A step-by-step guide to baking the perfect Kolkata Christmas Fruitcake

Chrismas to a Kolkata resident is a time for fruitcake, lights and live bands on Park Street, and the Christmas Eve mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral, say Insiya Poonawala and Saptarshi Chakraborty, founders of Indian food blog Bong Eats. While we might not be able to get the full experience, this Kolkata Christmas fruitcake, they guarantee, tastes equally festive and delicious.

"First, we’ve added spices to both the dried fruit mixture as well as to the cake batter. But the most significant addition we’ve made is adding thick, syrupy ‘burnt sugar’. It is an old-fashioned Anglo-Indian technique, widely popular in Caribbean cooking too, to add a deep flavour, mild bitterness, and colour to cakes and meats," the blogger couple explain.

If you'd like the recipe to reflect yours and your family's tastes, feel free to play around with the proportions of dried fruits and nuts or replace some of the dried fruits with others of your choosing. "As long as the total quantity of dried fruits and nuts remains the same, you should be able to follow the rest of this recipe without any trouble," add Insiya and Saptarshi.

Here's a detailed step-by-step guide:

Serving size: 1kg cake

Preparation time: 3 hours and 10 minutes

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Ingredients

Dried Fruits and Nuts

100gm (⅓ cup) raisins

150gm (⅓ cup) pitted dates

100gm (⅓ cup) apricots

100gm (⅓ cup) tutti frutti

100gm (⅓ cup) crystallised ginger

125gm (⅓ cup) candied peels

180ml (⅓ cup) apple juice

Burnt Sugar

80gm (½ cup) sugar

80ml (⅓ cup) hot water

Cake Batter

150gm (⅔ cup) salted butter (softened; extra for greasing)

135gm (¾ cup) brown sugar

150gm (3 large) eggs

150gm (1¼ cups) flour

2 tsp orange zest

½ tsp vanilla essence

8 pcs cloves

4-cm cinnamon stick

¼ tsp nutmeg

15 pcs allspice berries (optional)

40gm (½ cup) ground almonds

25gm (¼ cup) cashewnuts

25gm (¼ cup) shelled pistachios, unsalted

15–20 almonds (blanched and peeled; for decoration)

1 tbsp jam (for a glaze, so any flavour will do)

Equipment

Weighing scale/cup measures

Sieve

Grater

Spice grinder

Saucepan

Mixing bowl

Balloon whisk

Rubber spatula

10-inch round cake tin

Greaseproof baking paper

Aluminium foil and newspapers/paper towel (for the collar)

Method

Step 1: Prep the dried fruits

1. Add cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice berries to a spice grinder and blitz to a fine powder.

2. Chop dates, apricots, crystallised (candied) ginger and candied peels into 1-cm chunks.

3. Add these to a saucepan along with the raisins and tutti frutti.

4. Add apple juice and ¼ tsp of the powdered spices (reserve the remaining spices for the batter).

5. Mix everything together, and cook on low heat until the apple juice has nearly all been soaked up by the dried fruits (about 20 minutes or so).

6. Leave the fruits to rest for 2 hours.

Step 2: Make Burnt Sugar

1. Spread the sugar in a single layer in a pan, set on low heat.

2. Cover the pan with a lid and allow the sugar to melt slowly.

3. Once the middle starts to darken, stir the sugar to evenly distribute the heat.

4. Keep heating as the colour changes from amber to gold to brown to black. Don’t walk away—this requires constant attention.

5. Once the sugar is black (this will take about 15 minutes), add hot water to stop it from cookin further. The mixture will be sticky and lumpy, but keep stirring until the lumps have dissolved and you get a smooth syrup.

6. Remove from the heat, and allow it to cool and thicken.

Step 3: Miscellaneous Prep

1. Divide the cashewnuts in half.

2. Blanch pistachios so that they turn a bright green colour, and divide those in half too.

3. If you are not using readymade almond meal, grind almonds to a powder in a food processor or grinder.

4. Blanch and peel another handful of almonds for the decoration.

5. Zest an orange. Sift the flour.

Step 4 : Prepare the cake tin

1. Grease the tin lightly with butter.

2. Cut a circle of greaseproof baking paper to cover the bottom.

3. Flour the sides of the tin, dusting off any excess. These steps will ensure the cake releases from the bottom and sides of the pan with ease.

4. Finally, as an added precaution against the sides of the cake cooking faster than the middle, resulting in a cracked or domed cake, prepare a ‘cake collar’.

a. For this wet some newsprint or paper towels and fold them in strips as wide as the height of your tin, and as long as the tin’s diameter.

b. Wrap them in aluminium foil.

c. Using a cotton string, attach this collar to the outside of your tin.

Step 5: Batter and baking

1. Preheat your oven at 150°C.

2. Take softened butter in a mixing bowl and cream it until light and fluffy. You can do this either by hand or in a stand mixer.

3. Add brown sugar and cream further until light and fluffy again.

4. Crack in an egg and mix until incorporated. Add a teaspoon of flour and mix that in too.

5. Crack in the second egg and mix, then the second teaspoon of flour and mix.

6. Repeat with the third egg and third teaspoon of flour. Adding flour after each egg allows the batter to stabilise. If you don’t do this there is a chance that the batter will split or curdle with the mixing of the egg in the fat.

7. Add vanilla essence, orange zest, rest of the powdered spices and burnt sugar.

8. Add the remaining flour and ground almonds.

9. Fold in the chopped cashew and pistachios, as well as the apple juice–infused dried fruits.

10. Transfer the batter to the cake tin, levelling the top as evenly as possible.

11. Embed the peeled almonds into the top of the batter in a concentric pattern.

12. Bake in the preheated oven at 150°C for 45–50 minutes, until the cake has turned dark brown and its internal temperature is around 95–97°C (a skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean).

13. Once out of the oven, brush the top of the cake with jam (you may have to loosen it up slightly by heating it with a tablespoon of water) for a nice shiny glaze.

14. Allow the cake to cool completely in its tin before unmoulding and slicing.