“When I was growing up, which was after the war, food was generally in short supply,” Angela said. “There had been rationing, and I lived in the country, so my mother cooked almost everything from scratch.”

“I learned how to preserve food, I learned how to bake, I learned how to cook —I thought those things were very normal, that everybody did that.”

This kind of self-sufficient cooking has stayed with Angela throughout her life. “When I first got married, we didn’t have any money either,” she recalled. “So I also made everything from scratch, bottled things, made jams, made pickles, all those sorts of things. 

She paused. "And I've continued to do so. I don’t do it as much now as I used to, but I still make preserves and jams and pickles and fruitcakes every Christmas and put them in hampers to give to my friends.”

Angela’s Christmas cake is legendary, the kind of traditional treat that simply cannot be passed over during the holidays. 

“There’s a fight over it, usually,” she said seriously.

Using her mother’s recipe, she bakes three or four fruitcakes per year, plus a number of smaller ones to give away. 

“There’s never been a year when I haven’t made one,” she asserted firmly. “But I never bake them just for myself.”

“When the children were at home, we would cut the cake after midnight mass on Christmas day and have a slice at one in the morning,” she recounted. That was their tradition, one that Angela herself had participated in ever since she was small. 

Because the cakes last a long time—certainly more than six months, Angela assures me—they have often been used at birthdays, christenings, and even weddings. 

In fact, when we talked, Angela was a few days out from embarking on an Easter camping trip with some family members. 

“I’m going to bring the remaining half of the fruitcake to share it with them,” she says.

“They’re delighted.”