Cake-Mixing Season: How India Updated the Christmas Plum Cake

At a hotel ballroom in Mumbai, the Christmas season now begins not with a carol but with the rustle of plastic gloves.

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Representative image.

Long tables at ITC Grand Central are piled high with dried fruits, candied peels and nuts; guests in red and green aprons lean in as chefs cue them to start tossing. The annual cake-mixing ceremony - a colonial ritual of soaking fruits for plum cake - has morphed into a social media moment, and, increasingly, a showcase for a newer kind of Christmas cake.

Traditionally, the Indian Christmas plum cake was a serious affair: dark, moist, and unapologetically boozy, its fruits steeped for weeks in rum or brandy. Today's hotel and home-baker versions are lighter on alcohol, lighter in texture, and more inclusive - designed for kids, older relatives and teetotallers who still want that unmistakable Christmassy aroma.