Bajan Black Cake

As tradition built it

Bajan Black Cake

Barbados's Christmas fruit cake, baked 2 to 3 hours after the fruit's long rum soak

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• 1 lb raisins
• 1 lb currants
• 1 lb cherries
• 1 lb prunes
• 400ml rum and 200ml port, or brandy in the same proportion rum, port or brandy, for soaking the fruit
• enough to make around ½ cup of burnt sugar browning sugar, for the browning
• water, to thin the browning
• 1 lb butter
• 1 lb dark brown sugar
• 6 eggs
• 1½ lb flour

Method

1. Soak the raisins, currants, cherries and prunes (a pound of each in a representative full recipe) in rum, port or brandy for anywhere from a week to several months; some households keep the same soaking jar going for a full year or longer.
2. Pulverise the soaked fruit to a paste.
3. Make the browning: burn sugar deliberately to near blackness and thin it with water.
4. Fold the browning in last alongside a pound each of butter and dark brown sugar, six eggs and a pound and a half of flour.

Notes

The quantities above are drawn from cross-checked recipe convention rather than a single named Bajan cookbook author, a gap this chapter says is worth closing in a future edition.

What a modern chef changes

Discipline Over Technique

Rung 04

Method

1. Soak the fruit properly and for long enough, in a real, additive-free Barbadian rum rather than a heavily sugared commercial one, since added sugar changes both the preservation chemistry and the final sweetness balance of the finished cake.
2. Dry a portion of the soaked fruit briefly in a dehydrator before blitzing, concentrating its flavour rather than adding further liquid to an already wet batter.
3. Burn the sugar for the browning in small batches over direct Big Green Egg heat rather than on a domestic hob, for a more even, controllable caramelisation short of bitterness.