Parsons Bookshop Auckland - Cake for Christmas
From Helen Parsons

Customers remember the cake I made to celebrate our 25th Birthday in 2000.
I now send the recipe to you with our wishes that you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year festive season.
The story behind the cake is that it is a recipe from the famous Eliza’s Coffee Shop in Wellington. One of my sisters, Alice Pugh worked there during her university years.
Alice later moved to Italy and was co-director of The Roman Cooking School in Anguillara-Sabazia. Right on the lake side, one hour north of Rome.
She and two more of my sisters (Gwyn Bright & Bronwen Pugh) own the very fine Deli Aro in Aro Street, Wellington. www.deliaro.co.nz

However, here is the recipe……….
Fruit Cake

18-25 pitted prunes – sprinkle with brandy or whiskey and stand overnight.
8oz butter; 8oz sugar; 5 eggs; 10oz flour; 1 tsp baking powder; 1 ½ lbs dried fruit; 2 oz lemon peel; 2 oz ground almonds; 1 oz icing sugar; almond paste (as below) whole blanched almonds.
Line a 9 inch cake tin well.
Cream butter and sugar, and add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition.
Add flour and baking powder. Mix in the dried fruit and lemon peel. I use light coloured fruit – sultanas, ginger, candied pineapple or papaya, apricots.
Put half of the cake mixture into the tin. Layer the prunes, then the ground almonds mixed with the icing sugar on top. Cover that layer with the rest of the cake mixture.
Cook in a low oven 300-325 for about 2 ½ hours.
Then cover the top of the cake with real almond paste and decorate with whole blanched almonds.
Return the cake to the oven until the almonds are browned.
Almond Paste – 8 oz ground almonds; 4 oz castor sugar; 4 oz sieved icing sugar; beaten egg.
Mix the first three ingredients to a stiff paste with the beaten egg.

And thinking of family at Christmas time…….

In October this year I visited one of our sons Ben Parsons who is a gallerist at Karsten Schubert Gallery in Golden Square, London.
Ridinghouse is the publishing imprint of Karsten Schubert. We stock the Ridinghouse publications. A selection:-
Patio and Pavilion; The Place of Sculpture in Modern Architecture by Penelope Curtis $99.95.
David Ireland; Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings by Kenneth Baker $49.95.
Bridget Riley Circles: Colour Structure Studies 1970-1971 $49.95.
Bridget Riley: Berlin Catalogue 2007 by Robert Kudielka $69.95.
The Curator’s Egg; The evolution of the museum concept from the French Revolution to the present day.
First published in 2000, this 2009 3rd edition has a new epilogue. $59.95.

Ben and I lunched with Roger’s cousin Robert Baldock, Managing Director of Yale University Press, London.
Two recent very fine Yale art titles:-

Marcel Duchamp: Etant Donnes by Michael E Taylor with essays by Andrew Lins, Melissa S Meighan
HB $195.00
Cezanne and American Modernism by Gail Stavitsky & Katherine Rothkopf with essays by Ellen Handy, Jill Anderson Kyle, Mary Tompkins Lewis, Jerry N Smith, Jayne S Warman.
HB $165.00

written and sent by Helen Parsons,
Parsons Bookshop Auckland
26 Wellesley Street East
Auckland 1010
New Zealand

books@parsons.co.nz
www.parsons.co.nz
www.artprecinct.co.nz