Christmas Cake
Courtesy of the New York Public Library
In the nineteenth century Caribbean enslaved Africans made culinary inventions from the extra measure of sugar, their master’s doled out during the Christmas holidays. Cake is very labor intensive and expensive which is probably the reason why people don’t make it year round.
Christmas Cake
Ingredients
¾ cup honey
½ cup sugar
2 cups or more flour
12 teaspoon powdered ginger
½ teaspoon cardamom seed ground to a powder
1/8 teaspoon cloves
Speck white pepper
Pinch salt
¼ to ½ teaspoon soda
1 tablespoon water
2 ounces blanched almonds chopped fine
Instructions
Cream the butter, sugar and honey and slowly add the dry ingredients, the water, last of all. Bake as for fruit cake.
Elizabeth D. K. Dooley, Puerto Rican Cook Book (1948)
