Spirit of Christmas: Day 1

Let me first begin with Happy Thanksgiving to all!!! And to all a tummy-ache free night!!!

Like I mentioned before, for the next 30 days, I am going to post about a Christmas tradition that I have enjoyed, or those that I love have enjoyed. So to start off the season, I will mention my favorite of all of my family's Christmas traditions.

Jesus' Birthday Cake

source

Growing up, my family loved to make homemade hard candy. My dad was in charge of melting the sugar and checking the temperature. We just had the all important job of picking the flavors and cutting the candy. My favorite taste of the candy was always Wintergreen, but the way the Anise made the whole house smell delicious for days was really fun also. For those of you who have not made hard candy before, here are the basics. You follow this recipe choosing flavors and colors that match well. When the candy is cooked, you pour it out over a buttered, cold marble slab. My dad would then fold it until it became firm. Then he would cut manageable ridiculously hot pieces and toss them to my mom and sisters and myself on a pan covered in powdered sugar. It was our job to cut the candy with scissors into suckable sweets and roll them in the powdered sugar. Rather than throwing out the used powdered sugar, my mom would save it in a bag for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve my mom would bake up the most delicious white cake. Then using the saved powered sugar with extra candy bits, she made pure white frosting. Then as a family we would gather around and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and enjoy the white and pure cake celebrating the purity of our Savior.

This year we probably won't be making the hard-candy, but a white Birthday Cake will be enjoyed on December 24th.

Look forward to tomorrow with Christmas Books.