Growing up in India, Christmas was different from life as I know it in the burbs of the US Pacific Northwest.
For one thing, our Christmas tree for the longest time was green – and that’s where all similarities to Christmas trees fake or real ended. It was green foil tree, about two feet high and had red and white flowers glued on it.
When that died and foil needles littered the floor, we stuck a branch of a Casurina tree in a pot, decorated with small balloons and cotton (our version of snow in sweltering climes) and called it good.
But not before we took empty boxes and wrapped them with glittery wrapping paper to put at the foot of the tree. Empty boxes – because all those boxes in Hollywood movies couldn’t possibly have gifts in them, right?
But the one thing we didn’t scrimp on in India was my mom’s Christmas cake aka fruitcake, rum cake, plum cake, the Cadillac of cakes, the cake that makes other cakes feel puny and stupid, if cakes could have feelings.
The making of it was a production. Like if you take an epic war movie and turn it into a cake, it would be my mom’s fruit cake. Rum was procured months earlier, dried fruits soaked for weeks, an aunt or two recruited for help and baking wisdom and a whole day spent cutting parchment paper to line cake tins, making caramel and dredging fruit. Then began the actual baking.
The results were worth it. Those cakes were coveted by all our family and friends. And for the record it tasted nothing like the sorry excuse for fruitcake sold in Costco.
The last few years I’ve attempted to bake this venerated fruit cake – with mixed results. It was the caramel that always did me in. And, my dear mom’s most unscientific recipe that calls for everything in kilos. Hello! I
Here’s the final recipe:
Salted butter (room temp) – 1.5 cups
Dried Fruit – The kind sold near the produce – 3 cups (heaped)
Nuts – 1/2 C
Flour – 2 cups
Molasses – 3/4 C
Vanilla – 2 tsp
Baking powder – 2 tsp
Salt – 1/2 tsp
All Spice – 2 tsp
Cinnamon – 1 tsp
