A fruitful effort

No Christmas celebration is complete without homemade wine, the traditional Christmas cake baked with nuts and fruits with a tinge of brandy and of course, plenty of traditional delicacies.

Homebakers in the city have already begun preparations for the Christmas cake. The first step is to soak the dry fruits and nuts in alcohol, red wine or any exotic syrup that one wishes to mix into the cake. The soaking is done either a month or a few weeks before the actual process of baking begins. 

Most homebakers stick to the traditional method of baking the Christmas cake. Some even use the recipe that has been handed down to them by their mothers and grandmothers.

Charmaine Saldanha is the third-generation of homebakers in her family and she follows the recipe passed down through generations. “My mother passed down the recipe to me and more than following the recipe, she insisted that I watch her closely when she made two to three batches of cake. Then she supervised the first few batches that I prepared so that I got the process right,” says Charmaine with a smile.

Charmaine begins shopping for her Christmas cake in advance. “I buy raisins, ginger, cherries, peel and cashew nuts from Avenue Road and soak the fruits for at least a month before I start baking. The richness in my cake comes from the quantity of butter that I put in. The soaked fruits and storage of the cake for a month before it goes out to people, gives it a lovely texture and a mature flavour,” she explains. She adds, “The ingredients that are used in the cake and the process of mixing and slow baking ensures that the cake has a shelf life of over a year.”

Most people start baking the Christmas cake in the first week of December and Ashwini Pai, another homebaker, puts her baking skills to good use during this time.

Every year during Christmas, Ashwini makes a rich plum cake which she distributes among family and friends. She begins the process of mixing the fruits much earlier. “The earlier you soak the fruits, the better the cakes turn out to be because that retains the moisture in the cake. Some people soak the fruits a year in advance,” she says. She carefully chooses the mix that goes into her cake which includes raisins, plums, tutti frutti, almonds, cashewnuts, candied orange peel, prunes and dates. “I bake my Christmas cake in the first week of December and add more rum to it after it is baked. This soaks in the blend,” adds Ashwini.

There are people like Tresa Francis, a lawyer turned homebaker, who uses innovative solvents to soak the fruits before she bakes the cake.

 “I sometimes use coffee liquor or red wine to soak the fruits. I don’t soak it in advance but do so only a few days before Christmas. I then slow-cook the contents until they turn soft and then mix it in the cake. I also use a tinge of chocolate which enhances the taste,” she says. Tresa says that she picked up the basics of baking from her mother who still bakes carrot and walnut cake during Christmas. “As children, we never liked plum cake so my mother would make carrot and walnut cake which she continues to make till date,” says Tresa.

Aparna George started baking only four years ago and says that she has been tuned into the process by her mother. “I used to watch my mother bake and help her in mixing the ingredients for the cake. I was handed down the traditional recipe of the plum cake and I continue to stick to the same method. I soak the dry fruits and nuts in alcohol in November. The longer you soak it, the deeper the taste,” says Aparna.  
Most families prefer to make the traditional cake at home rather than buy it from a store. The preparations for the cake begin months before Christmas, at least in Dorothy Victor’s house.

Her hectic schedule hasn’t come in the way of her finding time to bake the traditional Christmas cake.
  
Dorothy has been at it for as long as she can remember and believes the longer the fruits soak in the solvent, the richer the cake is. “I soak the fruits in an alcohol solvent for a month. Traditionally, the fruits used to be soaked for at least three months. But today, given the fast pace of life, the time period has come down,” says Dorothy.

She says that the time taken to soak the fruits is important. “The amount of time the fruits are soaked is important for the richness of the taste because the infusion of the fruit flavours in alcohol improves with time,” explains Dorothy.