TASTE: Caribbean black cake for Christmas

On the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Maple Street in Brooklyn, the noon bells at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Blaise are tolling “It’s a Gift to Be Simple.” In the church’s courtyard, a flock of concrete sheep bow their heads before a manger swaddled in plastic tarps.

It’s Christmas in Little Caribbean, as this part of Prospect Leffterts Gardens is known. But despite the winter chill, just across Maple Street the sidewalk outside Allan’s, a third-generation Caribbean bakery, is a tropical paradise festooned with palm trees, Astroturf, and a porch glider. Inside, the small space is redolent of sugar and spice, as it’s the season for black cake—also called Christmas cake, fruit cake, or dark cake in English-speaking Caribbean countries.

The line of customers waiting for their Christmas orders wraps twice around the store beneath garlands of Caribbean flags. A sign touts the health benefits of a “bacchanal” slushie drink of coffee layered with Tang and ginger juice. Posters advertise parang, soca, and steel drum holiday concerts around Brooklyn.

Before I step inside, I am tempted by the pallets of green coconuts—delivered fresh from the Caribbean each day—a few doors down, outside Labay Market Gobwa Import Export store.

Under an awning, a man in a Rastafarian beanie and a plastic apron is singing along to tinny reggae as he hacks the tops off coconuts with four precise whacks of a machete, perilously close to his gloved hand. Once he’s carved a lid, he pries it off with the edge of the blade and flings it into a nearby dumpster.

Grabbing a plastic bottle from a stack balanced on the coconut husks, he sets a steel funnel into the neck and upends the fruit so the clear coconut water pours in. Then he hefts another fruit into his palm, and begins again.

With my bottle of fresh juice in hand, I join the line at Allan’s, where the mood is patient and festive. Black cake is an adaptation of English plum pudding (or “figgy pudding”), which was introduced by the British when they took control of the islands in the 1600s, looking to profit in trade from the area’s sugarcane. The colonists soon began bringing over enslaved Africans to cultivate the crops. As such, black cake contains vestiges of this dark history. But the Caribbean people managed to transform the imported dessert into their own delicacy by using products made from the crop for which their labor was stolen: sugar. To the British mix of dried fruits and spices, they added dashes of local rum, as well as molasses and burnt sugar (known as browning, which gives the cake its signature dark color). Unlike plum pudding, which has always been steamed, the early versions of black pudding were baked using traditional methods, such as in iron coal pots, box ovens, brick ovens, or kerosene pans. Also, the liquor-steeped fruit is pureed into a paste that is then blended with the other ingredients. The result is moister, denser, and smoother than plum pudding. The cake and fruit are prepared months or even a year ahead of Christmas, and doused periodically with fresh liquor to ward off bacteria and impart the cake’s signature flavor. Each Caribbean culture has its own version of black cake: Jamaicans and Grenadans tend to flavor it with rum, almond extract, or rose water, while Trinidadians sometimes use sherry and festoon it with maraschino cherries. Black cake is an essential part of Caribbean Christmas traditions in the islands and beyond, and a point of cultural pride in this Brooklyn enclave.

The woman behind the counter, wearing a Prince Purple Rain T-shirt, sways languidly between the customers and the shelves, conveying orders to the bakers in a songlike lilt, not unlike an auctioneer: “Hot cross buns currant rolls doubles hardo tennis rolls cassava pone butter flaps…” She hands me my single slice of black cake in a stickered plastic bag. Back at home, I decide to try it with the coconut water for an afternoon treat.

The cake has the tang of rum, and the fruit pieces have melded together into a moist crumb, with the prickle of nutmeg and cinnamon and cloves. The top bakes into a creamier, darker layer that’s almost like a buttercream icing. The flavor is warm with a punch, and swigs of the cold coconut water mellow it with sweet, salty smoothness.

When I was growing up, my father, whose mother was Scottish, made plum pudding in the heat of July, six months before Christmas, mixing up dried and fresh fruits, grated suet, eggs, sugar, breadcrumbs, and lots of liquor. The batter was scooped into stoneware crocks and steamed in a water bath, then stored in our basement, the crocks covered with tea towels and tied with twine. The puddings aged in the damp coolness, like fine wines. On Christmas Day, my father proudly upended one of the crocks onto a silver platter and the cake slid out, perfectly formed, a riot of glossy, fermented fruit, sometimes covered with a layer of white mold. Undetterred, he shaved it off, doused the pudding in brandy, and set it on fire. It was carried to the table wreathed in blue flames and met with hearty cheers. The goal was to keep the flames alive as each person was served their slice with a dollop of hard sauce—sugar and creamed butter, undoubtedly the tastiest part for a child. Here is my stepmother the cake-bearer, with my grandmother’s hand-drawn portraits of our ancestors peering over her shoulders.