The Best Christmas Cake comes from Sri Lanka – By Rachel Bartholomeusz

This is the cake even fruit cake haters will love. It’s much closer to a flourless cake or a brownie than the usual rock-hard missiles that pass for Christmas cake elsewhere. But there’s a catch: you need to make it now to for flavours to develop and the cake’s moisture to increase

ByRachel Bartholomeusz Special Broadcasting Service Australia 22 NOV 2018

(Full disclosure: I am half Sri Lankan and thus prone to hyperbole, but you’ve just got to trust me)

The Romans might have invented the fruitcake, but Sri Lanka, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, perfected it. It might strike you as odd that a Buddhist-majority country is home to the best Christmas cake in the world, but it shouldn’t. This cake tells the story of the cultures that have passed through Sri Lanka, of a former Portuguese, then Dutch, then British colony that still loves Christmas.

Only 7 per cent of Sri Lanka’s population are Christian, but Christmas and Christmas cake – also known as rich cake, and available year round in bakeries – spread much more successfully than Christianity.

It’s a specialty of Sri Lanka’s Burgher minority, a dwindling community of mixed Portuguese, Dutch, British and Sri Lankan heritage. Their cuisine borrows and mixes flavours and ingredients from east and west, and though there are few Burghers left in Sri Lanka, their cake lives on.

While your typical fruitcake has whole glace cherries and hunks of fruit peel suspended in a cake so dry I want a glass of water just thinking about it, this version is rich, moist and dark, with a prohibitively long list of ingredients.

In place of all that flour there’s rulang (semolina) and the cashews that grow so well in Sri Lanka’s climate, brought to the country by the Portuguese. The number of eggs gets ramped up to ridiculous quantities – recipes call for anywhere between 12 and 55 eggs, and more egg whites still. The batter is a heady mix of vanilla and rose water, almond essence, spices and brandy. To the usual glace cherries, peel and nuts, are added jars of the strawberry jam that the British couldn’t live without in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, as well as preserved pumpkin, ginger, and chow chow (which is choko! I never knew).

It’s all chopped so very finely that the end result is much closer to a flourless cake or a brownie than the usual rock-hard missiles that pass for Christmas cake elsewhere. Best of all, while it improves with age, it’s perfectly good to eat straight away: handy when you’re operating on island time. If you can’t find chow chow, our recipe has a suggestion for a substitute. Here’s our recipe for Sri Lankan Christmas cake.

The cake is traditionally iced with a marzipan made from local cashews, not almonds, then cut into small rectangles and wrapped in coloured cellophane. Burgher families would offer a piece to visiting guests along with milk wine, an arrack-based liquor, introduced by the Dutch.

My dad jokes that Burghers had large families primarily to help with this annual production. Growing up in Sri Lanka, he and his five siblings would sit around a table with his mother and both grandmothers, each given the task of chopping one ingredient into the finest dice possible without turning it to mush.

For the Burgher diaspora that mostly relocated to Australia and Canada – my family included – a piece of Christmas cake was a taste of the Sri Lanka they left behind.

My grandmother continued to make her cake each year after migrating to Australia, and passed her recipe on to my mother, who made it her own. Somewhere, over time, the marzipan icing dropped off, and for as long as I can recall our cakes have been bare.

SRI LANKA CHRISTMAS CAKE

The author’s family cake has abandoned the icing for a simpler look.

My childhood years were marked by the annual search for jars of chow chow preserve on the dusty back shelves of South Asian spice shops. These hard-to-find jars become a prized commodity at Christmas time, imported from Sri Lanka and available in just a handful of shops.

With only three children at her disposal, Mum soon abandoned the hand chopping in favour of a food processor. It takes practice but the key, she says, is to pulse each ingredient separately, and very carefully: you want tiny pieces rather than a paste. Purists will tell you to hand chop or not bother, but I’ve yet to eat a version better than my mum’s.

After chopping, the next task is finding a bowl that’s big enough for mixing. Ours was always stored at the top of the pantry, a large steel bowl so enormous that it found no other purpose, brought down and dusted off just once a year.

Happily, that time is upon us.

Try something different this Christmas with a Sri Lankan-style dessert. The addition of chow chow (choko) preserve is what makes this cake so moist.

SERVES

PREPARATION

30MIN

COOKING

3hr

SKILL LEVEL

MID

Angela Nahas

It’s important to follow the instructions for lining the tin to prevent the cake burning during the long cooking time, which ensures the cake is cooked through. For best results, after cooling the cake in the pan, wrap it, still in the pan, in plastic wrap, and store in a cool, dry place for 6 weeks to allow the flavours to develop and increase the cake’s moisture.

Ingredients

225 g (1½ cups) raisins
240 g (1½ cups) sultanas
150 g glacé pineapple, chopped
200 g (1 cup) glacé cherries, chopped
495 g jar chow chow preserve (see Note), chopped
2 tsp each orange and lemon zest
150 g (1 cup) unsalted cashews, toasted, finely chopped
160 g (1 cup) unsalted almonds, toasted, finely chopped
60 ml (¼ cup) brandy
250 g unsalted butter, chopped
385 g (1¾ cups) caster sugar
6eggs, separated
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp rosewater (see Note)
180 g (1 cup) fine semolina
1.5 kg store-bought marzipan (almond icing)
icing sugar, to dust
1egg white, lightly beaten

Cook’s notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.

Instructions

You will need a 20 cm square cake pan and brown paper for this recipe.

Preheat oven to 160°C (140° fan-forced). Place all the fruits, chow chow preserve, zest, nuts and brandy in a large bowl. Stir to combine, then set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating after each addition, until just combined. Add fruit mixture, spices, rosewater and semolina, and stir to combine. Whisk egg whites to soft peaks (it’s important not to overbeat), then fold into cake mixture in 2 batches.

Grease and line a 20 cm square cake pan with a double layer of brown paper, then a double layer of baking paper. Spoon mixture into pan (see Note about suggested baking paper addition) and bake for 3 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and the cake is firm to touch. Cover with a damp clean tea towel and cool in pan. Trim edges and cut into 4 x 5 cm-wide logs.

Knead almond icing by hitting it with a rolling pin until softened. Pinch off small amounts of icing and use to fill any holes in cakes on all sides.

Divide remaining icing into 4 even pieces. Working with one piece at a time, roll out on a work surface lightly dusted with icing sugar to 3mm thick. Cut into a 19 cm x 21 cm rectangle and brush with egg white.

Place a cake log lengthwise along the long edge of the icing closest to you, then roll away from you to cover in icing. With hands dusted in icing sugar, run your palms along sides to remove lumps or creases. Repeat with remaining logs and icing. Cut into slices.

Makes 4 x 5 cm x 20 cm logs

Note
• Chow chow preserve, from Sri Lankan food shops and selected Asian food shops, is a fruit preserve of chokos in a sugar syrup. Although the Chow Chow preserve is traditional for a Sri Lankan Christmas cake, pumpkin preserve available from Sri Lankan food shops and selected Asian food shops may be substituted.

Rosewater is available from Middle Eastern food shops and selected supermarkets.
To prevent the top of the fruit cake from browning too much during the long cooking time, place a square of baking paper over the top of the raw cake batter before placing in the oven. This also helps to keep an even surface on top of the cake to make icing easier.

As seen in Feast Magazine, Issue 17, pg 66. This recipe has been edited slightly since publication.

Photography by Alan Benson.