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Christmas spells cake in Calcutta. Yes, Park Street's all dressed up, there's tinsel in New Market and Christmas trees of all sizes (from stunted ones to others on steroids), and there's even a mild nip in the air. But the picture isn't complete till you've bitten into the dry-fruit packed, drunk-on-rum/brandy Christmas cake made in huge numbers around the city.

And, more than in other cities, there are special traditions associated with making Xmas cakes here. From the baker coming home to mix cake batter to foodies queuing up outside the city's famed heritage confectioneries. And some communities have exciting Christmas stories to tell as well.

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'Calcuttans are infatuated with the Christmas cake. Everyone wants one,' says chef Shaun Kenworthy. 'I don't think anyone celebrates Christmas like Calcutta. That sank in for me when we relaunched Flurys in December 2004. There was an onslaught of insanity,' says the English chef who's settled in the city.

So, perhaps we are infatuated. And here's a taste of Christmas and its cakes in Calcutta...

The baker's tale

This is the time that families leaf through secret cake recipes passed down generations and guarded like the Golden Fleece. The baker is either called home to mix the batter, with a person from the family then accompanying him to the bakery for the would-be-cakes tryst with the oven. Alternatively, the ingredients are lugged to the bakery to be mixed by hand.

Mohammed Ibrahim has been baking bread and cakes since 1975, and hardly has time to breathe during December. 'I started off in Beckbagan's MA Ahmed Hussain Bakery as a 21-year-old. Now I'm 59, and still at it,' he says. He visits about 100 homes to mix cakes and other customers bring their ingredients to the bakery, he adds. Not just Calcuttans, but also people living in Jamshedpur, Asansol and Ranchi line up. After Ahmed Hussain bakery closed down, Ibrahim shifted to Waris Bakery in Topsia, but his client list hasn't changed.

Even a celebrity like Usha Uthup makes her way to a 'hole in the wall bakery' in Beckbagan to have her cakes made. 'There's something magical about the ritual of Christmas cake being put on a plate on a white lace tablecloth,' says Uthup, whose husband Jani Uthup is a Malayalee Christian. His aunt gave her 18 non-vegetarian recipes and her special cake recipe, which she keeps in her 'blue Bible', a velvet bound diary. And she's a purist where the recipe's concerned — she never innovates.

Uthup may be a vegetarian, but it's no holds barred where cakes are concerned. 'Eggs are okay if they're properly camouflaged,' she says with her trademark smile. It was the prospect of personalised cakes (name tags help to identify them at the bakery) that had excited Uthup. Today, she places the names of her children and grandchildren on the cakes she gives them. She has over 100 baked and some make their way to her family down south.

Cake craze at Flurys

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  The Christmas cake mixing at Flurys this year involved children from the NGO CRY

Vikas Kumar, executive chef, Flurys, clearly remembers his first experience of Christmas cake mania at the heritage tearoom in 1995. And he wasn't even with Flurys then. He was a student at the time and noticed a queue snaking out of Flurys and stretching almost till Park Hotel. 'There wasn't the shadow of a doubt in my mind that they were giving freebies. So I joined the queue, but wisdom struck halfway down the line when I asked my friend to inquire what the line was for. All those people were actually waiting to buy Christmas cakes!' he says. Now, on the other side of the counter, he's had to smuggle in celebrity customers through the back gate at times for a taste of the rich plum cake.

The recipe's sacrosanct, and Kumar who's a purist has introduced customs like the fruit mixing ceremony in which invitees get to mix dry fruits with rum and spices. This year they invited underprivileged children from CRY and got the youngsters to help mix 700kg of fruit. A staggering 25,000kg of cake are made in December and early January, 10 times the amount churned out during the rest of the year. Of this, 15,000kg are the rich plum cake. The production necessitates the hiring of extra hands, and on December 25, extra security guards.

'The fruit cake started off as a porridge eaten on Christmas Eve. Later preserved fruits, butter and spices made their way into it, and the porridge evolved into a cake,' says Kumar. 'Flurys was the place that the extremely rich, and at one time, extremely white people would frequent,' he adds.

Sixty-five-year-old Shivnath Ram, the oldest employee in the confectionery, remembers Mr Flurys (who founded Flurys in 1927) coming for a month every December. And yes, he would take a personal interest in the baking of Christmas cakes. 'Earlier, there used to be a lot more of these. Now, we have its cousins like Dundee cakes as well,' says Ram.

Nutty over Nahoum's

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  Issac Nahoum is proud of the 111-year-old recipe that his bakery still uses to bake its legendary cakes: Pic by Rashbehari Das

'We used to supply to Government House and the erstwhile Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, had our cake there. He said it was the best fruit cake he'd ever tasted,' says Isaac Nahoum with obvious pride. The recipe has come down from his grandfather who set up shop 111 years ago, and it has long acquired the status of a legend in Calcutta.

Earlier, they would supply to a huge European and Anglo-Indian community, and Nahoum clearly remembers the tin trunks belonging to people from the tea estates that lined a side of the shop during Christmas. They would stock up on the rich fruit cake and other goodies to take back home.

'People who've settled all over the globe make a sentimental journey back to Calcutta during Christmas, and we're mobbed on December 24 and 25,' says Nahoum whose brother David passed away this year.

There're other Christmas specialties at Nahoum & Sons: mince pies and the Christmas pudding that you steam, pour brandy over, flamb� and have with fresh cream. But the cake's the bestseller. Nahoum likes his flamb�ed with cherry brandy. 'It gives it a kick, like liqueur chocolate,' he says. And now, with Nahoum's planning to set up an e-shop as well, more people can get a kick out of their Christmas cake.

Sold on Saldanhas

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  Three generations are involved in turning out Christmas goodies at Saldanhas: Pic by Rashbehari Das

It smells strongly of Christmas at Saldanha Bakery & Confectionery. Their freshly baked fruit cakes are cooling on stands in the family home's dining room (they take orders at home), and the newly whitewashed walls of the 'mixing room' are splattered with cake batter. 'When it splatters that high, you know the cake's been mixed well,' says 78-year-old Denzil Saldanha, whose mother started the Goan bakery about 80 years ago.

No ingredient is bought till a sample wins approval from him personally. And with daughter Debra Alexander and 19-year-old granddaughter Alisha helping out, it's still a family business that mostly bakes on order. The Saldanhas reckon they're the only Goan bakery left standing after many others shut shop.

Along with a host of other goodies like coconut macaroons and lemon drops, fruit cakes are made throughout the year, but it's during Christmas that the demand peaks. 'You don't know whether to stand on your head, it's so crowded here at the time,'says Alisha. In December alone, about 20,000 cakes are churned out of the traditional wood-fired oven.'Just this morning, customers picked up cakes to take home to Canada and Australia, and a Dutch lady is ferrying some to Holland as well — theirs are whiter and spongier,' says Debra.

The Anglo-Indian way

Walk into Errol 'Brien's Park Circus home and you'll spot a mix of fruit peels, raisins and cherries catching the sun in giant glass jars on his verandah. 'We soak these in rum, a lot of it, for two weeks and then fix a date with our baker. Of course, we buy more than needed since a lot of the nuts and peels never find their way into the cake,' smiles 'Brien, who edited the book The Anglo-Indian Way released this year.

And as with many Calcutta families, his relationship with his baker stretches back generations — the baker's grandfather used to bake for 'Briens' grandparents. The image he paints grows sepia tinted as he describes his grandmother measuring out the ingredients in chataks, a measure of weight, even as he and his siblings busied themselves 'pinching ingredients'.

But the crucial elements of the Christmas cake traditions have remained the same: buying ingredients from New Market, sunning them, the family bustling around as the baker hand-mixes all the ingredients in a huge earthenware bowl, and then tasting the first cake when the freshly-baked batch is deposited home that night.

'Each family recipe is fiercely preserved,' says 'Brien. Though many of his relatives migrated abroad, it seems the prized Christmas cake recipe has survived.

'There's a huge Anglo-Indian population in Melbourne and we've been using the exact recipe there for decades,' says his cousin Charles Andrews, who migrated in the 1970s.

An Armenian angle

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  The Anglo-Indian and Armenian communities both have their own traditions related to the Christmas cake: Pix by Rashbehari Das

'The Armenian Club in Queens Mansion on Park Street was called the 'Bada Club' because all the community's 'bada people' or big shots would go there,' says Peter Hyrapiet, the club's president. On Christmas day, which is celebrated on January 6 by the Armenians, a traditional lunch with dishes made by each family — pilaf (a pulao with raisins), dolma or mincemeat wrapped in grape leaves, kebabs and Armenian cheese — would be laid out there. And the cake would usually be bought from Nahoum's. Though this tradition didn't make it past the 1960s, the other one, a tea party at the Armenian Sports Club on the Maidan is still going strong, with each member carrying home a box of Christmas cake and some goodies.

'We used to buy our Christmas cakes from Arizona, an Armenian bakery down the road, and a special essence gave it a unique aroma,' says 93-year-old Violet Smith, joint managing director, Fairlawn Hotel on Sudder Street. Walk in on any morning and you're sure to spot the perfectly made-up Armenian lady with not a ginger-coloured hair out of place. Fairlawn, which has been featured in films like City of Joy, has a special Christmas dinner on December 25 that includes fruit cake baked according to the recipe of her late British husband.

Interestingly, Christmas cake isn't an integral part of the celebrations in Armenia. 'It has become a part of the celebrations of the Armenian community in Calcutta because they have integrated customs from communities like the Anglo-Indians,' says Vahan Tevosyan, a student of the Armenian College.

Cakes at church

The Sevika Sangam (ladies mission) of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in Calcutta has been making 200 Christmas cakes a year for four decades. Most orders come from church members, with the proceeds going to charity. 'This tradition, with the cakes being baked at the bakery, is unique to Calcutta,' says Benzy Roy, its secretary.

The story's different at St Paul's Cathedral. 'Many in our congregation have their cakes baked. And they guard them, since every recipe is different, and you don't want another person's cake in your home,' says Patricia Sarma, who is from England and has been a member of St. Paul's for over 40 years.

However, Sarma bakes her cakes at home with a few 'English tricks', like adding black molasses for a dark colour.

The Calcutta Christmas cake, like others baked in the country, may not be a true-blue Brit cake. 'It is very different from the Brit Christmas cake — in the West, cakes are much heavier and packed with dry fruits,' says Shaun Kenworthy.

Nonetheless, it's the culinary star of the Christmas season—and an amalgamation of the east and West. No wonder every Calcuttan wants his pound — or should that be a kilogram - of cake during Christmas.

PLUM CAKE (1/2 kg)

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Ingredients:

• 125g brown sugar • 125g butter • 3 eggs • 100g flour • 5g ginger powder • 3g cinnamon powder • 2g nutmeg powder • 100g cashew nut • 60g each of tutti frutti, mixed peel, dry cherries, sultanas • 50ml each rum and brandy

Method:

1.Soak all the dry fruits in the alcohols for at least 2-3 weeks , the longer , the better.

2.Cream together the butter and the brown sugar, until light and fluffy.

3.Add the eggs , one at a time ,mixing between each addition.

4.Fold in the flour and all the dry spices.

5.Mix in the liquor soaked dry fruits.

6.Bake at about 160°C for about one hour, check for done-ness by inserting a skewer , if it comes out clean, the cake is ready.

7.Cool on a wire rack ,wrap in a cling film when cold , consume after 2-3 days .This cake can keep upto a month if stored in a dry ,cool place.

TIPS:

• Rub the marinated dry fruits with the flour before mixing in the batter, this helps to distribute the fruits equally in the cake.

• Whisk the eggs a little bit by hand before mixing in the butter sugar mix, It helps in emulsification and hence a smoother mix.

• If powdering your own spices, ensure to powder each spice separately (ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon ), it helps to bring out better flavour of the cake.

(Recipe from Flurys)