Lounge Round Up: ’Tis the season for cake
Our countrywide directory for the best Christmas bakes
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We love our rich, fruity, boozy cakes in December. And since the best cakes were always made at home, here’s our round-up of what family style bakers, and a few classic and modernist bakeries, have to offer across the country. Make that call, you know you want to.
New Delhi
u Crescentia Scolt Fernandes
She uses a three-generation-old family recipe adapted from a Sri Lankan original to make “really rich" plum cakes that incorporate 5kg of fruit in 1kg of flour, besides extra eggs and sugar. Fernandes also does real mince pies, brandy-soaked fruit in pastry, that are very, very moreish.
Contact: 9811571379 as soon as possible.
Prices: ₹ 1,200 a kg (also sold in half-kg) for cakes; ₹ 100 a piece for mince pies.
u Jaya Kochhar
Plum cakes with rum-infused frosting, plum-cake cupcakes topped with marzipan Santas, candy canes and snowflakes.... Jaya Kochhar learnt the basic recipe at The Culinary Institute of America and has been tweaking it ever so slightly over the last 10 years. She uses real butter and cinnamon, and each cake has 300-400g of rum-soaked fruit.
Contact: 9818077161 by Christmas Day.
Prices: ₹ 1,200 a kg for plum cakes.
u Divin-e-licious
Contact: Call 9811961572 or email divin.e.licious@gmail.com by Christmas Day.
Prices: Starting from ₹ 900 for the Christmas Dessert Jar; and from ₹ 150 for the Christmas Cake Pops.
Bengaluru
u Michelle Gafoor
Unlike most other bakers, she swings into action only in the run-up to Christmas, baking limited quantities of plum cakes at home. Based on a four-generation-old recipe, the cake uses minced/candied peel and dry fruits, besides fruit jams, marmalade, caramelized sugar, minced almonds and walnuts.
Contact: Call 9845092630, 080-25469823/25480030 or email michelle.gafoor@gmail.com by 20 December.
Prices: ₹ 650 a kg (also sold in half-kg for ₹ 325).
u Café of Joy
This German bakery in Whitefield is making traditional German Christmas goodies, led by stollen, the yeasty, fruity bread-cake, in three varieties: almond, raisin and marzipan. Also on the list: lebkuchen, a soft gingerbread; panettone, a citrus-infused sweet Italian bread, and a variety of Christmas cookies.
Contact: Call 8762732564, 9886329015 or email info@cafeofjoybangalore.com by 23 December.
Prices: ₹ 300-500 for Kkg stollens, ₹ 500-650 for half-kg lebkuchen, ₹ 100 for 100g of the panettone and ₹ 450 for 500g of assorted cookies.
Kolkata
u Nahoum and Sons
For most of the year, Kolkata’s New Market is like a decaying dowager, but come Christmas and it’s all decked up—with Nahoum the jewel in that crown. More than a century old, Nahoum has fed generations with its rich plum cakes, packed with dried fruit, made to a recipe as old as the store, and mince pies.
Contact: 033-65269936. The plum cake is available till February.
Prices: ₹ 750 a kg (also sold in half-kg for ₹ 375) for the special fruit cake; ₹ 30 a piece for mince pies.
Mumbai
u Rejoyce Cakes
Joyce Fernandes’ fruit cakes, covered in elaborate icing and intricate figurines, have been the core of thousands of celebrations. During Christmas, Fernandes jokes, her kitchen is busier than Santa’s workshop as they roll out winter- wonderland themed plum cakes and marzipan sweets.
Contact: Call 022-65137444 by 25 December.
Prices: ₹ 1,100 for 1.5kg plum cakes; ₹ 3,000 for 2.5kg marzipan plum cakes; ₹ 380 for 250g marzipan sweets.
u Vienna Bakery
The Vakola institution is a one-stop shop for traditional Goan and East Indian Christmas sweets, including marzipan, milk cream, jujubes, karanjis, neureos, rose cookies and guava cheese. But the bakery, which opened in 1959, is best known for its rich plum cakes.
Contact: Call 022-26672811/ 26672513 from 15-25 December.
Prices: ₹ 200 for 800g of rich plum cakes. Other traditional sweets will be available from 15 December.
u Eighth
Contact: Call 9820267003 by 22 December.
Prices: ₹ 800 for 10 Christmas cookies or Red Velvet Crinkles, ₹ 900 for 12 madeleines, ₹ 1,400 a kg (also sold in half-kg for ₹ 800) for chocolate-almond and raspberry pistachio loaf cakes.
Goa
u Little Chocolate Box
Gayle D’Souza of Little Chocolate Box uses raisins, cherries, currants, prunes, cashew nuts, almonds and walnuts soaked in wine and rum—and barely any flour—according to a precious family recipe. The rich cakes are then topped with home-made marzipan flowers.
Contact: 9822984224 as soon as possible.
Prices: ₹ 650 for half-kg.
u Mog. Cake Studio
Mog does a delicious twist on Goa’s most loved seasonal goodies. Christmas hampers include a custom gingerbread house, the traditional semolina coconut baath cake paired with lemon custard, pretzel sticks, and cinnamon-sugar coated kalkals.
Contact: 8380078252 soon.
Prices: ₹ 220 for half-kg lemon baath cake; hampers start at ₹ 700.
—Prerna Makhija, Chanpreet Khurana, Revati Upadhya & Sumana Mukherjee
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