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Craving for authentic Christmas cakes? Try these legendary bakeries for scrumptious treats
Food is to a festival what a cake is to Christmas. Apart from brewing hot chocolate, steaming chicken stew, and spicy mulled wine, the aroma of a freshly baked cake manifests Christmas in the air. The diversity of India is visible in the different traditional cake recipes spread across India. The warm Christmas cake is often filled with rich dried fruits, immersed in brandy or rum and blended with spices.
The origins of Christmas Cake in India go back to 1883. Murdoch Brown, a British planter asked the local baker Mambally Bapu in Thalassery to taste the plum cake he had bought from England. At Murdoch's request, Bapu tried to recreate it using a different fermentation technique due to the unavailability of yeast. This could have been one of the first homogenisation of plum cake recipes into Indian culture.
As time passed, Indian Christmas Cake went through improvisations of local flavours, ingredients, and maturing techniques. Types of Christmas cakes came into existence as people experimented with the recipes. Many legendary bakeries have followed these recipes to date.
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Mambally opened a bakery in 1880, starting with 140 types of biscuits he learned to make in Burma. Three years later, India's first-ever cake was baked there. To recreate Mr Brown's plum cake, Mambally replaced one of the ingredients, French brandy, with a local brew of cashew apple and kalaippazham banana. Murdoch Brown described Mambally's version as one of the best cakes he ever had. He ordered a dozen more.
Soon, it became the locals' favourite and Mambally's business boomed. The rest is history. This bakery gets packed with orders for this delicious Christmas Cake, whose original recipe is still used.
Nahoum Israel Mordecai, a Baghdadi Jew, founded this bakery in 1902. It is Kolkata's only remaining Jewish bakery. Come December and Nahoum's is filled with the aromatic whiff of their three signature Christmas Cakes: Rich Fruit Cake, Special Rich Fruit Cake, and Light Plum Cake. These soft and spongy cakes have an old-world charm. It has managed to caress the nostalgia of the people of Kolkata for more than a century. The fruitcake of this legendary bakery has also been praised by Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
If it's Christmas in Bengaluru, the rich plum cake has to be from Koshy's. With its infusion of nuts, fruits, and Jamaican rum, the 18-ingredient opulent plum cake gets its robust flavours by soaking the dried fruits in sugar and spices. The age-old restaurant which started as a bakery in 1940, has stirred up a huge fan following. So, to get your hands on Koshy's exclusive plum cakes for Christmas, I suggest placing the orders in advance.
The famous Mattanchere Spice Plum Cake remained at the top of the menu for more than three decades in this cake shop. This plum cake is moist and luscious due to its handpicked spices and juicy fruits. The secret behind its distinctive flavour is the traditional maturing process. Fruits are immersed in wine, honey, lemon juice, lemon rind, and candied lemon and ginger peel. The immersion process is done in a metal vessel for months. This version of the classic plum cake has its roots in a small spice market in Mattancherry.
This quaint Portuguese bakery is in the colourful neighbourhood of Fontainhas in Panjim. The uniqueness of this legendary cake shop is that they still bake their cakes in a wood-fired oven. Special Goan traditional Bebinca cake and the most famous fresh plum and walnut cakes are served here for Christmas. This charming bakery is surrounded by old buildings of the Latin Quarters. Since 1930, while Goa was still under Portuguese influence, they have been serving authentic Christmas cakes baked in the clay oven.
Carvalho family has been in the baking business for five generations since 1908. The bakery got nicknamed American Express for being the fastest to deliver goods to American cruise ships. For over 100 years, the family-owned business has served traditional Carvalho recipes during Christmas time. The special December menu includes Rich Plum Cake, Traditional Christmas Plum Pudding and the Dundee Cake. Their exquisite plum pudding is made by maturing fruits in rum, cognac, and spices for two months. It is considered one of the finest in Mumbai.
Christmas in Pondicherry is celebrated with a traditional cake called Vivikam Cake. It is a speciality cake baked in ghee with roasted semolina. This is a Creole import recipe that landed in the bakeries of Pondicherry. The cashew nuts are soaked in brandy or rum and are matured with raisins, fruit peels, and candied fruits. The secret of the age-old recipe for the authentic Pondicherry Christmas Cake is that it gets better with time. Hence, it stays just fine for weeks without refrigeration. Auroville Bakery near Kuilapalayam in Pondicherry is best known for serving this traditional cake.
India might only have 3% of the Christian population, but everyone celebrates Christmas. The country has a deep culinary history of baking Christmas Cakes. Christmas turns magical when the festive air fills with the aroma of warm cake out of the oven. The tenderness of the plum cakes almost gives a feeling of a warm hug.
While curating this list of legendary bakeries for their traditional seasonal cakes, I was salivating. I wish I had more than one Christmas in a year, for I would travel across India and get a mouthful of every cake recipe. I hope you can make the most of your Christmas celebration by ordering authentic Christmas cakes from one of these legendary bakeries across India.
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