Sri Lankan Christmas Food - Down memory lane

Christmas to me meant my auntie Violet’s secret recipe Christmas cake, made at least a couple of months in advance, well matured, iced in marzipan and cut into little pieces and wrapped in squares of waxed paper and then again in red and green cellophane paper with the two ends twisted like a toffee. Christmas cake was served with milk wine and ginger beer for us kids. My Dutch Burgher neighbours sent us a plate of food with Christmas cake, a few pieces of love cake, a couple of slices of Breudher with slices of Dutch cheese until most of the Burghers of Sri Lanka migrated to Australia after Sinhala was made the official language of the country.

Sri Lankan Christmas cake which obviously is closely related to the English Christmas cake brought to Ceylon when its colonisers arrived has over the years changed to accommodate a Sri Lankan flavour by the inclusion of ingredients such as roasted semolina, oodles of cashew nuts, honey, ginger, melon and chow chow preserves, rose water and almond essence and a few spices such as cloves, cardamoms and cinnamon, roasted and ground together and brandy from Father’s liquor cabinet. The English would not recognise it now but it is definitely an improvement on the stodgy English cakes. The fruit is cut into fine pieces and marinated for days or even weeks, cashews roasted and chopped finely and semolina roasted and cooled, at least 25 eggs separated, yolks added to the creamed butter and sugar and half of the egg whites whisked till still, the other half reserved to make kisses – little meringue rosettes delicately flavoured with almond or rose essence. The prepared cakes were usually sent to the bakery to bake after the bread was done as most houses did not boast of ovens then. The baked cakes were wrapped up in brown paper, then layers of newspaper and stored in boxes with precautions taken to keep the ever present ants from attacking them. A week before Christmas, the sheets of cake are iced with home-made marzipan using ground cashews, almond essence, icing sugar, egg whites, brandy and lemon juice and cut into small squares and wrapped.

I am not posting a recipe for Christmas cake as there are many around. I use my Auntie Violet’s usually as it has become my signature recipe for the family but have also made Charmaine Solomons’ a pioneer of Sri Lankan cooking, Mrs Dickman’s from her cookbook written by her daughter Shanti Cassie Chetty which is a really good cookbook and even more recently Peter Kuruwita’s which is a really nice cake which I made last year. I have come across Christmas cakes that use dates which I never add to mine and very fancy cakes with whole exotic fruits which look like stained glass when cut. I am a traditionalist so I make my usual cake around October (our labour weekend) and store it; ice it and wrap it in different ways. One year, I cut them into postcard sizes and hand painted a Christmas card and gave them to my family and friends. Last year, I made these Santa sledges using candy canes and chocolate Santas. 

 

 This year, I will make a stained glass Christmas cake and not my usual recipe for a change.

Another Christmas delicacy I remember from my childhood is the Breudher, a rich fruity bread that is made by taking bread dough and beating butter and eggs into it and kneading sultanas and baking in a Bundt pan after letting the dough rise well. Breudher is eaten usually for breakfast, buttered and with slices of cheese. I have started baking a Breudher as a gift to my Dutch son in law whose mum always has a similar bread for her Christmas brunch. Again you can find the recipe online and in most cookbooks.

Milk wine is the staple drink that is served with Christmas cake to visitors. It is made by using Sri Lanka’s signature alcohol Arrack, copious amounts of sugar, condensed milk, spices etc. and after infusion is strained several times and the horrible taste of Arrack miraculously transforms into a sweet and clear tasty wine that is served in tiny glasses.

Many people make Love Cake instead of Christmas cake and it is one of those Sri Lankan dishes from heaven made with roasted semolina, enough real butter that would sit on your thighs for a lifetime, sugar, honey, lime rind, heaps of cashew nuts and eggs as well as spices. It melts in the mouth and is a moist and tasty delicacy that is delicious. There is a Dutch delicacy that is sold in Dutch bakeries and delicatessens of Australia and New Zealand which we call Dutch fingers which is a poor relation of our Love Cake but it could be the origin of this slice of decadence.

There are other memories of Christmas delights made by different people from my childhood and youth. One auntie of mine used to make these melt in the mouth crescent shaped cookie out of ground cashews and icing sugar flavoured with lemon rind which were baked and dusted with icing sugar. Another friend of my mother’s made gingerbread trees and stars; many made kisses or meringues using the left over egg whites from the Christmas cake. My mother always made marshmallows with three layers – a pink layer flavoured with rose essence, a white layer in the middle flavoured with vanilla and a green layer of almond essence. I make this with the white layer flavoured with coconut essence now. I will post the recipe later when I post my New Year recipes if anyone is keen to have it.

In Sri Lanka turkey was not a Christmas staple as it was so expensive and not many could afford it. Instead, stuffed chicken, duck, pork or mutton were part of the Christmas table. Savoury rice dishes such as fried rice, ghee rice or lumprice, the heavenly banana-leaf wrapped spicy rice with a mixed spicy meat curry, an onion sambal, a pounded prawn sambal, two frikadels or meat cutlets (spicy minced meat balls, battered, crumbed and deep fried) and a fried ash plantain (a type of banana) squares and brinjal (aubergine) dish, baked and which gives out a mouth-watering aroma when the packets are opened are common. Several meat dishes, prawns and other seafood, several vegetable dishes and several sides like cutlets would be common on the Christmas table.

I always make a stuffed chicken or turkey with a fruity stuffing I learnt at a class by Sunita Godamunne whose cookery classes I attended as a teenager. The stuffing is made using sautéed onions, green chillies,  chopped bacon, breadcrumbs, pineapple cubes and juice, chopped cashewnuts and spices. The chicken or turkey is then covered with pineapple cubes covered in bacon on toothpicks and baked. Once baked each toothpick is topped with a cherry tomato and decorated with parsley and surrounded by stuffing balls and roast vegetables. This is another dish I have scrapped now in warmer weather in favour of more lighter sea food or cured salmon.

Christmas pudding complete with brandy butter and custard were also made. I came across an interesting pudding recipe by Shanti Cassie Chetty which I have made once with really good results. However, I don’t make Christmas pudding anymore now as I live in a country where Christmas happens to be in the middle of a hot summer so we tend to make either a berry trifle or a fruit and cream filled meringue (the famous Kiwi Pavolva) for Christmas dessert.

Another lovely custom we had was that everyone who celebrated Christmas would send round a plate or a tray of food to share with their neighbours especially those of other faiths who did not celebrate Christmas. The same custom was repeated by Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus at Sinhala and Tamil New year season in April and Muslims at Ramazan. This was the Sri Lanka before the civil war when all ethnic groups lived in harmony and in peace.

 

Have a Merry and Safe Christmas everyone!