{"id":75460,"date":"2021-12-23T01:08:39","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T05:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=75460"},"modified":"2021-12-24T18:21:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T22:21:54","slug":"the-best-christmas-cake-comes-from-sri-lanka-the-romans-might-have-invented-the-fruitcake-but-sri-lankawith-her-burgher-heritage-perfected-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=75460","title":{"rendered":"The Best Christmas Cake Comes From Sri Lanka: the Romans might have invented the fruitcake but Sri Lanka,with her Burgher Heritage perfected it."},"content":{"rendered":"

By
\nRachel Bartholomeusz<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Romans might have invented the fruitcake, but Sri Lanka, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, perfected it.
\n(Full disclosure: I am half Sri Lankan and thus prone to hyperbole, but you\u2019ve just got to trust me.)
\nIt might strike you as odd that a Buddhist-majority country is home to the best Christmas cake in the world, but it shouldn\u2019t. 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Only 7 per cent of Sri Lanka\u2019s population are Christian, but Christmas and Christmas cake \u2013 also known as rich cake, and available year-round in bakeries \u2013 spread much more successfully than Christianity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a specialty of Sri Lanka\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In place of all that flour there\u2019s rulang (semolina) and the cashews that grow so well in Sri Lanka\u2019s 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\u2019t live without in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, as well as preserved pumpkin, ginger, and chow chow (which is choko! I never knew).
\nIt\u2019s 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\u2019s perfectly good to eat straight away: handy when you\u2019re operating on island time.<\/p>\n

The cake is traditionally iced with 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.
\nMy 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.<\/p>\n

For the Burgher diaspora that mostly relocated to Australia and Canada \u2013 my family included \u2013 a piece of Christmas cake was a taste of Sri Lanka they left behind.
\nMy 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.<\/p>\n

Somewhere, over time, the marzipan icing dropped off, and for as long as I can recall our cakes have been bare.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve yet to eat a version better than my mum\u2019s.<\/p>\n

After chopping, the next task is finding a bowl that\u2019s 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.
\nHappily, that time is upon us.
\n
\nCourtesy:sbs.com.au<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rachel Bartholomeusz The Romans might have invented the fruitcake, but Sri Lanka, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, perfected it. (Full disclosure: I am half Sri Lankan and thus prone to hyperbole, but you\u2019ve just got to trust me.) It might strike you as odd that a Buddhist-majority country is home to the …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The Best Christmas Cake Comes From Sri Lanka: the Romans might have invented the fruitcake but Sri Lanka,with her Burgher Heritage perfected it.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75460"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75483,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75460\/revisions\/75483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}