Jamaican Black Cake, also known as Christmas Cake, is a rich and flavorful dessert that is traditionally enjoyed on special occasions in Jamaica. Made with rum-soaked fruits, aromatic spices, and a dark, moist cake base, this cake is a delightful treat that will impress your friends and family.
With five pounds of dried fruit and multiple dosings of dark rum, this aged Jamaican Black Cake is a fruitcake for serious fruitcake fans only.
Jamaican Black Cake, also known as Christmas Cake, is a rich and decadent dessert, deeply ingrained in Jamaican tradition. This heartwarming cake is packed with dried fruits and warm spices, all soaked in dark rum and red wine. It's a perfect dessert for the holiday season, but trust us, you'll want to have it all year round!
If you know anything at all about West-Indian Caribbean culture you already know that Jamaican Black Cake is a must have at Christmas time. If you didn’t know before now, a Caribbean Christmas dinner invite will almost certainly net you a slice of the most alcoholic cake you will ever eat. A cousin of the British […]
Shivi Ramoutar’s rum-soaked festive fruit cake is a popular recipe in the Caribbean at Christmas time – every family has their own recipe, and every family claims their recipe is the best. Here’s Shivi’s boozy Caribbean-style Christmas cake. Or, make this decadent Christmas cake using spiced rum butter mincemeat.
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The Traditional Jamaican Black Cake is preferred and baked by most Jamaicans during the Christmas season. As with cooking, every Jamaican has a slightly different recipe which still turns out great. This recipe is for two 9 inch cakes. It takes a little effort, but the outcome is delicious and gratifying. For the best mouthwatering Jamaican Black Fruit Cake, fruits should be soaked in Red Label Wine for 1 week at minimum or to up to a year. When soaked that long, the dried fruits are allowed to absorb the flavored liquid. Place the fruits in a large jar, pour wine/rum in until fruits completely
Here is the recipe for one of Jamaica’s favorite and most delectable cakes, The Jamaican black forest cake. This dessert will surely have you licking all ten fingers and asking for a second, third …
In today's blog post we will explore the intricacies of the Jamaican fruitcake/ black cake/ Christmas cake. Sooo......it’s that time of year again! The crisper, cooler air heralds the most wonderful time of the year. That time when we relish the relief from hot, humid days by basking in the much-anticipated Christmas breeze. That time when our hearts grow a bit bigger to extend more support and show more love to those who are less fortunate. That time for reflecting and meditating on the most precious gift of all: the gift of Jesus Christ. That time for indulging in the delectable delight of the famed fruitcake that tantalizes our taste buds. It is the most popular dessert in Jamaica and possibly the English-speaking Caribbean during the Christmas season. Renowned as the black cake because of its rich, dark color, this cake graces the table of almost every home in Jamaica at this time of the year. However, it is also quite popular at weddings, birthdays and other celebrations during the year. Its history is based on a plum pudding brought to the Caribbean by the English in the 18th century. Over the centuries the methods and ingredients have morphed into many variations. However, one thing is certain, its popularity seems to grow exponentially with each year that comes. Most persons closely guard their recipes under lock and key and will not share it. Neither for love nor money. A few will even be offended if you dare to ask them to share their recipe. The main reason is that at this time of the year, the making of fruit cakes is huge business in Jamaica. All bakers truly believe that their fruitcake is the best and hence they market it as such. Everyone’s cake is unique and results will vary based on a variety of factors. These include the quantity and types of spices used, the types and brands of wine and/or rum, the amount of sugar and the addition of extra ingredients such as molasses or juices. Some persons use margarine. Some use butter. Some use a mixture of margarine and butter. Some swear by the soaking of the dried fruits in concoctions of rum and wine for several months up to a year or more while others believe it makes no difference and that a week or less is enough. In the case of the latter, persons tend to stew the fruits before using them in their recipes. In addition, the fruits used are no longer limited to the traditional raisins, prunes and currants but have expanded to include other dried fruits such as cranberries and apricots. Some may even opt not to use prunes. Textures will vary too. Some are like pudding others are lighter but moist. My mother’s fruitcake was lighter but I have also come to appreciate and love a slightly denser texture. In recent years, new flavors of fruit cakes have taken the market by storm. We are no longer limited to the traditional fruit cake. Variations include the sorrel fruit cake, the coconut fruit cake, the nuts fruit cake, the coffee fruit cake and even the vegan fruit cake among others. I will share with you the recipe I used to bake my very first fruit cake. Over the years I have tweaked it and tried different rums, wines, different quantities of spices and fruits. You can use the recipe as is or tweak it to suit your preferences. Be warned though. It is a labor of love as the process can and does take a while especially if you are a novice baker but it is worth it. Preparation of Fruits for Baking 1 lb. raisins 1 lb. currants 1 lb. prunes You can also add some cherries and mixed peel if you like 1. Blend the fruits or leave them whole if you like to taste chunks of fruit in your cake. 2. Cover the contents with a mixture of rum and wine in a glass jar with a lid that seals well. Red Label wine is a favorite among Jamaican bakers. It is advised that you do not use plastic containers. 3. From time to time, examine the soaked mixture and add more rum and wine as necessary, to keep the fruit covered. Ingredients 8 oz. sugar 8 oz. butter 5 eggs 2 tbsp. browning (use less or more according to how dark you want your cake to be) 2 tsp. lime juice 1 tsp. grated lime rind 2 tsp. vanilla 1 tsp. of almond flavoring 1 tsp rose water 3 to 4 cups mixed fruits 6 oz. flour 6 oz. bread crumbs 1 tsp. baking powder ¼ tsp. salt ½ tsp nutmeg 1 tbsp. mixed spice Method 1. Prepare a 9-inch tin by greasing it and lining with baking paper. 2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 3. Pre-heat oven at 325 F 4. Crack eggs in a bowl. Add eggs one by one to the batter and beat in well 5. Mix in browning, vanilla, rose water, almond flavoring, lime juice and rind. 6. Mix in the soaked fruit. 7. Mix together flour, breadcrumbs, baking powder, nutmeg, salt and mixed spice. 8. Use a wooden spoon to gently fold in flour mixture into the batter in 3 portions. 9. Add about a quarter cup of rum/wine mixture to batter. 10.Bake for approximately1 hour 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. If you try this recipe, be sure to let me know how it turns out. Here’s to a very merry Christmas. Happy baking! Enjoy!
The Traditional Jamaican Black Cake is preferred and baked by most Jamaicans during the Christmas season. As with cooking, every Jamaican has a slightly different recipe which still turns out great. This recipe is for two 9 inch cakes. It takes a little effort, but the outcome is delicious and gratifying. For the best mouthwatering Jamaican Black Fruit Cake, fruits should be soaked in Red Label Wine for 1 week at minimum or to up to a year. When soaked that long, the dried fruits are allowed to absorb the flavored liquid. Place the fruits in a large jar, pour wine/rum in until fruits completely
The past few years, Slow Learner (actually Mr. Bread Maiden's mother) and I have been celebrating Christmas by baking a batch of fruitcake. Fruitcake, if you don't know, is that much-maligned dessert bread chock full of fruit, nuts, spices, and a whole lotta alcohol. When you think (or, before meeting Mr. Bread Maiden's kin, what I THOUGHT) of fruitcake looked something like this: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/fruitcakesec.htm I don't even know what those green and red things are. But all that changed. Well, not the part about the green and red things. I don't know if I want to know what those are. The story goes, Slow Learner got the recipe from (you guessed it) Alton Brown. http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/brown_gets_political.html Starting a few months ahead, she bakes the loaves and then once a week gives each loaf a spritz of brandy, which as an added bonus helps preserve it. By the time Christmas rolls around, those things are good and smothered in the stuff. She serves it with whipped cream and more spritzes of brandy. If you want to make the world's best fruitcake, Alton's recipe is here. This year I'll be leaving the fruitcake-making to the expert. Instead of making fruitcake this year, I decided to try my hand at a different type of fruit-alcohol-spices-bread combination. I found a recipe for Jamaican Black Cake, which as one person online so eloquently phrased it, "is what fruitcake wants to be when it grows up." I got the above picture from a google images search and then was sucked into this website. It shows why this cake bears more than a passing resemblance to British Christmas puddings. Not too sweet, made with spiced rum instead of brandy, and mixed with some heaping spoonfuls of molasses, the recipe made my little Latin Americanist heart sing. www.amazon.com The recipe began here, but I made quite a few alterations along the way. The cake also goes by Trinidadian or West Indies Black Cake. You will need: FOR THE DRIED FRUIT 3 cups dried fruit 3/4 cup spiced rum zest from one lemon A few days before you want to bake the cake, put about zest and dried fruit in a large plastic zip-top bag with spiced rum. Suck all the air out of the bag before closing. Let sit in the fridge for a few days. FOR THE DOUGH 1/2 lb butter (softened) 1 cup sugar 2 tbsps dark molasses (the original recipe calls for browning, but I didn't have any) 1 tsp vanilla 11/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp allspice 1/2 tsp salt 4 large eggs dash of rum 1/4 cup slivered almonds 1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F and position a tray in the middle of your oven. Butter two loaf pans. 2. In one large bowl, whip the butter, sugar, vanilla and molasses. Set aside. 3. In a second medium bowl, whip the eggs with a dash of rum. Set aside. 4. In a third medium bowl, mix together the dried ingredients. Set aside. 5. Add the egg mixture to the butter and sugar mixture. 6. Add your rum-soaked fruit and nuts to the wet mixture. 7. A little bit at a time, add the flour to the batter and fold it with a spatula to lightly combine. 8. Divide your dough into the two loaf pans, and bake for 90 minutes or until the top is firm. In order to make sure both loaves would bake equally, I used a kitchen scale to divide them by weight. 9. Let the loaves cool about 30 minutes in the pan, then take them out and let them rest on a cooling rack. Since it was already 10:30pm and I was tired, I let them rest overnight. My first thought was, "those aren't as dark as I was hoping." I think if I had used dark rum, the "browning," brown sugar, or blackstrap molasses, they would've been darker. YUM. 10. After they are cool, pour a good jigger of rum over the top of each cake and store in a plastic zip-top bag. The alcohol acts as a preservative, so pour on! The cake really absorbs a lot of liquid, so don't be stingy. Even though they aren't as dark as they're supposed to be, when we took a bite this morning the cake was very tasty. Success! If I don't post before then, Bread Maiden and family wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The recipe is as close as I can possibly get to Emily Dickinson’s black cake. I make only one concession to modern taste and availability of ingredients. Instead of using all citron, I blend several kinds of candied fruit. I make this on Thanksgiving weekend, wrap it in cheesecloth dipped in brandy and serve it on Christmas Eve. Cut the recipe in half or one-quarter if you must, but DO NOT call it a fruitcake! Yield: 1 very large cake
When it comes to the most delicious Caribbean cuisine, Jamaica takes the cake (literally)! Follow my mouthwatering culinary tour of Jamaican desserts.
The Traditional Jamaican Black Cake is preferred and baked by most Jamaicans during the Christmas season. As with cooking, every Jamaican has a slightly different recipe which still turns out great. This recipe is for two 9 inch cakes. It takes a little effort, but the outcome is delicious and gratifying. For the best mouthwatering Jamaican Black Fruit Cake, fruits should be soaked in Red Label Wine for 1 week at minimum or to up to a year. When soaked that long, the dried fruits are allowed to absorb the flavored liquid. Place the fruits in a large jar, pour wine/rum in until fruits completely
The Traditional Jamaican Black Cake is preferred and baked by most Jamaicans during the Christmas season. As with cooking, every Jamaican has a slightly different recipe which still turns out great. This recipe is for two 9 inch cakes. It takes a little effort, but the outcome is delicious and gratifying. For the best mouthwatering Jamaican Black Fruit Cake, fruits should be soaked in Red Label Wine for 1 week at minimum or to up to a year. When soaked that long, the dried fruits are allowed to absorb the flavored liquid. Place the fruits in a large jar, pour wine/rum in until fruits completely
The Traditional Jamaican Black Cake is preferred and baked by most Jamaicans during the Christmas season. As with cooking, every Jamaican has a slightly different recipe which still turns out great. This recipe is for two 9 inch cakes. It takes a little effort, but the outcome is delicious and gratifying. For the best mouthwatering Jamaican Black Fruit Cake, fruits should be soaked in Red Label Wine for 1 week at minimum or to up to a year. When soaked that long, the dried fruits are allowed to absorb the flavored liquid. Place the fruits in a large jar, pour wine/rum in until fruits completely
Officially the most alcoholic cake that I have EVER baked. Jamaican Black cake is most definitely not for the faint of heart or soberest of people. Containing 2 bottles of dark rum and a half bottl…
Jamaican Breadfruit Punch Recipe || Jamaican Recipe Contest Entry #13 Breadfruit is a very versatile food, used in a variety of ways in the Jamaican diet
Recreating my mother's recipe in a new home.
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The black cake recipe is a dark fruit cake filled with all kinds of fruits; also know by wine cake or Jamaican rum cake.
