What a team! Barbara and Bill Ralph at Wychwood Presbyterian Church. For years, they made the annual Christmas tea and bazaar their focus. Bill crafted wooden toys and bird boxes and Barbara painted them. Barbara also knitted. Together, they baked 20 fruit pies for bake sales. The Ralphs also plated the fancy sandwiches and delectable cookies, for the tea, and then manned the kitchen, making pot- after-pot of tea and coffee for the brisk trade in the tea “room.”
In summers the Ralphs enjoyed travelling around the province, collecting items for the White Elephant table. Years ago, they found a box of stained glass candle holders and, since then, these festive holders have decorated the tea tables at Christmas.
But the Barbara’s story starts long ago in England. Barbara was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, a fishing port, at the easternmost point of England. From childhood days, she recalls Sunday school picnics that featured strawberries and a scramble. “They would throw candy and nuts, on the grass, and all the kids scrambled after them. Today people would be horrified,” Barbara says, adding it was The Depression (1930s), so candy and strawberries, with cream, were special treats.
Barbara also remembers, at Christmas, eating Palace Cake, so called because it was a lavish confection with thick cream between four layers. “ The at Harvest Festival, they used to hang fishing nets around the church. The fishy smell was terrible, but we were happy. And, outside, there were always big ships’ wheels decorated with sheafs of wheat.”
Barbara and Bill married, in 1947, and left England, on a (former) Dutch troop ship, headed for Canada. Barbara has awful memories of the emigration trip. There were over 300 women and children in one “cabin.” They were a mix of British citizens and Displaced Persons (DPs) from the European refugee camps. There were no proper toilets, so they squatted behind a canvas sheet. The men were in separate quarters, below, in “steerage,” and no visiting was allowed. Barbara was pregnant and sea sick the whole journey. From Quebec City, she boarded a train for Toronto and survived on one ham sandwich. Bill, a sheet metal tradesman, soon found work, in Toronto, and Barbara worked in a corrugated paper plant.
Because Barbara was baptised an Anglican, the Ralphs first attended an Anglican church, but left when one minister turned out to be a drunk. The family “tried” Wychwood, another neighbourhood church, and stayed. Sadly, Bill died last year, after 66 years of marriage, and Barbara’s youngest son died, suddenly, at Christmas. But Barbara is thankful for all the good times, they had at Wychwood.
“There was a lot of joking, laughing, good fellowship and camaraderie. It was wunderbar,” she says.
However, Barbara laments the demise of the congregation at Wychwood. Recently, because there are so few members left, this inner-city church was sold to a condo developer.
Barbara offers this recipe for her favourite rich tea cake. She calls it Happy Cake “because it begs to be experimented with it and you change the flavours to suit yourself.”
HAPPY CAKE
Prepare a lightly greased loaf pan or two layer cake pans.
3 cups Cake flour
4 tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Salt
1 cup Butter or Shortening
2 cups White Sugar
6 Eggs
1 cup Milk
1 Tsp vanilla extract or maple or almond flavouring. You can also add cocoa or coconut.
METHOD
Cream butter until soft
Add sugar and beat until fluffy
Beat in eggs, one at a time
Add dry ingredients, alternating with milk
Add vanilla (or other flavouring)
Pour into pan(s). Bake loaf cake, at 325F, for 40 minutes. Bake layers, at 375F, for 25 minutes.
Frost as you like.
Christmas Variation
Prepare cupcake pans. Add dried peel and chopped dried cherries to the batter. Pour into cupcake tin. Bake at 350F, for 25 to 30 minutes. Frost and top, each cup cake, with a maraschino cherry.
