "stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milk-maids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms in snow-white confectionary, painted with variegated colours".

Whatever its other ornaments, the cake was usually topped with a crown, and from early times, the cake would be baked with a bean inside (later, a bean and a pea). Whoever got the slice with the bean was the king of the festivities, and if there was a pea, the lady who received it became the queen.

To me, this feels like a remnant of the very, very ancient practice of (in fact or symbolically), choosing a sacrificial victim to be killed and buried in the soil or eaten at the end of the harvest season to perpetuate the fertility of the fields. Many mythologies have dying and reborn god myths – part of the same idea. In a way, the cake with the crown stands in for the king of the past harvest year; it is devoured by the community, and whoever receives the bean stands for the king of the new harvest, whose seeds will, we hope, rise up in the spring.

So you see why I couldn't fit this all into just one post. Wish me luck as I explore actual recipes for twelfth-cakes and report back to you later.

And to finish, a poem of 1648 by Robert Herrick, entitled "Hesperides, Twelfe Night, or King and Queene":

Now, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where Beane's the King of the sport here;
Besides we must know,
The Pea also
Must revell, as Queene, in the Court here.
Begin then to chuse
This night as ye use
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a King by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfe-day Queene for the night here.
Which knowne, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake,
And let not a man be seen here,
Who unurg'd will not drinke
To the base from the brink
A health to the King and Queene here.
Next crowne the bowle full
With gentle lamb's woll*;
Add sugar, nutmeg and ginger,
With store of ale too;
And this ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.

*Lambswool: Wassail, an alcoholic punch, named for its frothiness.

Sources and further reading (with thanks to Bridget Wranich, program officer at Historic Fort York and co-founder of the Culinary Historians of Ontario)

• BBC.com: "Ten Ages of Christmas" by Christine Lalumia
• Cooking in Europe, 1650—1850 by Ivan Day (Greenwood Press, 2009).
• Feasting and Fasting: Canada's Heritage Celebrations by Dorothy Duncan (Dundurn Press, 2010).
• Historic Food (by Ivan Day): "Twelfth Cake"
• Historical Foods: "12th Night King and Queen Cake"
• The Jane Austen Centre: "Twelfth Night Cake"
• Entries on "Twelfth Night cake" and "Galette" in The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson (Penguin Books, 1999).
• Sugar-Plums and Sherbet: The Prehistory of Sweets by Laura Mason (Prospect Books, 2004).

Other image credits: Ghost of Christmas Present: a John Leech illustration from the original edition of A Christmas Carol. Tortell de Reis from Wikipedia. Mardi Gras King Cake from Andrea's Recipes, where you will find a recipe for a New Orleans-style Mardi Gras King Cake.

Vanilla Applesauce recipe for Tigress' Can Jam, November Edition #tigresscanjam

If you know me or read this blog at all, you'll know I'm kind of an apple geek. I'm really excited about all the different varieties and tend to eat quite a lot of them. I come by it honestly; my mom grew up not far from the original McIntosh tree in Dundela, Ontario.

I'm fond of making apple jelly, but since I've posted a few apple-based jelly recipes lately, I thought I'd do something different for the November edition of Tigress' Can Jam, featuring apples, as announced by the Cosmic Cowgirl. After pondering the possibilities, I decided on straight-up applesauce. I was considering one with cranberries or cardamom, but settled on a classic vanilla-cinnamon combination.

This project was a shopping Fail but a cooking Win. I had intended to flavour my applesauce with vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks, but when it came to the point, I and my neighbourhood shops were fresh out of them. Also, I had intended to go for the dependable default apple, the McIntosh, but (oddly) there were none in when I went to get them, so I used a mixture of Galas, Empires and Spartans instead. Nonetheless, I got a gentle, somewhat sweet applesauce that's great with hot porridge, which is what I was hoping for. Here's the recipe.

Vanilla Applesauce

Makes about 11 cups

• 8 pounds of apples (crisp, tart ones are best)
• 3 cups of water
• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup of sugar (optional)
• ¼ cup of lemon juice

1. Wash and sterilize jars and lids.
2. Wash, quarter and core the apples, but do not peel them.
3. In a large pot, combine the apples, water, cinnamon and vanilla, heat them to a boil and cook them over medium heat until the apples have broken down (about 30 minutes). Stir and mash them from time to time to help them along.
4. Put the apple mixture through a coarse strainer to remove skins and break down the pulp further.
5. Return the mixture to the pot and add the sugar and lemon juice.
6. Cook over medium heat until the sugar is well dissolved and the mixture is as smooth as you like it.
7. Ladle into sterilized jars and process in boiling water for 20 minutes.

Incidentally, I had intended to post more photos, including one of a bowl of hot Red River Cereal with yogurt and applesauce, but this month's Can Jam entry was also a photography Fail, as it turns out, so we will all have to be content with the sort-of-painterly shot of my sink full of apples.

Room 4 Dessert at George Brown Culinary School

On Friday, December 10, second-year Baking and Pastry Arts students team up with third-year Bachelor of Applied Business students at George Brown College to present Room 4 Dessert, an evening of desserts, cheese, breads, preserves and assorted beverage pairings in support of scholarships for both programs.

Room 4 Dessert takes place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Centre for Culinary Arts (300 Adelaide East). Tickets are $50 (must be 19 years of age or older), and you can buy them online or in person at the George Brown College Bookstore at 200 King East.

Photo from George Brown College Chef School Culinary Studio.

Handpicked: A Fundraiser for Not Far From the Tree

Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 10, Not Far From the Tree is holding a fundraiser called Handpicked. The entertainment includes hors d'oeuvres by Jamie Kennedy, Mark Cutrara and Carole Ferrari, an open bar featuring their signature elderberry cocktail "The Gleaner", a cider press, original artwork in the silent auction, and remarks by Mayor David Miller and Claire Tansey, food editor of Chatelaine.

Handpicked takes place at the SHAMBA Foundation (48 Yonge Street at Wellington, 12th floor). Tickets are $50 and can be purchased online or by calling 416-363-6441, extension 224. There's also a Facebook page for Handpicked.

In case you don't know their work, Not Far From The Tree harvests fruit from urban trees. In 2010 (their third year), their 700 volunteers picked nearly 20,000 pounds of fruit, of which one-third was distributed to 25 partnering food banks and shelters. (The rest went to the fruit pickers and the owners of the trees.) If you can't attend but would still like to support Not Far From The Tree, you can donate through The Popular Education & Research Catalyst Centre or by calling 416-363-6441, extension 224.

Photography by Reena Newman

A Dickens of a Christmas

...Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course-and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurray!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't at it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone - too nervous to bear witness-to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose-a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered-flushed, but smiling proudly-with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly struck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put on the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed:
"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

This holiday season a group of us are planning a Dickens of a Christmas blog hop, including:

• April of 21st Century Housewife
• Ken of Ken Albala's Food Rant and many, many books about food which you should check out
• Heather of What Would Madame Defarge Knit
• Diana of A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa
• Annette of Sustainable Eats
• Margo of the fine millinery site Hatshadows
• ...and me!

There will be recipes for the traditional foods Dickens wrote of in A Christmas Carol, or found in Victorian England around the holidays. There will be a professional reading of the book. There will be giveaways, themed knitting patterns and even hats! There may be smoking bishop and suet cooked in organs. And there will certainly be much making of merry.

The blog entries started rolling out this week and will culminate on U.S. Thanksgiving weekend (beginning with Thursday, November 25, one month before Christmas) to kick off your holidays in Victorian style.

So please do bookmark all our blogs and add them to your rss feeders. We'll be using the linky below to link all the blog entries for the entire shebang so that you don't miss a single one. We hope you enjoy this as much as we know we will! And we hope that you have a DICKENS OF A CHRISTMAS!

Image of Mrs. Cratchit with the Christmas pudding by Arthur Rackham, from a public domain copy of A Christmas Carol on Project Gutenberg.

George Brown Culinary Series Tastes of Tomorrow Presents "Passion for Pears" Seminar

On Thursday, November 11, the Tastes of Tomorrow Series of the George Brown College Chef School presents "Passion for Pears". National Food Educator Wendy Barrett will discuss different varieties and seasonal availability of different pears. She'll also demonstrate how to cook them.

"Passion for Pears" starts at 6:30 p.m. in the main lecture theatre (Room 112) at the George Brown Chef School (300 Adelaide East). Admission is $10, or free for members. (Membership fees are $35.) For more information or to RSVP, email tastes@georgebrown.ca. There's also a Tastes of Tomorrow Facebook page.

Upcoming Tastes of Tomorrow Events

• November 22: Organic Farming, presented by David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens and Chef Roger Romberg, now of George Brown, but formerly of L'hardy's, Quenelles, the Westbury Hotel, the Four Seasons, the Harbour Castle Hilton and Winston's
• December 2: Chocolate, presented by the Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut
• January 27: Artisanal Cheeses, presented by Ruth Klahsen of Monforte Dairy

Photo by Lorettaflame, Morguefile.

Fun at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair 2010

Another edition of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair is on again, and it runs until 6 p.m. on Sunday, November 14. If you're thinking of heading down, be aware that the admission price is a fairly steep $20 for adults, $16 for youth and seniors, but any weekday after 5 p.m. there's a two-for-one admission policy, which gives you four hours of fun for not quite so much money. And if you're not particularly strapped for cash, I really think the full admission is worth it. I was down there for more than eight hours yesterday, and felt as though I'd barely skimmed the surface.

Free Stuff at the Fair

To ease the sting of the admission price, I had the impression there was more cool free stuff this year than there sometimes is. Apart from many wonderful foods to taste – smoked fish, sausages, cheeses, jams, mustards, pepper jellies, and so on – I picked up free PEI potatoes, a free bar of goat-milk soap and a sizeable free sample of a new margarine product from Becel that's not only low in "bad" fats, but is actually supposed to inhibit absorption of cholesterol.

Tweeting Cows and Waterfalls

Most people already know about the horse shows, the dog shows, the chickens, the petting zoo, the cow barns and so on, but there are always some unusual things to be found in odd corners of the fair. This year, besides all the real live animals, there were at least two model cows set up to let you try "milking" them, a model cow you can write comments on (several wags wrote "Got Milk?), and an exhibit about "Teat Tweet", a Critical Media Lab project that's posting comments from a dozen cows via Twitter for one year as they navigate a robotic milking system.

The cows have quite a literary bent, with a tendency to mix quotations from great English poets with more mundane remarks like "Entered the stall at Sat, Nov 6 '10 9:29 am and by Sat, Nov 6 '10 9:38 am gave 18.5 milk." If your attention span is too short to click on the Teat Tweet link, just follow @FreerideSpeedy or @MontgomeryMae on Twitter.

Near the entrance to the fair, there's a walk-through exhibit about water, aimed at kids. Tucked away at the very end is a clever and rather lovely piece of installation art called Waterfall, addressing the environmental issue of water use. It was originally created for the Canadian Wildlife Federation to be exhibited at Whistler Canada Olympic House during the Vancouver Olympics.

The work of Canadian artists Kim Morgan, David Clark, Rachelle Viader Knowles and David Ogborn, Waterfall takes the form of a vending machine with lit-up panels depicting everyday uses of water; when you punch in the number codes that correspond to a selection, the panel presents a video clip of that activity, which in turn falls away to reveal part of a beautiful waterfall.

Grocery Shopping at the Royal

I always try to buy some special groceries while I'm at the fair. There are great bargains to be had, like Woolwich goat cheese for $2. One of my must-do stops is the Northern Ontario section, where I generally pick up smoked fish, bison meat and sometimes wool. Several artisanal cheese makers are represented, and there's also an Eastern Ontario corner near the prize-winning veggies, where you can buy Fifth Town Cheese and sample craft beers.

For the first time this year, the upstairs section includes a fresh vegetable market (pictured), along with the usual honey and maple syrup. And there's an LCBO outlet, just in case you need one.

And finally, it was a special thrill for me to feel I was, in a small way, part of the whole thing this year, since the jams and jellies I entered in the preserving competition did quite well.

Here is the display case where the winning preserves are displayed at the fair. Yvonne Tremblay, author of such cookbooks as 250 Home Preserving Favorites, amassed more judging points than any other entrant to win the title of Grand Champion Jam and Jelly Maker, which makes her an amazing five-time winner of the honour.

Patricia Griesser, who came second overall in the points ranking, won the Judges' Choice Award for her Mango Papaya Jam with Chinese Five Spice. It scored a full 50 out of a possible 50 points. She was last year's Grand Champion.

Thus you can understand how good I felt about coming in third overall behind these two talented preservers, with five ribbons, including a first-place prize for my Gooseberry Jam with Ginger. I was also pleased to see that my friend and neighbour, Tom Boyd, picked up numerous ribbons once again, including the top prize for dill pickles in the pickling category. The full results for all the agricultural categories are posted online, including cattle, cheese, honey, maple syrup, butter, poultry, rabbits, wine, and even square dancing.

2010 Canadian Culinary Book Award Winners

Yesterday I attended the awards ceremony for the 2010 Canadian Culinary Book Awards, held at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair by Cuisine Canada and the University of Guelph. I always find it inspring to be in a room full of several hundred people interested in food and publishing, all there to mark the outstanding accomplishments of their peers.

There were 68 entries in all this year, and several panels of judges not only read through them all, but tested recipes from short-listed entries. (This is a serious competition, folks!) Here are the winners, which are available for purchase at the Cuisine Canada table at the Royal, or at The Cookbook Store for the rest of the year:

Canadian Culinary Landmarks Hall of Fame

This honour was instituted last year, when Elizabeth Driver was recognized for her massive work Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825–1949 (University of Toronto Press, Toronto), a definitive history and bibliography of Canadian cookbooks.

Driver herself inducted three new members and two books. Carol Ferguson and Margaret Fraser were recognized for their 1992 book (now out of print) A Century of Canadian Home Cooking: 1900 through the '90s. Kate Aitken (1891 to 1971) was also honoured posthumously for Kate Aitken's Canadian Cook Book, and for her life's work in disseminating Canadian food culture and wisdom. Her family members accepted on her behalf.

Special Interest – Food and Beverage

• Gold (French language): Maison de Thé Camellia Sinensis, Thé: Histoire, Terroirs, Saveurs, Les Éditions de l’Homme, Montréal (about the history, cultivation and appreciation of tea)
• Gold (English language): David Sax, Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of the Jewish Delicatessen, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto
• Silver (French language): François Chartier, Papilles et Molécules : La science aromatique des aliments et des vins, Les Éditions La Presse, Montréal (a guide to molecular gastronomy as it relates to wine, and available in English as Tastebuds and Molecules)
• Silver (English language): Tony Aspler, Tony Aspler’s Cellar Book: How to Design, Build, Stock and Manage Your Wine Cellar Wherever You Live, Random House Canada, Toronto
• Honourable mentions: Richard Béliveau and Denis Gingras, La Santé par le plaisir de bien manger, Les Éditions Trécarré, Montréal (French, available in English as Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer) and Ricki Heller, Sweet Freedom: Desserts You’ll Love without Wheat, Eggs, Dairy or Refined Sugar, Trafford Publishing, Victoria (English)

Special Interest – Canadian Culinary Culture

• Gold (French language): Manuel Kak’wa Kurtness, Pachamama : Cuisines des Premières Nations, Les Éditions du Boréal, Montréal (about the culinary culture and traditions of Quebec’s First Nations.)
• Gold (English language): Chefs’ Table Society of British Columbia, Vancouver Cooks 2, Douglas and McIntyre Publishers, Vancouver
• Silver (English language): Nathalie Cooke, editor, What’s To Eat? Entrées in Canadian Food History, McGill- Queen’s University Press, Montreal and Kingston
• Honourable mention: Michael Howell, Atlantic Seafood: Recipes from Chef Michael Howell, Nimbus Publishing, Halifax (English)

Special Interest Cookbooks

• Gold (French language): Patrice Demers, La Carte des desserts, Les Éditions de l’Homme, Montréal (a luscious dessert cookbook)
• Gold (English language): Laura Calder, French Taste: Elegant Everyday Eating, Harper Collins, Toronto
• Silver (French language): Antoine Sicotte, Le Cuisinier Rebelle, Les Éditions Cardinal, Montréal (a fun-looking read by a tattoo-sporting musician/self-taught chef)
• Silver (English language): Anna Olson, Fresh with Anna Olson: Seasonally Inspired Recipes to Share with Family and Friends, Whitecap Books, Vancouver
• Honourable mentions: Carlos Ferreira, Ferreira Café : Du Portugal à Montréal, Les Éditions la Presse, Montréal (French) and Michael Smith, The Best of Chef at Home: Essential Recipes for Today’s Kitchen, Whitecap Books, Vancouver (English)

The Edna Award

Honouring Edna Staebler (1906-2006), a Canadian icon and one of the first Canadian authors to extol the virtues of local (regional) food in her best-selling cookbooks (Food That Really Schmecks, and others), this award honours an individual who has contributed to the promotion of regional cuisine and who exemplifies the region through his or her work. This year's recipient is Vancouver chef John Bishop (of Bishop's). Born in Wales, he worked first in England, and moved to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked first with local restaurateur Umberto Menghi as head chef and Maitre'd. He opened Bishop's, one of Vancouver's best restaurants, in 1985.

The Founder's Award

Created by Cuisine Canada founder Anita Stewart, this honour is extended on occasion to those Canadians who have achieved a lifetime of service to the culinary community of Canada. This year's recipient is Elizabeth Baird. Honoured earlier this year as Woman of the Year by the Women's Culinary Network, Baird not only served for two decades as Food Editor of Canadian Living Magazine, but is a remarkably generous and hardworking woman who is dedicated to increasing Canadian food knowledge in every way. Author of numerous best-selling cookbooks, she also is also a host of Canadian Living Cooks on Food Network Canada and contributes in many other ways to the culinary life of this country.

Her award was presented by The Honourable Gerry Ritz. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who (incidentally) made some remarkably enlightened comments about the importance of Canada's food culture.

You can read more about the Canadian Culinary Book Award Winners for 2010 on the Cuisine Canada blog.

Royal Agricultural Winter Fair Wine Competition Winners

Sizzling hot off the presses, here are this year's results in the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair Wine Competition: Click here for a discussion amongst the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair Wine Judges.

Best In Show:

2007 Chateau de Charmes Cabernet Franc "St. David's Bench Vineyard" St. David's Bench VQA (pictured)

• Best Overall White: 2009 Hillebrand “Trius” Sauvignon Blanc Niagara Peninsula VQ
• Best Overall Red: 2007 Chateau de Charmes Cabernet Franc “St. David's Bench Vineyard” St. David's Bench VQA

Awards for Whites

Riesling Under $20

• 2009 Fielding Estates Riesling Niagara Peninsula VQA Gold
• 2009 Flat Rock Cellars Riesling 20 Mile Bench VQA Silver
• 2009 Cornerstone Estates Riesling Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

Riesling Over $20

• 2009 Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery Riesling "Robert's Block" 20 Mile Bench VQA Gold

Oaked Chardonnay Under $20

• 2009 Stoney Ridge Chardonnay "Warren Classic" 20 Mile Bench VQA Bronze

Oaked Chardonnay Over $20

• 2009 Pondview Estate Winery Chardonnay "Barrel Fermented" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2008 Closson Chase Chardonnay "South Clos Vineyard" Prince Edward County VQA Bronze

Unoaked Chardonnay Under $20

• 2009 Black Prince Chardonnay Prince Edward County VQA Silver
• 2008 Sandbanks "Waves" Chardonnay Ontario VQA Bronze

Aromatic Whites

• 2009 Hillebrand "Trius" Sauvignon Blanc Niagara Peninsula VQA Gold
• 2009 Calamus Pinot Gris Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2009 Colaneri Pinot Grigio "Cavallone" Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

White Blends

• 2009 Hillebrand White Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2009 Stoney Ridge "Q White" Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

Awards for Reds

Merlot Under $20

• 2005 Colio Estate Vineyards Merlot "Reserve" Lake Erie North Shore VQA Bronze

Merlot Over $20

• 2008 Rosewood Estates Winery Merlot "Emerald Shore Vineyard" Creek Shores VQA Silver
• 2007 Palatine Hills Merlot "Proprieters Reserve" Niagara Lakeshore VQA Bronze

Cabernet Franc Under $20

• 2009 Pelee Island Winery Cabernet Franc "Lighthouse" Pelee Island VQA Bronze

Cabernet Franc Over $20

• 2007 Chateau de Charmes Cabernet Franc "St. David's Bench Vineyard" St. David's Bench VQA Gold
• 2008 Rosehall Run Cabernet Franc "Cold Creek" Prince Edward County VQA Silver
• 2007 Kacaba Vineyards Cabernet Franc "Reserve" Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

Pinot Noir Under $20

• 2009 Pelee Island Winery Pinot Noir "Alvar" Pelee Island VQA Silver
• 2008 Trumpours Mill Pinot Noir Prince Edward County VQA Bronze

Pinot Noir over $20

• 2009 13th Street Pinot Noir "Essence" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2008 Rosewood Estates Winery Pinot Noir 20 Mile Bench VQA Bronze

Meritage

• 2007 Stoney Ridge Merlot/Cabernet "Chateau Cartier" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2007 Reif Estate Winery Cabernet/Merlot "First Growth" Niagara River VQA Bronze

Red Blends

• 2007 Southbrook Cab/Merlot/Shiraz Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver

Other Reds

• 2009 Peller Estates Gamay Noir "Private Reserve" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2008 Peller Estates Cabernet Sauvignon "Private Reserve" Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

Awards for Other Wines

Sparkling

• NV Chateau de Charmes Brut Niagara On The Lake VQA Silver
• NV 13th Street Winery Premier Cuvee Niagara Peninsula VQA Bronze

Rose

• 2009 Peller Estates Rose "Private Reserve" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver

Dessert Wine

• 2007 Chateau des Charmes Riesling Icewine "Paul Bosc Estate Vineyard" St. David's Bench VQA Gold
• 2008 Hillebrand Vidal Icewine "Trius" Niagara Peninsula VQA Silver
• 2008 Reif Estate Winery Vidal Icewine Niagara River VQA Bronze

Fruit Wine

• Southbrook Vineyards Cassis Silver
• Southbrook Vineyards Framboise Bronze

Organic Fair Trade Coffee Tasting at Red Rocket

On Wednesday, November 17, Red Rocket Coffee (1402 Queen Street East, just east of Greenwood, 416-406-0880) is holding a Coffee Cupping Event at 7 p.m. with Adam Pesce from Reunion Island Coffee. Reunion Island is a local company that specializes in high grown Arabica coffee, including Fair Trade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance Certified coffees.

For $15, you'll taste various coffees and learn about coffee cultivation, roasting and flavours. You may find it dispels some coffee-related misconceptions. You'll go home with a bag of Reunion Island coffee beans, and snacks are provided.

When I attended one of these sessions a couple of years ago, it changed my coffee-drinking habits forever (no more dark roast for this girl!) It also taught me where in the mouth to taste acidity (useful for wine tasting) and about the relationship between mountains and coffee beans.

In case you weren't aware, Red Rocket opened a second location this year, at 154 Wellesley Street East, 416-640-1355.

Coffee cup photo by Puddleduck, Morguefile.