Sri Lankan Christmas Cake

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  The final product loaded with fruits and nuts

As I sit here eating the Sri Lankan Christmas cake I made over the weekend, I reflect on the entire experience. It is definitely a delicious version of the fruit cake, as growing up I thought all fruit cakes tasted like Sri Lankan Christmas cake, and boy was a wrong. But the cake is a lot of work but really worth it in the end.

So After months of planning I finally took a dive and tried making the world famous Sri Lankan Christmas cake, well famous as my Sri Lankan grandmother used to make it every year and my mother still makes it and it is absolutely delicious, so trying to replicate it in my eyes was a big step.

Like most fruit cakes the Sri Lankan Christmas cake is loaded with dried fruit including raisins, dates, figs, prunes and cherries, but being in America I also included cranberries. What makes the cake Sri Lankan is the additional ingredients including preserved papaya (which I couldn’t locate for the life of me), raw cashews, preserved ginger, cardamon, semolina, rosewater, honey and 12 eggs, yes 12 EGGS!!!

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  The eggy batter

Knowing I’d have to modify the recipe, I decided on the fly to combine the recipe my grandmother and mother provided, Charmaine Solomon’s recipe and Margaret Fulton’s Christmas cake recipe.

Having the marinated dried fruit and locating a number of the Sri Lankan ingredients, the final product ended up more like a traditional Christmas cake with the Sri Lankan influence, if that makes sense.

Making the cake required 1 1/4 cups of chopped preserved ginger, now preserved ginger is very different to candied ginger, preserved ginger is basically ginger in a sugary syrup. It smells delicious and not as intense as the candied root.

Also using 2 1/2 cups of chopped raw cashews, chopping raw nuts isn’t an easy task. Apart from constantly tasting the nut, as it is my favorite. Chopping it with a knife does cause little bits to fly around the kitchen, so then I tried doing it softly and it still caused nuts to fly. Eventually I ended up covering them with a tea towel, and simply chopping while keeping my hands clear.

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  The delicious fruit and nut mix with the spices

Grinding the spices, I decided to use the coffee grinder for cloves and cardamon are quite strong. It ground the spice beautifully, but the coffee we ground the following morning, and let me assure you I did clean it, but it has a rather unique flavor. My husband complained it tasted like toothpaste, but I have to be honest I didn’t mind the flavor, but lesson learned, clean your coffee grinder if you use it for spices.

Mixing all the ingredients together did smell absolutely amazing. The marinated fruits, the spices, the raw cashews and the additional brandy, all combined smelled like Christmas, well what reminds me of Christmas as a kid. Going to my grandmother’s place in December would smell like this cake and more recently when visiting my parent’s home.

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  The batter mixed together, it is delicious and you can’t help eating it raw!

The bake time for the cake did surprise me. Three and a half hours in a very low oven, I honestly expected it to burn and it did a little on the bottom, so I will use a high shelf in the oven next time. But removing the slightly brown bottom, I was able to soak the cake in a little extra brandy overnight, just to make it even more delicious.

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  Straight out of the oven

One take away from this bake is the cake with a lot lighter in color, but after talking to my mother, apparently the cake should be lighter in color and if I had added the papaya it would be more orange or red in color once baked.

But the cake has been in our house for almost five days and we have only one quarter left. It is the perfect cake for an afternoon break from work with a cup of tea.

Also a thing to note is that the longer you leave it wrapped in paper and tin foil, coating it with brandy, the more fudgy and aromatic it will become. Next year I might bake it, wrap it and douse it with brandy for a couple of weeks before serving it to people.

But a delicious treat that reminds me of home and Christmas!