Homemade Christmas cake is a delicacy to cherish during the holiday season. With some mild alterations, you can bake it anytime of the year for your loved ones.

Christmas time is nostalgia for all of us, especially those studied in the Christian Convent Schools. Our Christmas celebrations started from mid-November when we began rehearsing for different Christmas programmes organised in our school – MAMC Carmel Convent High School, Durgapur. Our parents prepared Christmas goodies like Christmas plum cakes and puddings to be relished by us till our school reopened in January after the winter holidays.

Before writing this article, as we were browsing through the internet, we came upon an interesting story on the origin of the English Christmas Cake. So, the story goes like this – in the initial days, Christmas Cake was a porridge made with oatmeal, meat, and other ingredients. People had the porridge on Christmas Eve after fasting the previous day. Later, to make the porridge tastier, honey, dried fruits, egg, spices, flour, and butter were added. Oatmeal was replaced with flour, butter, and eggs as they held the mixture better. And the entire mixture was boiled, which came to be known as Christmas Pudding. Later on, instead of boiling, the mixture started to get baked, thus, earning the name Christmas Plum Cake.

Christmas Cake At Our Home

In Parna’s house, her father prepared a homemade Christmas cake every year. He used to add Karamcha as a substitute for Cherries, Kumror Morobba as a substitute for marshmallows, and occasionally roasted peanuts instead of cashew nuts to bring down the cost. She had found out that her father’s recipe was the recipe of Indian Plum Cake prepared by the Anglo-Indian families living in Kolkata. Her father is no more, but she carries on the legacy by making the easy plum cake following her father’s recipe to the tee, sans the Morobba part. Well, this time, she had added some chocolate syrup and cocoa powder for the young ones in her family.

We’ll be sharing her recipe in this article. So, here it goes:

Easy Christmas Cake Recipe‘s Ingredients

• All-Purpose Flour (Can be replaced by Wheat Flour or Atta): 2 Cups (200 g)
• Butter: 200 g (You can take 100 g refined oil and 100 g butter)
• Eggs: 4
• Sugar (Powdered): 200 g
• Vanilla Essence: 2 tsp
• Baking Powder: 1 ½ tsp
• Baking Soda: 1 small pinch
• Cocoa Powder: 1 ½ tsp
• Chocolate Syrup: 1 ½ tsp
• Dry fruits (Cashew Nuts, Raisins, Cherries): 50 g

Procedure to make easy Christmas Cake:

• Mix the flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Cocoa Powder and filter it through a sieve twice. This will help the batter to rise by trapping in the air. Keep aside.
• Take a bowl. Add powdered sugar and butter. Mix well using a blender. When bubbles start coming, keep adding the eggs one by one.
• Mix the eggs well.
• Add the vanilla essence, chocolate syrup to the batter.
• Put the oven to pre-heat at 180°C – 200°C for 5 minutes.
• Meanwhile, as the oven is getting pre-heated, mix the flour mixture with the batter.
• Add the dry fruits to the batter.
• Put the batter in an oven-safe mould. Set the oven at 200°C for 35 minutes and bake. Different ovens have different specifications, so set the baking temperature accordingly.
• To test the doneness, you need to prick through a fork in your cake and see if it’s coming out clean. If it comes out clean, your cake is ready. But, don’t taste until it cools down!

Bring it out of the oven and cool. But, please do not keep it inside the oven because that can turn the cake hard. After the cake cools down, cut it into desired sizes, and serve.

Our Tip

In Parna’s house, this homemade Christmas cake used to be baked in an electric cake oven. We are not very sure if it is still available in the stores. But you can prepare this quick Christmas cake at your home with a pressure cooker (or any heavy-bottomed pan) also. All you need is a good quantity of salt. And spread it inside the cooker or the pan, place a stand on it, and turn on the gas.

Let the container with salt heat up slightly. Now, put the container with the batter on the stand. Remove the cooker’s gasket and weight and cover it. Then, let it stand for 45 minutes. Check the doneness, as mentioned above.

Merry Christmas and season’s best wishes!!