For the longest time , I didn’t associate the traditional
Christmas cake with a Christian celebration, but an Armed Forces celebration.
Part of it was because I grew up as an Army kid, travelling around the country,
as my father got posted from Delhi to Punjab, to Maharashtra. And no matter
what part of the country we were, we would always have Christmas cake. It all
begins during Diwali. Again, I am not sure if it’s an Armed Forces tradition,
or just a North Indian tradition (because I don’t see much of it now that I
live in Maharashtra and Goa ), but people loved gifting boxes of dry fruits
along with an equally large box of fire crackers. The fire crackers were sent
back, since we didn’t burst them , green Diwali and all, the pistas were devoured
even before the wrapping came of the other dry fruits. An Army Diwali means not just one box of dry fruits, or two,
but entire regiments and battalions of dry fruit boxes. And so at Diwali, my
mother would get all the left over dry fruits chopped, and soak them in Rum and
Brandy bought from the Army Canteen. So you see, the two main ingredients of
baking a Christmas cake; rum and dry fruits were present in abundance in almost
every Armed Forces home. Also the entire chopping of what seemed kilos of dry fruits
needed an army of workers, again something which was a privilege we enjoyed in
the defence colonies. It’s easy to see, why I thought Christmas cakes was
something of an Army/Navy /Airforce tradition rather than belonging to a
religious celebration.
In the Armed forces, people of different region and religion
, all seem to be mixed and moved around the country like a bag of pot -pourri,
and all that you have in the end is a fairly homogenous group of odds and ends.
And so here we were, Bengali hindu Brahmins, baking the most fragrant and
indulgent Christmas cake, a recipe my mum learnt from another Armed Forces
wife.
Cut to now, and it’s been over 15 years since my father left
the Army, and yet , year after year, Ma makes 5 , sometimes 6 batches of Christmas cake, the
prep for which begins at Diwali, and the cakes begin baking by first week of
December all the way to mid January, depending on who needs to be gifted the
cakes.
Even after baking them, the cakes are carefully wrapped in
silver foil to keep the aromas in, and lovingly watered with rum every few
days. There is a Bengali word they use for it ‘cake Moje jabe’ , I guess it
means the cake will mature, or marinate in its juices. And in the last 16 years
that I have been out of home ( I left home at 18 to stay in the medical college
hostel, and then various hostels across the country , Goa and Madurai) but I
have always received my Christmas cake , wrapped in silver foil and a red
ribbon.
This year too, one of my mother’s patients who live in the
UK, but come visiting their home in Goa every year, decided to fly down to Pune
, to show their daughter to my Ma, who
is a paediatrician in Pune. And Ma handed over my Christmas cake to her, to
deliver it to me in Goa. Didn’t I tell you, this cake has travelled to places.
Its travelled to Kolkata, and Dhanbad, and places overseas like Dubai,
Mauritius , Canada, wherever her friends and family are.
The Christmas cake recipe, however , I have never tried
making myself. It’s like Santa; we never told our parents, we knew they were
Santa, because that would just take the magic out of it. If I start making my
own cake, Ma might stop sending me hers, and part of the magic of Christmas is
the gift of Giving, I don’t want to take that gift away from her! However , I do make Christmas cake pops from
ma’s Christmas cake.
The cake, unlike the
store bought Christmas cakes, is thrice as studded with dryfruits than an
average cake. So as one goes to slice a piece, the knife invariably hits a
candied orange, veers off track, then hits a walnut and then skids off another
route, until you end up with a craggy piece of cake and lots of crumbly cake
bits.
Now here is a short and simple recipe for Christmas cake
pops.
Crumble Christmas cake, or gather all the crumbly bits
together and make little balls of them, add a little condensed milk/honey to
bind if needed.
Melt dark chcoclate, add a little butter for gloss, add
cinnamon powder , nutmeg powder and ginger powder to the chocolate mix. And
what I love to add is oil based orange essence, and a few candied oranges . the
smells and flavours of Christmas cake should reflect in your chocolate coating.
I melt my chocolate in the microwave, going 20 seconds bursts until melted, but
you can do it over a double boiler.
Now drizzle the chocolate over the cake balls, or if you are
feeling fairly dangerous, you can stick a lollypop stick in the cake pops and
roll it in melted chocolate. But I warn you the christamas cake is more dense
and heavy than an average cake pop, and you’ll only drop it in the melted
chcoclate.
These cake pops would have been the revamped version of rum
balls I presume. But funny thing, while we were allowed to have Christmas cake
matured in rum , we weren’t allowed to have Rumballs as a kid!
Recipe also of candied Orange peel.
Peel oranges,sundry the peels for a few days. In a pan take
½ a cup water, bring to boil, add ½ cup sugar, add the diced dried orange
peels. Simmer till sugar syrup evaporates. Keep in an airtight container.
