Fruit-mixing ceremonies herald festive season in Tiruchi

TIRUCHI Hotels and bakeries in the city have begun to prepare for the festive season’s Christmas cakes and confectionery through in-house and public ‘cake-mixing’ ceremonies where large quantities of dried fruit, nuts, spices, and sugar are soaked in alcohol as a prelude to the cooking process. On Tuesday, Ramyas Hotels held its first cake mixing ceremony. Huge quantity of dry fruits, nuts, and spices such as cashew, almonds, dates, pistachio, cherries, raisins, sultanas, tutti-frutti, orange peel, ginger powder, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves were mixed with fruit jam, and red wine, rum and brandy in order to be macerated for several weeks.

“This mixture will be used to produce approximately 75 kg of plum cake. Every ingredient has its own character, but when combined, they create something truly wonderful. We hope to make cake mixing an annual tradition,” said R.

Natarajan, food and beverages manager, Ramyas Hotels.