It’s that time of the year when most bakeries and star hotels start preparations in right earnest for the perfect Christmas cake. Following the European tradition of cake mixing, a number of hotels geared up to welcome the season. At the Promenade Hotel, Dilip Kapur, founder-president , inaugurated the Cake Mixing Ceremony on Monday.
Hotel chefs, bloggers and guests along with the Hidesign family joined in the ceremony with their special Christmas hats and aprons. All the guests present rolled up their collective sleeves and joined in by mixing raisins, candied apricots and cherries, orange peels, dates, prunes, cashew nuts, pistachios, pecans, pine-nuts, hazelnuts and almonds with liquor to make the perfect Christmas cake.
An age-old custom
“Over the years, ‘cake mixing’ has become more of a ritual and is an occasion one looks forward to. The dry fruits and nuts will be soaked in liquor for 45-50 days before we begin using them prepare plum cakes. People start soaking the dry fruits and nuts in liquor by end of October in order to preserve it for the cold Christmas season. The rich plum cake is prepared from this which provides the required calories to burn in the cold season,” said Peram Mohan Naidu, Executive Chef, The Promenade Hotel.
The cake mixing ceremony is another opportunity for people to come together and celebrate. The first step is the mixing and is believed to be a forerunner of good things and happiness, Mr. Naidu said.
Atithi Hotels this year celebrated the traditional cake mixing ceremony on Friday. According to Ganesh Ramamoorthy, Operations Manager, “The history of the cake-mixing ceremony dates back to the 17th century, when it marked the arrival of the harvest season. During this time lots of fruits and nuts were harvested and prepared to go into the making of the traditional plum cake.”
Harvest’s harbinger
The mix was saved up for the next harvest season with the hope that the coming year would bring with it another abundant year.
This ceremony quickly metamorphosed to an intimate congregation, with families coming together to soak dry fruits in wine or rum in hoping that the fine flavour would fill their Christmas with delectable sweetness. The cake mix at Atithi was prepared by mixing dry fruits such as dry grapes, tutti fruity, dry ginger, orange zest, black raisins, dry red cherry, cashews, dates, fig, apricot, black currant, spices, cinnamon, cloves, star anise and nutmeg with aged Brandy, finest whisky, rum and matured Red wine.
The soaked mix was put into jars to be left for a few weeks for the fruits to soak up the alcohol to give a very moist cake, he said.
