‘Tis the season to indulge

KOCHI: The countdown to Christmas has begun and shops are beaming with colourful decorations and goodies.This is also the time to indulge in our gastronomical cravings without guilt. And this year, home bakers are ready to cater to all that your heart desires by whipping up a whole range of customised cakes, cookies and other delights apart from the traditional plum cakes. Special assorted chocolaty treats seem to be the specialty this season.

Nisha Kirans Eatery is bringing out an array of festive delights which include traditional Xmas cakes such as rich fruit rum cake along with other desserts like rum balls and the English Christmas pudding. However, the newest addition to home-baked treats is the Christmas candy.

“The festive candy consists of six assorted Christmas-themed cookies which are colourful and come in different shapes inside a jar. Baking cookies is not something new. However, baking a Christmas cookie is more common abroad. Since I always try to explore a new treat every festive season, I came up the cookie inside a jar idea which would appeal to kids,” says Nisha Kiran, the home-baker behind Nisha Kirans Eatery.

Each jar contains different variants such as red velvet, butter, a mix of nuts and fruits, chocolate and marble with sugar icing. “The jar serves as a perfect gifting option for Christmas. Orders have already started coming in and will be delivered before the Christmas week,” adds Nisha. Her Christmas pudding, one of the bestsellers last season is made with 90 per cent dry fruits. “The pudding is steamed and then caramelised in liquor sauce which makes it an ideal dessert.”

Parvathy Ravikumar, a techie-cum-baker, has come up with a Christmas special gift hamper for the customers. The food hamper carrot-date cake, plum cake, brownies in nutella and other variants. Parvathy says, “Plum cakes are always the most sought-after treat. We start our preparations well in advance as the ingredients need to soak in spirit for months to get the perfect balance of flavour. We are also offering different types of cookies which will be included in the hamper.” Besides baking Christmas delights, Parvathy also sells ‘mango kulfi cake’ and ‘tender coconut pudding cake’, through her venture Cake’d.