Pudding memories

My maternal grandparents were German, so perhaps not surprisingly our family Christmas traditions were conducted along German lines. On  Nikolaustag, celebrated on 6 December, we were given some little gifts. These appeared miraculously in a pair of your shoes, which you’d left outside your door on going to bed the night before. Naughty children were told that their shoes would contain only a lump of coal. We opened our larger presents on Christmas Eve, Weihnachtsabend, not on Christmas Day.

The meal we ate on Christmas Eve after attending a Christmas Eve carol service and opening presents, was usually cold but had taken on an Australian twist. We would have smoked salmon, cold turkey, ham, and salads. These days we also have prawns. We finished the meal with a pudding, which was definitely an Australian rather than a German tradition.

I don’t remember my grandmother cooking the pudding but I do remember her other Christmas cooking including pfefferkuchen, s-kuchen and stollen. There was lots of Christmas food throughout the month of December. 

When serving the pudding on Christmas Eve I do remember that once my grandmother was so liberal with the brandy for the flambé that it seemed the blue flames would never stop. One year she made an ice-cream pudding. I’m not sure whether this was quite properly German or even Australian, we only ever had this once.

I do like rich fruit-and-suet pudding served with brandy butter. In 1985, the year after I was married, I took part in a Christmas-cooking course presented by an English Cordon Bleu instructor. One of the dishes she demonstrated was a Christmas pudding made with suet, and I’ve been making it every Christmas since, for thirty-five years.

Advertising (1985, September 22). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 12. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128256902 The teacher was Julia Wilkins who had given an interview to The Canberra Times in September: The Good Times – Cordon bleu chef loves teaching (1985, September 19). The Canberra Times, p. 8 (a supplement to The Canberra Times). Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128256035

This afternoon my son Peter and I made this year’s pudding, two actually. We had soaked the dried fruit in brandy for a week first.

The recipe is very reliable and the puddings are always delicious.  

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  grating nutmeg

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  mix

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  into pudding basin

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  cover with greaseproof paper

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  boil

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  the recipe sheet handed out in 1985 and used every year since

2020 pudding

2005 pudding with a summer pudding as well

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  2003 flaming pudding

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  2003 flames

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  2006 pudding

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  2010 flaming pudding

Puddings of the past, the blue flames are tricky to photograph

The Advent Angel Orchestra

 

I asked my mother to write about the angels that she displays each Christmas.

The Advent Angel Orchestra

Beginning in late November or early December, the weeks before Christmas are the season of Advent. Though the major display is the tree at Christmas, it is traditional in Germany for candles to be placed on a wreath, with a new one lit on each of the four Sundays. They are accompanied by suitable decorations, and families gather for afternoon coffee and cake.

Images of angels are one form of decoration for Advent, and Wendt and Kuhn of the Erzgebirge in Saxony have been making models for just over a hundred years; their green wings, each with eleven white dots, are a special and unifying feature. When Christa was born in 1939 her family already had an orchestra of angels, and the musicians and their conductor were set out each year.

Advent display ca.1937, probably at the house of Christa’s aunt Helene Manock

When Christa came to Australia with her parents Hans and Charlotte in 1950 they brought a small group of the angels with them – including three trumpeters and a triangle-player – and the family continued to celebrate Advent in the new country.

Members of the original Boltz orchestra, Christmas 2017

From 1989, however, with the reunification, Christa and Rafe have been able to travel more easily to the east – the old DDR [German Democratic Republic], and the orchestra has grown considerably. The originals, now eighty years old, still perform, but they have been joined by candle- and lantern-bearers, there are new stringed instruments – including harps and a lute – while the percussionists have gongs and a tambourine and the brass has a trombone, a French horn and a small tuba. There are also an accordion player and a guitarist, and a stronger cohort of singers – three of them supported by bluebirds.

The fuller orchestra, Christmas 2017

Recruitment continues.