Spring has sprung! It’s time to get started on The Shady Baker’s Christmas cake

Aunty Jean was born Annie Jean Edson in 1925 in Broken Hill, New South Wales, and grew up on Stirling Vale station, west of Ivanhoe. As the eldest daughter in the family, Jean was taught by her mother to cook on the AGA in the homestead kitchen, from the age of seven.

In 1948 Jean married Alan Harris and lived her married life at Melton Grove station, also in the Ivanhoe district, where they raised their four children: Jock, Sandra, Margaret and Alison.

Jean was a founding member, and later a life member, of the Murulla Country Women’s Association (CWA) branch, established in 1962 and later part of the Mildura/Millewa group. Murulla is a First Nations word for ‘meeting place’. Jean and her fellow members worked tirelessly to raise funds for charities in Pooncarie and Mildura. The CWA created connections for women living remotely on the stations at a time when social outings were few and far between and female company was scarce. 

Jean kept her own mob of black sheep that had been cut out  of the main mob of Merino sheep, to prevent colour contamination in the wool clip. These rather lucky black sheep provided coloured wool for the spinners and weavers of the district.

She supplied the district with fruit cakes for every occasion, including weddings, anniversaries and birthdays. Jean baked my parents’ wedding cake. When planning any event, it went without saying that Jean would supply the cake. All of her cooking was done in her AGA stove that would run for 12 months of the year. No doubt the summer days would have been long and hot in her small yet well-organised station kitchen. Jean outsourced the decorating of her special-occasion cakes to trusted cake decorators she had connections with in Mildura. No doubt she kept them busy.  

Traditional plum puddings were another of her specialities. When I was a child the puddings seemed huge, hanging in their calico coverings in my grandmother’s dark station storeroom, waiting to be boiled up for the Christmas table. Jean supplied enormous puddings to the local Christmas tree celebrations at Darnick, where slices of pudding would be served with generous amounts of homemade custard.

Family members recall Jean arriving at the old community hall with a big tin esky that had a leather strap around it, just in case the lid fell off and the precious contents came adrift on the bumpy outback roads. It is only now that I fully appreciate the work and ingredients that went into these festive creations, not to mention the transportation and storage issues. 

I’ve made some small adjustments to the original recipe, to make it a little easier for the modern cook to follow. Sadly, Jean is no longer with us but the memories of her baking will stay in our community forever. I hope you might share a slice of this cake with your family this Christmas.