Black Cake: fancy fruit soaks in rum for up to a year to make this rich Caribbean Christmas cake!

2 min read

1 year ago Danilo

There are people who can’t wait to plan Christmas every year and, If you’re on that, it’s never too early to start preparing the Caribbean holiday treat known as black cake or, not by chance, Christmas cake.
Probably you agree the holidays would go a lot pleasant if everyone was handed a shot of rum and a delicious slice of cake.
How could conversation not go pleasurable after that?
Apparently, that’s what they do in the Caribbean…and with great success!
To make it, islanders soak an expensive array of dried fruits, like cherries, raisins, and prunes in rum and cherry brandy for up to a year before baking.

After British colonists introduced plum pudding, which is more like cake than it sounds, to Caribbean islands, locals adapted the recipe with available ingredients in their region.
Actually black cake may be a far cry from the original pudding or its cousin fruitcake but, If traditional fruitcake makers leave the pieces of soaked fruit intact, black cake creators pulverize them into a sweet paste, and the final result is a rich, smooth cake, and this along with a dose of molasses and brown sugar that give the cake it’s deep brown coloring.

What version of the cake ends up on your fork depends on what island your plate rests on, and most will agree that regional flavors make unique the Caribbean treat.
For example, a combination of extracts, called “mixed essence,” adds notes of vanilla, almond, and pear, even though on Trinidad recipes may use bitters and vanilla, while a homemade burnt-sugar syrup called “browning” contributes a caramel flavor, and the rum-soaked fruit offers a bit of bittersweetness.

Either way, families across the islands and their relatives in the United States, especially in New York, reserve baking and eating black cake for Christmas, and whoever’s making it bakes only a few, so giving one is a deeply affectionate gesture.
In fact, someone devoted months of preparation and more than four hours of baking to each cake, along with lots of love, liquor, and expensive fancy fruit.
In the Caribbean, in fact, dried raisins and cherries are much harder to come by, for instance, to a banana!