Continuing our Family Christmas Tradition

by Monique Jackson-Reynolds

December is Remembrance Month at The Worthy Educator!

My favourite holiday memory is going through the fruit cake making process with my aunt in the country side. Since we work and live in the city in Jamaica, my husband and children and I would look forward to spending the Christmas holidays in the rural hills of St. Mary with my aunt, uncle and cousin. 

Fruit cake is a traditional celebratory dessert that Jamaican families enjoy baking together. The traditional receipt is passed down from generation to generation. The younger generation help to do the preparations ad watch as the older folks complete the more intricate parts of the process. 

I would bring the ingredients for my aunt to make a set of cakes for my family to bring back to the city. We would stay up all night rubbing the butter and sugar together with wooden spoons. We would take turns to rub out the sugar because we had no electric mixer at that time. We would tell stories that we made up or laugh until we cried while remembering some funny moments from when we were growing up or when my and  mother were children. 

My little ones would crack the eggs, take out any bits of egg shells. Aunty V would soak blended raisins and prunes  in rum and red wine months before the Christmas holidays. This fermented mixture would be added to give the fruit cake its unique texture and delicious flavour. After the complete mixture is poured out into the baking tins, the little ones would pass around

the left over mixture in the big bowl or basin and use their fingers scoop out the sweet mixture that smeared the sides.

Sometimes over a dozen cakes were made, the neighbours would send one of theirs over to us and we sent one over tho them. We would cut a quarter of one of the 9 inch cakes to give to our friends at church or work. We would also receive different cakes from family members and friends. 

No set of cakes tasted the same, so that made the season of ‘giving’ even more special for us. Some families added nuts to their cakes, others added grated coconut, some used honey instead of sugar, others used oats flour and some younger generations - including me :-) experimented with putting the batter in muffin tins for our little ones. 

My aunt has passed away but the legacy and the memories  remain. I have tired to do the entire process with my children, the taste is not exactly like my aunt’s cakes but sometimes a batch comes out extraordinary. We enjoy the priceless moments spent together and my children are building their own set of memories from this awesome tradition. 

Monique Jackson-Reynolds is a Technology Integration Literacy Specialist and a Lecturer of Language | Literacy | Literature at the Mico University College in Kingston, Jamaica. Her energy shines brightly in every room she graces, but never more than when she is making her Christmas fruit cakes with her family. You can learn more about this rich Jamaican tradition and share your own with Monique by reaching out to her through email here.