Traditional Christmas Cake bearing different names in different regions of the country (Christmas Cake, Jesus’ Diapers, Christmas’s Eve Cake), in our region-Moldavia, especially in Neamţ county is called Cake with Linseed. This cake is made from unleavened dough, unlike ritual baked Christmases pastry (Romanian braids, sweet breads, triangular dumplings). Preparing the Cake with Linseed is a very important and expected moment for the families that kept the tradition of consuming this concoction, especially appreciated by people who have respected the austerity of the Christmas fast, all the ingredients being of post/fast.

A few days before Christmas Eve, the sheets made only with water, salt and flour are baked. The very thin sheets are baked carefully. For a cake we need 25 thin sheets, which are softened in water sweetened with honey, or in water sweetened with sugar. Traditionally, in Christmas Eve’ Day they are filled with linseed, a composition made up of crushed and boiled hemp seeds. Who doesn’t have hemp (because is no longer cultivated) uses nuts.

We use this Cake with Linseed to encounter the priest that announces the birth of Jesus, we share it with other people or we consume it, the day before Christmas.

Compared to other fine cakes, this cake is sweet crude, but its significance, once, was meeting with joy the infant Jesus.