Best of both worlds

ANITA Tasker spent childhood Christmases in Vienna with her Austrian grandparents – savouring a very different experience from her English friends at school.

“We celebrated on Christmas Eve with a huge feast for all the family, then we’d open the presents,” recalls Anita, now 57.

Her grandmother ran a bakery in central Vienna, so the festive table was laden with the likes of stollen and gingerbread houses – which Anita loved helping to make.

Pride of place during the festivities was a huge Tannenbaum fir tree decorated with real candles, gingerbread biscuits and tangerines studded with cloves and secured with a single red ribbon.

Fish was always served for the Christmas Eve feast – which upset the young Anita. “My grandfather had a concrete pool in his garden where he kept fish. Each summer, he’d get a man to fish him a huge carp out of the Danube, then fatten it up in his garden pool in time for Christmas. In the summer, I’d get in the pool and stroke it. When he killed it, I was heartbroken.”

Anita remembers fondly other elements of her Austrian Christmases, particularly the markets, where everyone would sample the finest gingerbreads and glühwein. Beautiful gingerbread houses would be on display and strings of spiced fruits, wrapped with cinnamon sticks, would be on sale.

This Christmas, Anita will be bringing the flavour of her childhood to Ryedale, where she will be selling a collection of Continental treats from her bakery and tearoom, Pattacakes, at Welburn, near Castle Howard, in North Yorkshire.

Hand made mince pies, Yule logs and giant chocolate cakes covered in marzipan will be on sale alongside gingerbread houses and biscuits for decorating the tree. Mini fruit cakes wrapped in marzipan and chocolate and decorated like a Christmas pudding will also tempt customers, as will Anita’s authentic stollen.

This bread-cum-cake, filled with marzipan, is the Continental equivalent of the fruit cake we traditionally eat at Christmas, explains Anita.

It has a long history, she added, dating back to the 15th Century. “Originally, stollen came from Dresden, and it signified the swaddling of baby Jesus – the marzipan representing the baby. Over time, it has become sweeter and sweeter and it is something that is eaten over the Christmas period.”

ANITA opened Pattacakes in May, after spending several years selling her wares at farmers’ markets across the region.

She learned the art of cake-making and patisserie as a child from watching her grandmother, who had people lining up outside her bakery every day to buy her pastries and strudel.

“I was shipped out in the holidays and was either at the kitchen sink or doing some menial task. I was used as an unpaid slave, but little did I know that I would absorb it all and grow to love it,” she remembers.

Pattacakes is rapidly gaining a reputation as selling some of the finest cakes and breads in the region – all made on the premises by Anita and her colleague Anita Brown.

Firm favourites include vanilla slices, meringue roulade, New York-style baked cheesecake, Battenberg and frangipane as well as carrot cake, coffee and walnut or chocolate gateau.

Bestsellers include brownies, flapjacks and caramel shortbread.

A snack and lunch menu is also available, as is a range of fine Italian coffee.

Also on sale are pasties and takeaway sandwiches and milk, cheese and hams from local producers, as well as other staples such as pasta, tea and jams.

In opening Pattacakes, Anita revived Welburn’s one and only village shop – and bucked a national trend that has seen local shops fold at a staggering rate.

Anita is dedicated to selling the best of local produce in the shop – at decent prices. “We want to support local artisans and sell local produce to local people without the huge mark-up,” she says. “A lot of people don’t know what we make in Yorkshire.

We sell local butter, milk, cheese and eggs, as well as flour milled in the Wolds.”

With her Continental roots and her passion for quality Yorkshire fare, Anita is serving up the best of both worlds.

■ Pattacakes, Main Street, Welburn, YO60 7DX. Telephone: 01653- 618352. Open: Monday to Friday 10am-5pm, weekends 10am-4pm.

GINGERBREAD BISCUITS

175g plain flour

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch salt

2 tsp mixed spice

65g unsalted butter cut into pieces

75g caster sugar

2 tbspn golden syrup

1 egg yolk, beaten

Method:

Sift together flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices

Rub butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs, add sugar, syrup and egg yolk and mix to a firm dough

Leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour wrapped in clingfilm or a plastic bag

Your dough is now ready to roll out.

Now is a good time to turn on your oven to have it nice and hot ready for your biscuits: 350/180 electricity or Gas 4

Try not to roll out too thinly, otherwise you may find your biscuit shapes difficult to manage

I roll out to about the thickness of two pound coins put together. If the dough is a little sticky, flour your hands and the work surface before you roll out

When you have cut your shapes, lay them on your baking sheet so they are not touching, as they grow a little in the hot oven.

They will take approximately 12-15 minutes to bake.

When golden, take them out of the oven and carefully lift them on to a cooling rack to harden. Be very gentle with them as they are still soft at this stage. When completely cold they are ready for icing.

Icing:

1 tbspn lightly beaten egg white

1 tsp lemon juice

3-4 oz icing sugar, sifted so there are no lumps

Mix all ingredients until you have a nice icing and either brush or pour over your biscuits. Leave to dry then store in an airtight tin.

Anita Tasker