From an early age, I understood the cycle of life in a practical, down-to-earth way that probably not one youngster in a thousand does today. Our Christmas food, as was the case throughout the year, came from what we planted, cultivated, fed, harvested, preserved, or killed. I’m convinced it meant more to us as a result.

I might also note that thanks to the kitchen magic of Grandma Minnie, Momma, and a passel of aunts, it was incredibly delicious. Yuletide brought all sorts of wonder, culinary and otherwise, including memorable gifts, special moments of various kinds, the joys of caroling, and the gathering of greenery and decorations for what was a truly natural Christmas.

Looking back, with the possible exception of my first gun, which was a treasured tool for putting meat on the table, nothing enchants me in quite the same way that food memories do. When someone mentions “comfort food” to me, I immediately think of foodstuffs connected with Yuletides of my youth.

Those thoughts embrace a bountiful and diverse array of dishes. Some were linked closely to the season while others were enjoyed throughout the year. Offerings such as roast chickens from Grandpa’s flock, giblet gravy, dressing featuring cornbread and chestnuts, slices of pink country ham so thin light shown through, leather britches beans, “fruit” consisting of canned apples from our orchard, numerous kinds of pickles, turnip greens, creamed corn, and much more served as mainstays of the holiday menu year after year. But it was desserts, varied and incredibly abundant, that meant the most to a greedy-gut boy who truly savored his sweets. For that matter, after the passage of a lot of decades and, as Grandpa put it, countless times of “pulling up a chair to take nourishment,” they still do.

Along with predictable items such as sugar, flour, and spices, three distinctly different ingredients figured prominently in most of our Yuletide desserts — black walnuts, apples in various forms, and pumpkin. We grew the latter two and harvested the walnuts from nature’s abundant offerings, so in effect all the different flavors of our seasonal desserts had special meaning. They came, or at least essential ingredients did, not from grocery store shelves but from our garden, orchard, or nearby fields and woodlands.

Looking back, I think the sweets were a bit sweeter and the memories a bit more meaningful because we were enjoying foodstuffs from the land and from our hands. After all, we spent pretty much the entire year tending our small but highly productive apple orchard. Our hearts, souls, and yes, sweat of our brows, went into those pies, mule ears or fried pies, stack cakes, and — the family favorite — applesauce cake.

Much the same held true, in terms of both the amount of labor and steps involved, for walnuts, but pumpkins were, comparatively speaking, a cinch. They were normally planted amidst corn patches, along with runner beans, in the traditional “three sisters” approach early settlers learned from Native Americans. We would harvest the pumpkins in the fall, feeding inferior or damaged ones to the hogs while carefully storing and protecting the better ones until it came time to make pies and pumpkin bread.

The recipes that follow are but a sampling of what was traditional Christmas dessert.

Orange Slice Cake

I have no idea when the waxy, sugar crystal coated candy known as orange slices first came on the market, but it was available loose in jars, like peppermint sticks and a lot of other candy, from my earliest memories. At some point around 1950, someone in the family, quite possibly my Aunt Emma, since I always associate this dessert specifically with her, obtained or developed a recipe for a rich cake that incorporated orange slices into what was almost a fruit cake. Since it contained plenty of black walnuts, an ingredient almost sure to provide any dessert with a doctoral degree in deliciousness, it was a huge hit with me.

1 cup butter
6 small, 5 medium, or 4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup buttermilk
3 brimming cups all-purpose flour
1 pound dates or yellow raisins, chopped
1 pound candy orange slices, chopped
2 cups black walnut meats
1 can flaked coconut or the equivalent in freshly grated coconut (the latter makes for a moister cake)
1 cup fresh orange juice
2 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter and granular sugar until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk and add to creamed mixture. Place flour in large bowl and add dates, raisins, orange slices, and walnuts. Stir sufficiently to coat each piece.

Add flour mixture and coconut to creamed mixture. This makes stiff dough that should be mixed with your hands (butter your hands or use rubberized cook’s gloves to avoid the batter sticking to your hands). Put in a greased and floured tube pan. Bake at 250 F for 2½ to 3 hours.

Combine orange juice and powdered sugar and pour over hot cake as a topping to make it moister. Allow to cool before serving.

Black Walnut Cake

Beulah Suddreth was a wonderful neighbor, cherished friend, and sometime house aide to my parents in their later years. She was one of those rare people with that quality where just being around her lifted your spirits. The recipe below likely isn’t exactly the one she used. When Beulah died, I had hoped to obtain her recipe from family members, but somehow it never happened. This recipe is close though, and it makes a mighty fine cake. As is ever the case, and at least in my family, black walnuts were always something to whet appetites for whatever treat might be involved.

½ cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
3 egg yolks, beaten
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup black walnuts, chopped fine
3 egg whites, beaten

Cream butter; add sugar and beat until smooth. Add beaten egg yolks and mix well. Combine dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture, alternately with milk. Add vanilla and walnuts and mix well. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in a greased tube pan at 350 F for 45 minutes, or until done.

Butter Frosting
The black walnut cake recipe above tends a bit toward dryness, but that can be resolved with a simple butter frosting. Here’s one Momma made and used on various types of cakes.

1 stick butter, melted
1 (16-ounce) box powdered sugar
Half-and-half or whole milk
¼ to ½ cup black walnuts, finely chopped

Blend melted butter and powdered sugar. Add enough half-and-half to reach desired consistency. Fold in walnuts and frost cooled cake — be sure cake is fully cooled before adding the frosting.

Applesauce Cake

Momma always made her applesauce cakes for Christmas during the Thanksgiving holiday. The ensuing month or so would see them stored in a cool area, usually the unheated downstairs bedroom, and periodically anointed with a few tablespoons of apple cider or a dollop of wine to keep the cakes moist. This combination of aging and moisturizing produced a cake which was, by the time Christmas rolled around and it was sliced, soaked through and through with goodness. A newly cut slice literally glistened from moisture, and the taste was such that it ranks, second only to a stack cake, as my all-time favorite dessert.

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 cups flour
⅓ cup cocoa
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons allspice
2 cups raisins
3 cups applesauce
2 cups black walnut meats
2 teaspoons vanilla
Pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add applesauce and remaining ingredients, a small amount at a time. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour at 350 F. Check with toothpick to see if cake is done (toothpick will come out dry).

Black Walnut Bars

Throughout the Christmas season there would be, in addition to cakes aplenty, various types of cookies at our house and that of my grandparents. Stored in round tins that had once held things like commercial fruit cakes, they were available for a quick snack most any time. At this season of the year, I don’t even recall the normal strictures such as “you’ll ruin your appetite.” As was true of about anything containing black walnuts, I loved these bars.

Crust

½ cup butter
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 cup flour

Cream butter and brown sugar. Slowly add flour and mix until crumbly. Pat into a 7- by 11-inch baking dish. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes at 350 F until golden brown.

Filling

1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1½ cups shredded coconut
1 cup black walnuts, chopped

Combine brown sugar, eggs, salt, and vanilla. In separate bowl, add flour and baking powder to coconut and walnuts; blend into egg mixture and pour over baked crust. Return to oven and bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes or until done. Cut into bars and place on wire racks to cool.

Pumpkin Pie

This traditional holiday dish was a fixture in my family. We grew our own pumpkins as well as cushaws, a form of winter squash; and the “meat” from the latter will also work in this recipe.

1 cup stewed pumpkin
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
Pastry

Add the sugar and seasonings to the pumpkin and mix well. Then add the slightly beaten eggs and the milk. Lastly, stir in the melted butter. Turn into a pie plate lined with pastry and bake in a 425 F oven for 5 minutes. Then lower the heat to 350 F and bake until the filling is set. The pie should be allowed to cool and “set” prior to slicing and serving.

Pumpkin Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting

This recipe requires considerable effort, but rest assured the end result is worth the labor. Moist, tasty, and redolent of all fall’s comforting flavors, it will be a hit even with folks who insist they don’t like pumpkin.

2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup canola oil
4 large eggs
2 cups of pumpkin (if possible, use the real McCoy, not pumpkin pie filling from a store-bought can)
2 teaspoons baking powder
Large pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 F and grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Form a hollow in the center of these dry ingredients and into it pour the oil and eggs. Whisk this together and then add the pumpkin, stirring until thoroughly mixed. Pour into cake pans and bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes away from the center clean. Let the baked cakes cool on rack for 10 minutes and then, with the aid of a spatula if needed, slip around the edges of the pans and remove the cakes. Let set for an hour.

When this period is over, add cream cheese icing or, if you prefer, caramel icing, using your favorite recipe for either one. Yet another alternative is to serve it without icing using applesauce, whipped cream, or even warmed sorghum syrup as an “adornment.” If desired (and I always desire), sprinkle black walnut meats atop the cake and press some into the side.

Jim Casada is a full-time freelance writer who is the author or editor of dozens of books. Many of those deal with traditional folkways and cooking. Among his most recent efforts is the multi-award winning Fishing For Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir.