Wax pears and apples are hand-molded, hand-painted; pull the latch string, and one side of the fruit opens wide like a door to show a miniature setting. One setting is a shining glory in gold paper portraying the Madonna and Child. A second pear shows the Christmas Angel blessing the gifts on the Christmas tree, a third apple carries the Christ Child with an apple in His hand. There are story-book scenes, Red Riding Hood meets the wolf, Snow White frolics with the dwarfs. These handmade waxen fruits came before the war—are now back unchanged, lovely as ever, the price about ＄2.50 boxed and Christmas-wrapped.
Shown with the wax fruit is the Christ Child in the manger. The Child is formed of wax and beautiful in each detail of figure. These are available in various sizes, ranging from ＄1 to ＄6.50.
The little shop holds everything for dressing a tree. Gay bags are filled with sweetmeats, shining red, blue, and yellow paper cornucopias wait to be stuffed with hard candies to hang from the green branches. There are candy canes in all sizes and barley sugar lollies. Back are the rings of solid chocolate covered with a sprinkle, those little candies, you know, called “hundreds of thousands.”
Hello! Christmas snappers and red flannel socks bulging with candy and miniature toys. The sock itself is decorated with animals cut from oilcloth. After-dinner mints are topped with wreaths, candles, holly bells, priced around 90 cents a dozen. Large decorated mints are made to sell for 25 cents apiece. The spun-glass boot, bell, chimney, and sleigh are for table favors or for a small gift. These are expensive, running from ＄1 to ＄1.25 apiece.
New York's Germantown, known as Yorkville, is gay again for the first time since the long war. When Yorkville gets itself dolled up for Christmas, it holds more joy for the eye and fancy than any other section of the big city. You can hear sleigh bells, almost, and the velvet beat of the reindeers' hoofs. We go to Emil Geiger, 206 East 86th Street, for tender gingerbread hearts, little ones the size of your hand, big ones a foot long. Christmas trees are snowed under white frosting for the hearts' decoration or maybe it's a cluster of musical bells, or a fat Santa with nose the hue of a holly berry. In the shop cases are displayed the freshly baked Lebkuchen, the marzipan sausage.
Gingerbread houses, trimmed with wee cakes, cookies, and candies, show elaborate skill in construction. Even a tiny house is beautiful to a detail, sugar icicles drip from the eaves, and candy-stick pillars hold up the small porches. Every house has its porch all gay as merry-go-round in pink, green, white, and brown.
This month Geiger's are baking the Baumkuchen—the Christmas cake king. Baumkuchen is a tree cake, baked on a revolving spindle before an open gas flame. This cake had its origin at the court of the Emperor Lucullus in old Roman times. A favorite wedding cake to this day in Germany and Austria, it is as much a part of Christmas eating as Pfeffernuesse and Lebkuchen.
This is no cake for a home baker to make. Special equipment is required in the form of a gas oven which provides a wall of flame back of the turning spit. The worker stands before the oven and dips a thin drizzle of the rich batter to the turning spindle which spreads and wraps it in a filmy veil.
Once, twice, the spindle revolves and the layer turns golden; another pouring of batter—and so the tree grows. Layer after layer is added, twenty to twenty-five filaments are baked on in this fashion until the cake measures about twelve inches through. Then the gas flame is extinguished, the spindle brought to rest, and the cake left overnight to cool and acquire firmness. Before removing from the spindle, the tree is brushed with an apricot glaze and then a white icing. Buy an entire tree and it will be decorated to order with macaroon strips and marzipan flowers. Cakes are made in sizes from 3 pounds up to 12 and are sold by mail, shipped to all parts of the country, price around ＄3 a pound.
To serve, set the tree upright and slice across, thin, thin! The cake is rich of butter and cream, but not overly sweet, which makes it a natural for serving with sherry and port.
Yorkville's marzipan headquarters is the Elk Candy Company, 240 East 86th Street. There the ground almond paste is molded into pears, apples, peaches, plums, all the fruits you can name and ditto for vegetables. Marzipan pigs, little pigs, mamma pigs, these for good luck. The chocolate kringles fill the window, ring- and heart-shaped.
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