This did not start with me. I remember my mother oiling brown paper bags to line Grandma’s cake tins that were only ever used for Christmas cake. I remember my parents diligently drizzling brandy over the cakes stored in the cold cellar once a week in the month leading up to Christmas. In all those years that my mother made those cakes for my dad, I never had a piece. They seemed strange and full of lumpy fruit and nuts that I avoided as a child. Mom drifted away from making Christmas cake sometime in my teenage years. She still […]