It celebrated the advent of Christmas and considered to be an usher of good tidings and happiness. The warm ritual involving dry fruits and nuts, spice mixes, and flavoring liquids is the stage setter for the festivities to come. This year, the traditional cake mixing ceremony was with a twist of the New Normal. Following the social distancing norms, separate mixing trays instead of a giant one was arranged for each guest to help themselves in mixing the assortment of colorful ingredients, nuts, spices, and a variety of liquor.
The ceremony was open to a few of the locals along with media friends, and in-house guests to prepare the Alma matter of sinful plum cakes and bring in the spirit of an early Christmas. The invitees donned aprons, gloves, protective headgears, and the Santa caps. The event was set-up by the resident chefs and headed by the Executive Chef Mihir Kane. The cake mixture included a wide array of fruits including raisins, glazed red cherries, orange peel, tutti-frutti, black currants, dates, figs, dried apricots, prunes, and nuts like walnuts, cashew, almond flakes, and pistachios, aside from spices such as ground cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and the Chef’s secret spice mix poured into a rectangular mixing pot.
To top it all off, syrups like golden syrup, molasses, honey, and vanilla were added. Everyone armed themselves with bottles of liquor like whiskey, white and dark rum, vodka gin, wine, beer and got ready to tackle the colorful mounds of ingredients. The mixture is soaked in rich distilled liquids and allowed to infuse in the nuts and dry fruits for three weeks to mature, blended in the cake batter, they are used in baking plum cakes, plum pudding, plum tarts, and many more Christmas delights. A welcome Hi- tea with a variety of canapés and petit fours along with warm mulled wine set the tone for the evening.
