By Alisa Lashley

WITH Christmas right around the corner and a lot to be done, one would find that a Guyanese home may be in a bit of a messy confusion as the Christmas cleaning begins, and the ovens are popping with many delicacies to tickle our taste buds during this season. One such treat is the famous and ever-popular Guyanese black cake. The black cake is historically the Caribbean’s version of the British dessert, plum pudding, but with ‘a hint of the Caribbean’. According to ‘Cooking in Victorian England: A History’, “Banned by the Puritans in the 1660s for its rich ingredients, the plum pudding and its customs came back into popularity during the reign of George the First. Known sometimes as ‘the Pudding King’, George requested that plum pudding be served as part of his royal feast when he celebrated his first Christmas in England, after arriving from Hanover to take the throne in 1714. By 1740, a recipe for ‘plum porridge’ appeared in Christmas Entertainments. In the Victorian era, Christmas annuals, magazines and cookbooks celebrated the sanctity of family as much as the sanctity of Jesus’ birth, and the tradition of all family members stirring the pudding was often referenced… Poorer families made the richest version of plum pudding that they could afford. Even workhouse inmates anticipated a plum pudding on Christmas Day.”

The black cake prepared in Guyana and the Caribbean is a delicacy no one can resist. Normative by culture, most persons prepare black cake at Christmas. It usually starts with the preparations of the fruits; the blending or chopping of them, then soaking them in alcoholic concoctions so that they can absorb the flavours of the added mixtures.

A RARE SKILL

Making the perfect black cake is considered a rare skill that requires a perfect balance between the cake’s texture, flavour and colour, with both amateur and professional bakers undertaking this task with the utmost seriousness. Skilled bakers usually soak the fruit that’ll be used for their black cakes months in advance, weighing and measuring each ingredient as carefully as if it is a scientific experiment. Anyone who has had any experience in black-cake baking considers themselves an authentic black cake maker, and were subject to be broached in a circle of bakers. One would hear the boastings and heckling as everyone tries to prove themselves the “top black cake expert”. Making black cake is considered a labour of love, and an achievement to indeed be boastful about. And with the range of mixers and food processors on the market, baking the black cake is now as easy as it would ever be.

Many of us, at some point in our lives, have assisted our mothers, grandmothers or other ‘black cake maker’ in stirring a huge mixing bowl of black cake batter with a large spoon. Back then, it was thought of as boring and tiring work, but to the little beings of any household, the most amazing part of creating the black cake was scooping up the remaining batter from the container, and licking the spoon.

However, amidst everything mentioned, you won’t ever encounter one standard recipe that is used for black-cake making. It is those types of vague and unquantified secret ingredients that make it difficult to replicate someone else’s black-cake recipe, unless they themselves offer it to you.

Mrs. Gwendyln Forde, in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, listed her techniques to making what she terms the perfect black cake.

“The texture is very important. Usually, the consistency of any black cake will make it either a good or bad treat. Recipes and techniques for black cake vary according to personal preferences. This cake is, therefore, an extremely special one. It’s one of those cakes where crucial steps, like how important a low baking temperature is, or how to make the burnt sugar to colour the cake, hold extreme importance, and if not done correctly, could be like the Grinch “stealing Christmas”, but in the form of a cake,” Mrs. Forde stated.
“Dried fruits,” she went on to explain, “usually work well with this cake. You can grind the fruits, using a traditional food mill or a blender. The blender has the grinding power to get the fruits to a smooth consistency, and it does so quickly. Grind your fruits, then soak with rum and wine. An alternative method is to soak the fruits whole, and grind when ready to bake the cake. No method is wrong here; just different, and based on preference. If the fruits weren’t soaked for months prior, an alternative would be to soak the fruits in wine for about 30 minutes or more, and allow it to cool, then macerate and combine with rum. This is not a crumb-type cake; it resembles more of a pudding, so a high temperature is not needed to cook the cake. Some people bake this in a bain-marie (water bath) to steam the cake. You can bake the cake anywhere between 250-300 degrees, and this temperature will determine how long to bake the cake. For example, baking at 250 degrees for two hours, or 300 degrees for one-and-a-half hours.”

A less technical black cake requires only a few simple ingredients of your choice.
The ‘Good ole Guyanese black cake’ has become synonymous, in our Christmas tradition, with varying recipes passing from generation to generation, and as such its legacy will forever remain, like Dave Martins says, “WE OWN”.