Fruit Cake

Fruit cake reveals the Anglophile tendencies of the Peranakans. It was customary for many
families to serve it during Chinese New Year. It is perhaps one of those quintessential
British legacies shared by Britain’s many colonies. I have a friend from Kerala, India, who
insists that her mother soaks her candied fruit in brandy for many weeks. My mother would
have agreed. The English soaked their fruits to preserve them on the long sea voyages to
their territories. In the Caribbean, the fruit is soaked in rum for their version
of fruit cake, which they call black cake.

My mother would only accept top-quality brandy for her fruit cake. That meant
stashing away all those expensive bottles of Hennessy VSOP which my father would get
from his business clients at Christmas-time. The VSOP was only used for her baking and
nothing else!

Like the Caribbean black cake, my mother’s fruit cake involved the use of a bittersweet
caramel which I now know as ‘browning’. At first, I could not fathom why her recipe
required me to ‘burn’ brown sugar. The burnt sugar provided the dark brown colour and
gave a special essence to the fruit cake.

My friend’s parents used to make fruit cake and were always puzzled as to why their
candied fruits would sink to the bottom of the cake. My mother’s tip was that she coated
these little raisins and sultanas in flour so that they would distribute evenly throughout the
cake. She also made these cakes early enough before Chinese New Year, to give it time to
get more moist and luscious. Ageing the fruit cake brought out the flavour. The cake could
be kept for a year, maintained regularly by a sprinkling of brandy to keep the cake ‘spiked’.

My mother also used this recipe for her daughters’ wedding cakes. It would be a home-
made affair of baking the cake, frosting it with delicious royal icing layered over marzipan
(no less!). The cake would be cut into individual rectangular slices, and wrapped in tin foil
to prevent oil seepage before going into pretty silver boxes.

Making fruit cake is a labour of love involving neat chopping of candied fruit and days
of preparation. I hope that you make this cake for those you love and in turn, those who
receive it will eat it with tremendous joy and appreciate your effort.

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