KOCHI: Come Christmas, rich plum cakes decorated with hard icing or royal icing were a usual sight in bakeries across the state. There was a time when the celebrations were incomplete in houses of almost all without cutting of hard-icing cakes. These scrumptious sweets, made using plum cakes or butter cakes and decorated with a stiff frosting of roses and other flower designs have been a favourite for many. The cake evokes a feeling of nostalgia and is back with a bang this Christmas.
More inquires are flowing in at Thiruvananthapuram-based food groups about the availability of the royal icing cakes of half and one kilo. The situation is not that different in Kochi, but these goodies are not available easily in the city.
The cake which was a usual part of every celebration has now been limited as Christmas special cakes at the Eastern Bakery which, one of the oldest bakeries in the city.
The present owner Mohanan says, “I have been taking care of the bakery for the past 60 years. Recently, with the advent of other fresh cream cakes and flavour cakes like black forest hard-icing cakes has been sidelined. But during Christmas, we have many regular customers for it, especially elder citizens and children born in the ’90s. Some customers buy these cakes and gift them to their children settled in other cities,” he says.
The cakes are a trip down memory lane for Advaith V S, a 34-year-old techie. For him, it was a regular ritual during his childhood at Christmas time to eat and gift the cake to his family and friends. “I was on the lookout for it which was more like extinct species. Searching on the EAT Trivandrum group I found it was available in Eastern Bakery. For me, it is a cake of emotion,” he says. However, it is also baked by a few home bakers in the city. The many enquiries in food groups made homebaker Bindu G S to prepare hard-icing cakes since last year.
“I am a fan of these delicacies. I bake them in plum and butter cakes. The plum hard-icing cakes are served on the third day as the ingredients will be blended only then and it has a good shelf life too comparing other fresh cream cakes. Chocolate, butterscotch and butter hard-icing cakes are also popular this year,” says Bindu who has been baking for a decade.
Rare sight in Kochi
However, In Kochi finding these delicacies of yesteryear is a difficult task. According to Sunayna Abid, one of the popular home bakers in Kochi, there is less interest in hard-icing cakes for Christmas celebrations. “There are only a few cake lovers who are into royal icing cakes. Last year, I had baked a cake for a client for his elder parents who love hard-cing. This year, so far I haven’t received such orders,” she says.