The Origin of the Great Indian Christmas Cake
India’s relationship with Christmas cake is a decadent and delicious one. Rose Scaria explores the history of Christmas cake in India and the many unique variations found across the country.
Before Christmas is in the air, the aroma of Christmas cake fills the air. The weeks leading up to Christmas is a busy time in the kitchen and the yuletide spirit can be felt in the kitchen long before it spills into the other corners of the home. The best quality dry fruits and nuts are sourced from local vendors and soaked in rum; rose cookies, nankhatais and kulkuls are prepared to be stored in air-tight jars, anticipating the arrival of children, relatives and friends. However, the Christmas cake is the centre-piece of the table, and the its preparation heralds the arrival of the season of joy and sharing. All other cakes, made during the rest of the year, pale in comparison to this one, an edible symbol of the spirit of Christmas.
Along with simmering mutton stew and chicken roast in cauldrons, fermenting batter of appams, the whiff of warm cake wafts through the chilly air on Christmas eve. The diversity of the Indian subcontinent can be best appreciated through regional food in India. But one dish that transcends all these boundaries is Christmas cake — decadent, peppered with dry fruits, infused with rum or brandy, filled with buttery goodness and laced with spices. And this cake is boldly Indian.
The story of Christmas cakes in India starts way back in 1883, when a British planter in Thalassery, Murdoch Brown asked the local baker, Mambally Bapu to taste the rich plum cake he had brought from England. Brown explained the baking process, and asked Bapu to prepare a similar cake for him.
In the old days, yeast was used for fermentation, and cakes were essentially sweet breads. But Bapu, instead of yeast, used locally brewed liquor in his cake. Brown asked Bapu to source the brandy from the nearby French Province, Mahe. But Bapu had a better idea, and used a local infusion of cashew apple and kadalippazham (a type of local banana) instead of French brandy. Delighted with the result, Brown declared it was the best cake he had ever tasted, (or so the story goes). Thus began the Indian tradition of Christmas cakes.
However, everything was not a cakewalk on the Indian baking scene. In his book, The Raj at the Table, David Burton describes cake-baking a tricky and finicky affair, because of the unavailability of quality flour and yeast. Until the invention of baking powder, yeast was used as a leavening agent, and the quality of cakes depended on temperamental respiring yeast, and the final product was often similar to sweetened bread. In some cases, erratic yeast was replaced by local brew and egg whites. In one of the earliest cookbooks published in India in 1879, Dainty Dishes for Indian tables, the author describes how egg whites were to be beaten, to yield a stiff consistency for the aeration of plum cake. The author also describes how great care should be taken to procure pure flour, as the ordinary bazaar flour was adulterated and inferior, resulting in heavy, and quick-spoiling cakes.
Without proper ovens, sand was heated to a high temperature, and baking tins were placed on it, with glowing charcoal on top. S Meenakshi Ammal in her classic Tamil cookbook, Samaithu Paar, published in 1951, describes improvised baking contraptions using hot sand and live charcoal and calls it a ‘Biscuit Box’. Food writer Vir Sanghvi writes that Indians historically have not had a baking tradition, and no history of ovens. The veteran Suma Sivadas of vlog cooking with suma teacher explains the ingenious methods she employed to bake cakes in early 1970s. “I used to cream butter and sugar with big wooden spoons. It was a tiring process and one day I stumbled upon the idea of using a grinding stone for creaming butter and sugar. For almost 10 years, I used grinding stone and got a creamy, ribbony batter,” recalls Suma Sivadas. In some parts of Goa, this problem was solved by sending pre-mixed batter to local bakers who had old wood-fired ovens.
All throughout my growing up years, I thought Kerala plum cake was the archetypal Christmas cake, an exact replica of English plum cake, and the rest of India had no tradition of baking Christmas cakes. As my knowledge of the wider world grew, I realised, to my delight, there are different assortments of Christmas cakes in India, and to my chagrin, the Kerala Plum cake was not a genuine English Christmas cake.
Local flavours, exotic ingredients, substitutes, heirloom recipes, makeshift ovens, unusual leavening agents and many other improvisations characterised Indian Christmas cakes, resulting in unique flavours. Different Christmas caked produced in various parts of India use unusual ingredients. Take for instance, Allahabadi cakes which contains petha (ash-gourd candy) and murabba (locally-produced marmalade). This quintessential Indian cake also uses ghee and is laced with a motley of spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, fennel, mace and ginger. Tutti frutti is another omnipresent ingredient in Christmas cakes. Indian tutti frutti is essentially candied papaya, and bears very little resemblance to its European counterpart. These little chunks in lurid colours of green, red, orange adorn the Christmas cakes found all over the subcontinent.
Christmas cakes get a very regional twist in Goa where flour, milk, butter are replaced by Goan staples like coconut milk, rice flour, desiccated coconut, ghee, semolina etc. Baath cakes, the traditional Christmas cakes of Goa are usually baked on a stovetop clay oven with hot coals placed on the lid. This Christmas cake needs at least 6 hours of resting time. While Goans are busy baking Baath cakes on Christmas, erstwhile French colony, Pondicherry boasts of another indigenous cake, Vivikam cakes. Made with roasted semolina and pure ghee, the rich, tipsy cake comes with generous amount of rum-soaked cashew nuts and raisins, citrus peels and candied fruits. Another traditional Christmas cake is the East Indian thali sweet which is baked in a traditional tray, called thali. It is a white cake made with fresh coconut, semolina, egg whites and almonds. In the deeper south, Kerala plum cakes uses a wide array of spices. “As you cut into the cake, a hint of spices hits the nose, but as you taste, the spices are not overwhelming. You won’t taste a cardamom or clove or a nutmeg — what you taste is a fine blend and balance of flavours,” says Annamma Kottukapally, the owner of Anns Bakery and confectionary.
Most of the recipes of cakes were heavily guarded secrets, often in the family for generations, and these recipes symbolised the family’s history, culture and ingenuity. The resourcefulness and imagination of Indian bakers resulted in uniquely flavoured Christmas cakes. India has welcomed many immigrant communities like Jews and Parsis over the centuries. Any mention of Christmas in Calcutta is incomplete without a reference to Nahoum confectionary’s Christmas cakes. Though many fancy bakeries and artisan patisseries have sprung up in different parts of the city, this 119-year-old confectionary’s rich plum cake is a legend in itself, attested by long, snaking queues outside the bakery during Christmas season. A now-legendary story about Nahoum’s bakery in Calcutta is that archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, declared their fruit cake the best he had ever tasted. While Nahoum’s rules the roost in Calcutta, Parsi Christmas cake is popular in Bombay. The Zoroastrian connection with Christmas is that the three Magi who visited baby Jesus were Zoroastrian priests. It is said that the British would buy Christmas cakes from Parsis and send them to their relatives and friends in England.
In India, less than 3% of the population follows the Christian faith. However, most Indians celebrate Christmas. Baking a Christmas cake or buying a cake has become very much a part of Christmas festivities. Eggless Christmas cakes, alcohol-free cakes, vegan cakes are all popular today. In all its forms, Christmas cake embodies the warmth of the big day.
Here is an original ‘old-fashioned’ plum cake recipe, adapted from the Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables published in 1881.
Recipe: Rich Plum Cake
Ingredients:
340 g butter
225 g sugar
340 g currants
340 g raisins
170 g mixed candied peel, finely chopped
25 g almonds, blanched and pounded
1 tbsp cinnamon, finely pounded and sifted
1/2 tbsp nutmeg, finely grated
1/2 tbsp cloves, finely pounded and sifted
400 g finely-sifted flour
6 egg yolks
6 egg whites beaten to a stiff consistency
One wineglass of brandy
Grated rind 1 lemon
Strained juice of 1 lemon
Method:
Beat the butter to a cream and put it into a basin with other ingredients, except the egg whites, in the order in which they are given.
Beat the mixture until it is well combined.
Add the egg whites and continue to beat rapidly.
Pour the batter into a lined cake tin and bake for 40 minutes in a preheated oven.
Rose Scaria teaches history and she loves to explore the intersection between food and history.
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