It’s no secret that baking confections, cookies, and fruit cakes have long been part of feminine customs surrounding the winter holidays. But one beautiful baking tradition is now almost entirely forgotten, and it served as the inspiration for this fruity, dense Mother’s Night Honey Cake. While it may be a bit rustic, I tried to recreate what I imagined might have been a typical cake served on this ancient holiday, with the foods, nuts, and herbs available at the time.

While we know it today as Christmas Eve, Mother’s Night was once dedicated to a group of feminine divinities. Their shrines, votive stones, and altars have been found as far as Scotland, Spain and Portugal, Germania, Gaul, and Northern Italy – although in Scandinavia it may have been called  Dísablót, the festival of the Disir, the tribal soul-mothers. Across Anglo-Saxon countries, from the 1st to 6th century, this holy night of Modrenacht honored both the ancestral mothers of the clans and the great mothers of the rivers, mountains, and lands.

Though traditions differ regionally, Mother’s Night generally revolved around leaving offerings, making prayers, giving thanks, topping a Modrenacht Tree with a star or light, gift-giving, feasting, and drinking. Plenty of magical fruit and honey cakes were blessed, offered, and eaten – ensuring fecundity and fruitfulness in the coming New Year!

While much about these goddesses remains a mystery, there are clues about their shared aspects and functions. They are often depicted with bowls of fruit, loaves of bread, and coins: the provision of nourishment, wealth, “plenty”, and possibly offerings given to these goddesses as well as blessings received from them.”

Altars and shrines of the Mothers or Matrons are often located near rivers, mountains, sacred springs, and trees. (see this link for more info)  Often depicted in a group of three, holding babies, and baskets of fruit and grain, they were associated with the fertility of nature. In his account of the pagan calendar in 725 AD, the monk Bede, tells us that on Christmas Eve ” the very night that is sacrosanct to us, these people call Modranect, that is, the mothers’ night, a name bestowed, I suspect, on account of the ceremonies which they performed while watching this night through.”

Bede leaves few details about what took place during these ceremonies, but modern pagan references (and here) indicate Mother’s Night traditionally kicked off the pagan celebrations of Yule – which from Germany to Scandinavia was celebrated with an enormous banquet featuring boar, goose and fish, nettle soup, mushroom dumplings, cheese pies, eggnog, mead – and plenty of honey cakes. That cakes should be baked in honor of the Mothers is no surprise. Honey cakes are one of our oldest ceremonial foods, baked in honor of female divinities and fertility goddesses on festivals and sacred holidays (holy days) around the world.

Early Christian women baked honey cakes in honor of Mary, and from Judah, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, women baked honey in cakes in tribute to Asherah, Ishtar, Artemis and Demeter, and many others, such as the Norse Goddess Freya and the Celtic goddess Brighid. These cakes were regarded as magical, bringing blessings of fertility, abundance, and good tidings for the new year.

Today their many descendants are still with us. Jewish honey cake is eaten on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, in hopes of ensuring a sweet New Year, the Yule log cake served traditionally in France brings good fortune, in Italy, the Panettone was given as presents to friends – and it was meant to be kept in the house to ensure good luck until the following Christmas! The English word “cookie” is derived from the Dutch word “koekie” meaning little cake. These were also given for good fortune and today cookies such as the Pfeffernüsse, Lebkuchen, and Springerle are still given as good luck tokens and are fashioned in the shapes of evergreen trees, stars, sun, and animals (symbols sacred to the fertility goddesses of old). German cookies made in the shape of horns or a crescent (also an ancient symbol of the Goddess) are heaped on plates for the Christmas Eve supper to ensure a bounteous new year.

So inspired by all these magical baking traditions. I decided to try my hand at what might have been a typical cake served by foremothers on “Mother’s Night”.  The methods were likely very simple: flour and honey were mixed and then the mixture would sit until naturally produced yeasts caused it to rise. Also, the eastern spices like ginger, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg we’ve come to associate with the fruit and spice cakes of Christmas were not commonly available before the Middle Ages either. So, these Mother Night cakes were likely made with honey, local dried fruit, nuts, forest roots, and herbs.

While a thousand flavor permutations were possible, I narrowed down a selection of ingredients that would have been readily available to my European ancestors at the time, such as stoneground rye flour, dark clover honey, hazelnuts, dried apples, cranberries, and mint.

And while the cake is “rustic” I don’t mind. I wouldn’t serve it to wow guests and family as the perfect holiday fruitcake – but it is my way of remembering the many women who passed the traditions of sacred baking from generation to generation so that they still grace our holiday tables. To them I give thanks.

I realize it may have no actual similarity to the actual cakes of Mother’s Night, but I nonetheless offer it up to all the forgotten mothers and nature goddesses of old. May their blessings shine upon all of us this season and throughout the coming new year. Blessings to all on this the night of Modranicht.

Hail to the Mothers!

Mother’s Night Cranberry Peppermint Honey Cake

Ingredients

• Approx. 2 & 1/2 cups of spelt flour or wholewheat.
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 2/3 cup of honey (a little extra for drizzling)
• 1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts (roughly chopped)
• 1/4 cup dried apples (chopped)
• 1 cup cranberries (lightly chopped)
• 1/4 cup of melted butter
• 5-6 sprigs of chopped mint or spearmint ( you can also use dried – approx. 1 crumbled ounce)

Directions

• Combine flour and honey in a large bowl, and mix well.
•  Add the rest of your ingredients into the batter and stir briskly, making sure it is well-blended.
• Pour dough into a dusted and greased baking pan ( a round tin or bundt pan is nice.)
• Bake in a preheated oven at 325 F for approximately 40 min or until toothpick comes out clean.

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