The Revolutionary Fruitcake For the Oppressed

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Photo Courtesy: PiesAndFriesDotCom[/caption]

In a desperate attempt to use up half a crate of oranges before they turned squishy, I revolutionised the fruit cake this Christmas. Dark chocolate, a touch of red chilli, tropical citrus (which is a fancy way of saying, “all those oranges slowly rotting in my fridge”), refined flour, exotic spices (unless you are middle-class desi, in which case I mean the pedestrian powdered cinnamon and whole fennel seeds), plus ye olde Lord Krishna-tagged noni (rich, unsalted cow-milk butter) and sunflower oil: these were the ingredients of my magic Christmas invention.

In case you miss the connection, my cue is taken — with richly-deserved bad grace — from the the revolutionary culinary evolution of modernity’s most enterprising global thieves, the English (bless their cold hearts). My season’s baking was mapped to reflect the choicest stuff they pillaged from the colonies and sold to the rest of the world (including humans, who are not very edible).

I’ll be honest: I thought myself rather clever for stuffing my cake with a history of devastation; “Oh, me!”, I thought, “such a smart little cookie! What other bored housewife would have realised popping batter into oven is so symbolic of the modern market and its history of permanent global economic destruction?”

I’ll be honest a little more: I totally primped in front of the china-cabinet glass with my baking bowl and whisk, thinking of a possible future Nobel. [Stranger things have happened, you know. The Brits drained our wealth for centuries and then shut off visas and work permits to us to protect what were suddenly their resources.]

The cake, for all its fancy name, is fairly simple to make. First you poach oranges and fennel seeds in sugar-water, then whisk the reduction into a batter of dark melted chocolate, sunflower oil and flour. Then you pop it into the oven, and top with a ganache of cream, chocolate and orange zest before serving. I made this for a potluck last week, and people applauded it fulsomely. It may have something to do with the hungry avidity with which I followed individual dessert spoons from plate to mouth, but I choose to believe their praise was freely given. 
Either way, my creative genius was terribly bolstered (never a happy portent), and I decided to bless the lucky, lucky people of my family — who live in a different town — with stale shipped parcels of my revolutionary ‘fruit’ cake, to really emphasise the happiness and good cheer of the season.

This is when the batter enterprise started getting wobbly, because my partner, my dear, supportive partner, decided to ‘help’ me with my baking.

Here’s the hat-trick of honesty: my partner is a great cook of all things animal protein. Unfortunately, this has convinced him he has considerable — albeit well-hidden — talent for baking and dessert-making. I love him dearly, but he doesn’t. He once added two teaspoons of salt to malpua batter. However, I am currently not in the pink of health, and fancying myself a head-chef with a willing sous, I consented to his aid. “First,” I said, “poach two peeled oranges in water, with sugar and fennel seeds.” “Right-o”, said he (not really), and disappeared.

Five minutes later, I skidded into the kitchen to shut off the heat and all power outlets. The P. was nowhere to be seen. However, the smell of thick, gloopy burn permeated our small flat. “Darling”, I called, in tones of crystal-edged sweetness, “did you know sugar burned if you put it on at 200 degrees C with only a teaspoon of water?”
“Oh, does it?”, came the disinterested co-parent’s response from the drawing room, cuddling our fawning dogs. I rather think he fancied himself the foppy Lord Grantham, lolling about with dogs to cover up culpability of a particularly unnecessary mess he made, and then left his ‘little people’ to clean up after him.

I gritted my imaginary working-class teeth.

Despite suffering an acute spondylitic attack, I scoured the saucepan (we have just one, us poor newlyweds), tossed the oranges out for the birds and squirrels, and redid the reduction from start. Out of spite, I didn’t even let the partner whisk the cake batter, even though he adores whisking, don’t ask me why.

Finally, when the cake was all done, I poured myself on the sofa, stretched my limbs, and asked for a cup of tea. “Be a love and tip the cake out to cool, will you”, I said, unwilling to dislodge the fluffy dogs from my lap, thinking certainly no one could possibly mess up tipping a cake out.

When I returned to the kitchen twenty minutes later, I found the P. had tipped the cake out all right, and then carefully covered the tipped-out cake with the hot cake-tin. In other words, he basically upturned the hot cake-tin on the cold stone slab. For twenty minutes, this closed system had poured humidity into my lovely cake, making it crumbly and fragile. When I tried to turn the tin the right way up, the whole thing disintegrated into five large chunks.

I stomped out of the kitchen and stood over my partner’s chair, glowing with righteous rage. “You destroyed my cake!” I bellowed. “You left the bloody tin on! The cake is GONE!”
“Oops”, said the P., clearly not bothered at all.

That was the point at which I swore not to give him a quarter inch of the damn cake, not if he begged for it on his knees. And I didn’t. I stuck the cake together with a thick white chocolate and orange zest syrup, covered it with a coffee and chocolate ganache to hide the cracks, and took it straight from my kitchen to a box at the post office, and from there (so I’m told) to my parent’s fridge. I signed off the parcel with a big toothy grin and the season’s bestest good wishes to the staff, delighted that the dog-loving helpmeet making dinner at home will not get a single bite of my magic new ‘fruit’ cake. Christmas baking has never been more unseasonably, spitefully satisfying.

[Yes, yes, I baked him his own damned cake later. Get off my back, you good-cheer-and-mellow-fruitfulness enemies of the oppressed!]