Festive season is round the corner and during this time, Christmas cakes adorn the shelves in most bakeries in the city.
The French Loaf is a popular bakery chain known for its delicious pastries, chocolates and other bakery products. I was invited to the ‘Cake Mixing’ event held at their commissary in Guindy. What was interesting was the magnitude of the event – The mixing was being done for 12 tonnes of Christmas Cake ! 🙂
Had a brief conversation with Chef Boopesh, Corporate Chef, The French Loaf and he gave an insight into what the event was about.
Hundreds of kilos of Mixed fruits like plums, peaches, pears, pineapples, and apples, along with tutti fruiti, dry cherries, dates, cashew nuts, orange peel, ginger chips, white raisins, mixed fruit jam were going to me mixed with spices like cloves, cinnamon sticks, cardamom, bayleaf and soaked in a few hundred litres of premium rum for about forty five days 🙂
Also had a pleasant, but brief chat with the CEO of Oriental Cuisines Mr. Narendra Malhotra. He was happy about the overwhelming response to their exclusive plum cakes last year and was confident of an even better show this year. He said that there were about thirty plus outlets in Chennai and the 12 tonnes of cake were basically for all the stores in Chennai. So a similar event, on a smaller scale, would happen in Bengaluru and Kolkata too where they have a few outlets.
The chief guest for the event was Celebrity Chef Damodaran, better known as Chef Damu. While we were waiting for his arrival, I clicked a few pictures of everything that was on the table. He arrived at about 16:00Hrs and after a brief address to the gathering, the event started. Excitement on the faces of everyone, litres of rum poured and mixed.
So overall, it was a colorful extravaganza and a visual delight! This year, I’m going to try tasting their plum cakes during Christmas ! 🙂
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