Swallows and Amazons Christmas cakes

Traditionally, this is the time of year when families stir the Christmas pudding. We have been busy making literary cakes:

Miranda Gore Brown brought her version of Mrs Dixon’s tradtitional fruit cake to The Arthur Ransome Society pirate feast, along with her book Bake Me A Cake As Fast As You Can, which has ideas on how to ice festive cakes. She has more ideas for Christmas baking here

A cake was baked to celebrate the launch of Julian Lovelock’s book ‘Swallows, Amazons and Coots‘ with a forward by Sophie Neville.

This cake celebrates Arthur Ransome’s book ‘Great Northern?’ set on the Isle of Lewis where filming took place for the DVD ‘Encountering the Ransomes’ that has recently been released by The Arthur Ransome Society

We would love to see your ideas for literary recipes or decorations. Here are a few more photos to inspire you:

~Winner of The Susan Prize 2017~

It was my privilege to award The Susan Prize 2017 to the girls who baked this cake. It proved they must have loved Arthur Ransome’s book Winter Holiday. The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are obviously contemplating whether or not to skate on the tarn that I understand was made by melting sweets and ‘took absolutely ages.’ You can see two of the characters approaching the ice.

Dorothea, the aspiring novelist, is skating around this cake, which tasted so delicious it almost transported me into Mrs Dixon’s kitchen on the banks of Coniston Water.

~Winner of the Crumbly Creations 2017~

A number of crumbly creations, using biscuits and chocolate, gave us a good idea of what the igloo in Winter Holiday must have looked like, while this birthday cake, inspired by the Puffin cover of Swallows and Amazons was much appreciated by members of The Arthur Ransome Group.

Detail of a Swallows and Amazons cake based on the Puffin cover

Swallowy dodgers with slices of cake obviously claimed by Amazon pirates were on offer at Lakeland Arts to accompany their Swallows and Amazons exhibition earlier in the year:

and, “There was an enormous gooseberry tart.” We’ve had a recipe published in Signals:

You can see other examples of Swallows and Amazons cakes as well as ideas for parties and presents here.

We would love to see your photographs of any cakes inspired by Arthur Ransome’s books. It would be great to be able to add them to this post. Please send Jpeg photos to sophie@sophieneville.co.uk

Elizabeth Rondthaler Jolley sent this photo from America:

Adam Quinan has written from Canada sending this picture: