Kersttulband

The Christmas tulband did not enter my grandmother's second notebook as a showpiece. It entered in pencil, with one practical instruction underlined twice: vet de vorm goed in, grease the mould well. That tells you almost everything about Dutch celebration baking. We are perfectly willing to put a crown on the table, provided it releases cleanly and feeds twelve people with coffee.

The name already tells you why the cake looks the way it does. Tulband is the Dutch word for turban, borrowed through Europe's long fascination with Ottoman cloth and headwear; in the kitchen it became the name for the high fluted ring mould whose folds make a cake look wrapped rather than merely baked. It has cousins in the German Gugelhupf and Alsatian kouglof, but at Christmas in the Netherlands it comes home as kersttulband, a buttery coffee-table cake with raisins, currants, succade, and a snowfall of poedersuiker, powdered sugar.

But let me tell you a secret: the trick is not the decoration. The trick is air, patience, and a mercilessly greased mould. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, add the eggs slowly so the batter does not sulk, toss the fruit with flour so it stays suspended, and dust only when the cake is cool enough to keep its white crown.

Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple. Serve it in thick slices at the koffietafel, the coffee-and-cake table, where children pick at the raisins and adults pretend not to notice the second piece. History and cookery, they cannot be separated, but here the history sits quietly under the sugar, waiting for the knife.