The Christmas Quest for Plum Cake at Upper Crust, Ahmedabad
On Wednesday, the 25th of December, I set out with two other friends, wearing festive sweaters and Santa hats, on a quest to search for the best plum cake in the city we could find. We made our way through several bakeries in town, only to get disappointed by the selection of seasonal delicacies on offer. Some, like A Gourmesserie on Sindhu Bhavan Road had a Christmas menu full of strawberry products for some reason, others lacked a special menu for the holidays at all. The offerings at the swanky sophisticated bakeries of Ahmedabad’s posh neighbourhoods somehow consistently managed to not feature the most anticipated dessert of the winter - the much-loved Christmas plum cake.
Eventually, we decided not to hedge our bets further, and headed off to one of Ahmedabad’s most popular bakeries - Upper Crust, which is owned and managed by Lester D’Souza, the son of a Goan Catholic migrant to the city. Since being founded by Mr. D’Souza in 1989, Upper Crust has now grown into an incredibly successful brand of bakeries, restaurants and caterers, with several branches all across Gujarat.
Traditionally, plum cakes have their origins in Victorian England, when it was common to break the period of Advent, the few weeks before Christmas where Christians fast and refrain from indulgences in anticipation of the birth of Jesus, and was done so with a plum porridge (also known as Christmas Pudding) in those times, although, the dish resembled a cake more than it did a “pudding”. In 1883, it was a Scottish merchant by the name of Murdock Brown who requested Mambally Bapu, the owner of a bakery in Kerala, if he could bake a cake for him on Christmas. Mambally Bapu obliged, and the experiment was a success, and the plum cake cemented its place in Indian culinary history. Eventually, with the spread of Christianity, and of colonial rule in India, the plum cake spread to the rest of the country, and it seems as though the consumption of plum cake on Christmas is a uniquely Indian phenomenon*, with the recipe being used for the Indian “plum cake” being oddly similar to the Victorian “plum pudding”, most notably the similarity in ingredients - dried fruits, lemon peel, and generous use of alcohol stands out. (*Note: don’t cite me on this, I won’t be shocked if it is inaccurate).
Upper Crust has had an annual tradition of baking plum cakes for Christmas for the past 25 to 30 years. Preparation starts several months before the holiday season, when a variety of fruits, ranging from walnuts, almonds, lemon and orange peel, cashew nuts and cherries, are mixed and let to soak in a burnt caramel sauce for months, only opened when its time to bake it. The most notable omission from Upper Crust’s plum cake recipe is rum and brandy, two ingredients very commonly used at this stage (the former more so in India, the latter seems to be more popular in English plum puddings), probably due to alcohol prohibition laws in the state of Gujarat where Upper Crust operates.
But the lack of this key ingredient does not deter Upper Crust’s plum cake from being a scrumdiddlyumptious piece of goodiness. Their plum cake is undeniably one of the richest desserts I’ve ever had. The first bite is an avenue into a mesmerizing wonderland, with a mixture of flavours surrounding you like bees onto nectar, the flavours getting clearer and more noticeable with each successive bite, indulgences that open doors into the magical worlds of zesty lemon peel and fruity cherries. Most importantly, there is no excess sugar added to the dish, a mistake that far too many Indian confectionaries and bakeries are guilty of, which does the virtue of not overpowering the components of the cake, allowing them to shine on themselves.
Upper Crust also has a few other pastries in their seasonal Christmas menu, most notably their Yule Log cakes and their Gingerbread Houses. We only tried the former, which were chocolate cakes wrapped in whipped cream and topped with chocolate frosting, but honestly, they’re nothing too special, skippable.
If you’re in Ahmedabad till the holiday season is ongoing, or if you’re reading this review in the future, I cannot urge you enough to go and pack some plum cakes from Upper Crust to have while binging the first two Home Alone movies. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!
Recommendations:
Plum Cakes (9.5/10), Yule Logs (6.5/10)
Note that they have other pastries (and food items, depending on the branch you visit) that I have had over the years, but am not reviewing for the purposes of this review, which is focused on their Christmas Menu. In case I were to review those in the future, they will be done in a separate post.
Location:
Multiple Locations around Ahmedabad
So well written Kathan! Can't wait to visit the bakery in Ahmedabad someday!