Christmas recipe: A special plum cake by pastry chef Lenin Raj of Hilton Chennai

Pastry chef Lenin Raj from the Hilton Chennai makes the art of a baking perfect Christmas cake look easy. So it comes as no surprise when we discover that he hails from a family of chefs, that is before he joined the Hilton family way back in 2002, in Jumeirah, and discovered his love for all things sweet! Going back in history, he says, "Cake mixing marked the arrival of the harvest season." He goes on to add, " During those days, a lot of fruits and nuts were harvested in the harvest season and these seasonal fruits & nuts used to go into the preparation of the traditional Christmas fruitcake. They used to save up the mix for the coming year as well in the belief that it would bring another rich year."

Here is the break down of chef Lenin's Christmas cake!   

Procedure:

1. Take a large bowl and sieve the flour and bakingpowder together. Keep it aside. Take another bowl mix the brown sugar and butter until the sugar dissolves completely by using an electric blender. Now break the eggs and add them one by one. Keep beating the mixture till it is light and frothy and stiff peaks are formed.
2. Gradually add the flour to this egg-butter and sugar mixture spoon by spoon so that no lumps are formed. Keep stirring so that a homogeneous mixture is formed. Add the vanilla essenceand the spice powder and mix it well. Allow the batter to rest for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile chop the nuts and the prunes finely. Mix in the batter. Beat well again. Reserve some nuts that you can put on top of the cake. Now pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes. Prepare a baking tray by lining it with butter paper. Grease it with oil or butter and dust some flour. Add the batter.
4. Bake at 180 degrees for one hour or at 200 degrees for 45 minutes. The temperature mostly depends on the type of oven you have. Insert a skewer to check if the cake is ready. If it comes out clean, take out the cake and place it on a wire rack to cool.

Tips:

- Fold the flour gently during the mixing; it shouldn’t be mixed too fast. 

- Double line the baking tin and wrap the tin with double layer brown paper to stop cake burning on a long bake.  

- I love decorating my Christmas cake with little marzipan fruits. They look really cute and colourful.

sonali@newindianexpress.com | @brightasunshine