Cake Expectations

When it comes to your annual Christmas fruit cake there should be zero compromise says Peter van Noord, who embarked on a quest to discover the secret recipe for the the best one he’d ever tasted

- Peter Van Noord

My father was a fussy eater, and for that reason I grew up with either beef or chicken on the dinner table, accompanied by potatoes and rice, with at least one green and one yellow vegetable. This obviously drove my mother insane, because how many variations on this theme can there possibly be?

On the sweet side, however, things were a lot more varied because my father has a sweet tooth like none other. Cadbury’s plain chocolate. Chocolate cake. Chocolate mousse. Tipsy tart. Vanilla cake. You name it. He would get up at night to eat a slice of bread spread with a thick layer of butter with an even thicker layer of sugar sprinkled over it.

And, yes, he loved fruit cake.

Every year my mother would see to it that we had fruit cake in the house for Christmas. Towards the end of November she would either bake one herself – using only the best ingredients – or, if time was an issue, she would order it from either Tannie Bessie or Tannie Baby, or whoever had the best reputation in town at the time. No skimping was allowed, and whoever baked the cake knew she would lose a good client if she dared to disappoint Isabel van Noord.