Baked in history: India’s first plum cake

Cakes came to Kerala in 1883, when Murdoch Brown, an early British planter (who ran a cinnamon plantation in Anjarakandy in the Malabar region) craving for a plum cake at X’mas time asked Mambally Bapu, the owner of Mambally Royal Biscuit Factory in Tellicherry (now Thalassery) to taste the cake he brought from England and recreate it.

One of the pioneering bakeries in the country, it made history when Bapu baked arguably, India’s first plum cake that led to Thalassery’s unofficial title, Land of three C’s – cakes, cricket and circus. Though the original bakery is not there, we stopped by the current bakery in a mall to have wood-fired gourmet handcrafted plum cake, crispy, scrumptious barley biscuits, etc.

Brown explained to Bapu the baking process and handed over an assorted bunch of ingredients like dates, raisins, dry fruits, etc and suggested the use of French brandy from erstwhile Mayyazhi (Mahe) for the X’mas cake. But Bapu decided to give a ‘desi’ twist to the cake. He procured the mould from a blacksmith in Dharmadam, and sourced spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Instead of using imported French brandy, Bapu used a locally brewed cashew-apple liquor (a form of local arrack/country liquor) enhanced with locally available kadalipazham (a type of local bananas). Swapping imported brandy for a local liquor made from cashew apples and bananas, the result was a unique plum cake made entirely from local ingredients. Delighted with the result, Brown certified it as the best cake he had ever tasted and ordered a dozen more. Thus began the Indian tradition of X’mas cakes.

Traditional baking

“We have consciously retained the traditional elements. The dry and candied fruits are slow-stewed in bell-metal urulis (traditional wide-mouthed, shallow cooking vessel) which allows for gentle, even heating and deep flavour development and baking in wood-fired ovens using coconut shells — so that the cake still carries the lineage of the 1883 masterpiece, ” explained Renuka Bala, the fifth generation custodian, of the factory.  

While the recipes have changed with the changing times due to the regulatory requirements and availability of ingredients, the Mamballys have not compromised on the quality.

While Bapu brewed his own cashew-apple arrack, it is no longer legally feasible for a commercial food business today. Hence arrack is not brewed in-house due to legal bottlenecks.

(Origin Story attempts to satiate your curiosity about the history of an ingredient or dish.)