CHENNAI: The heady aroma that offers a promise of pleasure, that texture that hovers between light-fluffy and dense, the welcome interruptions of raisin and nuts, and the blazing hints of rum and nutmeg. The plum cake is the true red-white-green miracle of Christmas.
This time around, there’s no dearth of options for the soul-satisfying cake break that you have been building up to for the whole year. For those inclined to experiment and the few left with a favourite, good Samaritan Chennaiites offer help - listing the places where their plum cake-starved souls find salvation.
Lydia Sonali Diaz
Apart from baking cakes at home, gifting plum cakes from Everest Bakery to friends and family has always been a part of my family’s Christmas tradition. Stepping into this 50-year-old traditional bakery still continues to bring back comforting, happy, and sweet-smelling memories that scream of Christmas and cheer! Their most popular plum cakes are known for generous portions of raisins, nuts, mixed fruits, ginger, and orange peels; all this soaked for over a month in aromatic plum essence and baked to perfection.
Milton Obadhia
Raised in a family that has always hosted luncheons for friends as well as strange faces, led my mother down the path of culinary arts. So, what started as an act of kindness transformed into the passion project 'Nut Shell' - offering real, sustainable food that delights the senses and nourishes the body.
An FSSAI-certified home baker with expertise in the field of baking for 15 years, an MSME certification in bakery and academic foundation in the field of psychology and literature, it’s her plum and Christmas cakes that I enjoy the most.
Often, food therapy is quite literally applicable. The frosting in her piping bag, like her patients, listens to her and with the right control and care, she makes them bloom. She also has a knack for making cookies, squashes, jam jellies and pickles with no preservatives, and healthy vegan-style baked goodies with millet and jaggery.
Salesh Dipak Fernando
Our family always got Christmas cakes from two prime spots - Mcrennet and Primas. Somehow, the other cake shops in the city never measured up to these two. There was always an element of magic in those Christmas cakes that I had while I was growing up.
When we returned home after the Christmas vigil, mom would deftly sneak in the Christmas cake when I wasn’t looking. As I grew up, I saw through it. But, the sense of wonder that it gave me as a kid is priceless. Sharing the cake with my loved ones was my way of looking past the differences and renewing the love we have for each other.
Nahshon J Benjamin
While desserts are a big part of Christmas tradition, plum cakes are certainly the main attraction. My idea of a perfect plum cake is a slice that does not crumble; it should have just the right amount of moisture and density, a good raisin-to-cake ratio, be not too sweet but mildly sour with a hint of bitterness.
We have been buying from McRennett in Anna Nagar for a little over 20 years. Being one of the first bakeries to come up in the locality, they’ve been dishing out some delicious cakes and confectioneries for years.
Though it isn’t anything fancy like ‘baked in-house’, McRennett stocks fresh batches every day and they can be trusted for quality. Though many modern bakeries and dessert places have popped up in the past decade or so, the convenience, consistent quality and pricing, I’m sure, will keep McRennett around for quite a while longer.
Noble Zafferin
For as long as I can remember, our family has been purchasing our Christmas plum cake from The Crown Bakery at Santhome. My family stayed there for 15 years before moving to Palavakkam. My entire family loves the cake, especially my father.
He says that they use grated orange peels and wine in the batter, which adds a burst of special flavour to the cake. Every Christmas, he rushes to the bakery to pick up a fresh plum cake. After our Christmas-eve meal, we all sit around the television with a big slice and watch some Christmas specials to end the night.
Lisee Thomson
When Christmas is near, we all dream about the delectable plum cakes. The aroma of soaked dry fruits and meltin- mouth texture of cakes makes this a special treat. The best plum cakes - those that taste exactly like homemade ones - are made at CakeWalk, Nungambakkam. It has become a tradition, for a couple of years now, to purchase cakes from there for Christmas.
Gitanjali Ubal
Christmas is synonymous with plum cake. I love having a variety of cakes; so I pick them up from home bakers and various bakeries in the city each year. I live in Neelankarai, so I mostly alternate among Tryst Cafe, Old Madras Baking Company, and CK’s Bakery. The age-old Adyar Bakery, Iyengar’s Bakery and McRennett all have their vintage charm. Not to forget, the star hotels who offer a class of their own.
Christina Ranjan
Every year since 2017, as November approaches, I usually turn into a ball of excitement. My classmate, Jacquelin of Jac & Joe’s invites me to an evening of Christmas cake mixing at her house. Once we mix the 40-odd ingredients, including several of her ‘secret ingredients’ and spice mixes, we leave it aside for them to soak and bind together for Christmas.
The result? Slices of heaven in the form of her special rich rum fruit-and-nut cake. The flavour and fragrance of the cake always mesmerises me and I can never stop with just once slice. What I love the most about the cake is not just its taste, but the process involved in making it too.
Jac handpicks all the ingredients and fruits, chops them in the right sizes and then steps into the mixing process. What makes it further special is how the mixing of the cake becomes a community affair, where s her friends are invited over and gifts them the experience.
She bakes a minimum of 50 kilograms of the rich rum fruit-and-nut cake for Christmas and I usually order a minimum
(Inputs by Anushree Madhavan, Naaz Ghani, Roshne Balasubramanian and Vaishali Vijaykumar)