Some memories never leave you. And as Hogmanay 2016 approaches, Ellis Armstrong, 71, is transported back to the 1950s when a black bun would be placed ceremonially on the sideboard next to a bottle of whisky ready to welcome First Footers.
“Back in the old days, these were ritual objects that had to be there. You didn’t touch them yourself and they had to be kept for visitors,” Ellis recalls.
“Although he was a good cook, my father didn’t make the black bun – he just bought one and then sat it on a plate on the sideboard.
“Once the visitors had been, the bun was cut up and we’d go first-footing with a lump of coal in one hand and a piece of bun in the other – the cake was hardly any more appetising than the coal.”
Ellis, a retired librarian, has inherited his father’s passion for cooking and makes most of the meals for wife Kate and son Michael.
“In those days it was quite unusual for the man to do the cooking and Dad was quite avant garde and daring for the time – he’d make dishes like chilli con carne and spaghetti bolognese which were considered very exotic,” he says.
When Ellis’s children were small, Kate was heavily involved with the pre-school playgroups and when she was away, Ellis would look after their children and cook for them.
“I’d make them Scotch pies and croissants while they made mud pies in the garden,” he chuckles.
Today he specialises particularly in curries and has an impressive array of spices. While he doesn’t tend to make much in the way of sweet dishes, he always makes a giant black bun.
“About 15 years ago, Kate said: ‘Why don’t you make a black bun?’ And I thought: ‘Why don’t I?’” he says.
Since then it’s become an annual ritual, with preparations beginning in November.
For anyone who doesn’t know, black bun is a dense fruit cake, completely covered in a thick pastry. Often given as a First Foot gift, it symbolises the hope that the recipient won’t go hungry in the year ahead.
Ellis adapts a recipe in A Taste of Scotland by Irish cookery writer Theodora Fitzgibbon.
“It’s a fairly haphazard mixture the way I do it but the most important thing is to make sure the relative amounts of pastry and fruit are right and once you’ve done that you can modify the recipe,” he explains.
“I experiment a bit with the spices. The original recipe just calls for allspice but because I do quite lot of Indian cookery, I have a range of spices that are dark and pungent, so I throw in green and black cardamom, cloves, aniseed, ginger and cinnamon.”
Ellis’s top tip is to ensure the mixture is nice and moist – and don’t hold back with the booze – this year, the black bun is generously laced with cointreau.
It takes him about an hour and a half to prepare and then a further three hours to cook in a slow oven. Once baked, he wraps it in foil until Hogmanay when he cuts the buns up into smaller pieces and distributes them to friends and relatives.
“My brother-in-law in Edinburgh always asks for some, and we have a friend who lives in France who misses two things about Scotland in particular – high pans (plain loaves) and black bun, so we always send her some too.
“We don’t have too many food traditions in Scotland so I really hope black bun doesn’t disappear completely in the future.”
A quick call to Fisher & Donaldson in Dundee’s Whitehall Street confirms that, for the present anyway, black bun is selling like hot cakes. “We sell it all year round,” says Lynnette Robertson, “but it’s very popular at this time of year and we sell a lot.
“Many people like to take it down to friends in England or even abroad.”
And why not have a go at making your own next year to keep the tradition alive?