y the time he was nine, Omari Cox knew he wanted to be a farmer.
Now 17, he recalled during his first term at the Scarborough Secondary School, when students were asked about their career choices, some of his peers urged him to find a more sustainable career path as a doctor, lawyer or engineer.
“I said I want to be a farmer and they laughed,” he told Newsday at his Store Bay Local Road home on Friday.
“The boys in the class even asked why I was settling for so low. Even in fifth form, they were talking about when we finish school who would be migrating, who would study law. But I maintain that I like agriculture and I would continue to do what I like.
“Everybody tends to look down on farming because they see it as a degrading job. Nobody really wants to call himself a farmer. But in reality, a farmer is one of the most important people in society because they are the ones who provide a lot of home-grown products for the market and grocery shelves.”
The shy Cox said he is working on quite an ambitious task: “I want to continue to provide food for the nation.”
Cox, who is currently sitting the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, said before moving to Store Bay Local Road, he lived in Calder Hall, where he grew a small bed of 48 lettuce.
“While attending primary school, we had a school project where we would sow red beans in a Styrofoam cup and allow it to grow. I was amazed at how healthy mine came (out), and from since then I was enthused by the agricultural field. From then I began doing plants in cup… it was plants like cucumber… I used to just experiment.”
A woman in Calder Hall suggested he try lettuce and he did.
“I remember the first time I tried my hand at this lettuce, they came so big and that encouraged me to push forward.
“My grandfather, he has been doing farming for a very long time, his drive pushed me, and I asked about it one day and he said it’s the care and handling. I told my grandfather of how serious I was, and he started taking me to the market with him and he also granted me two beds to try my hand.”
His grandfather is entrepreneur and hotelier Sylvan Rollocks.
Cox said farming is both rewarding and satisfying “because I make great profit, and satisfying because I get to do something I love every single day.”
The young farmer wakes up early to tend to his plants before heading for school. When he gets home from school, he repeats the process.
“I plant the plants, make sure they get water, or they don’t get too much water. I also have to make sure insects such as mole crickets and bachacs don’t cut the plants, because if they do, they will die. Also, I have to make sure they get the proper nutrients.”
Asked to describe his work, Cox said: “I would say it’s exciting. It’s very exciting because…I just love working in the garden.”
He sells to both retail and wholesale clients.
“I supply a number of hotels, guest houses and a few vegetable marts. They said that they have lettuce that they buy which is usually bitter and they admire my quality…Irrigation is very important in planting lettuce,”
So he wants to invest in water tanks, especially as there is a scarcity of water.
Cox said after his exams, he intends to delve further into the field.
“I really enjoy doing this. It’s fun, I love to see my plants grow – the fruits of my labour.
“I want to do it full time. There are people who do things for the money, but agriculture is my passion. When you do things for the money, you really don’t enjoy what you do, but for me, I want to enjoy what I do, and agriculture is what I love.” His plan is to open an organic mart. He said many people have tried to discourage him in the past, but he sticks to the principle set by his mother, Lois Rollocks-Stewart, “Do what you love.”.

Rollocks-Stewart said: “There is money in agriculture, people have to eat. Once you put your mind to it, he will make it. And I am already seeing it. Everybody knows him as ‘the lettuce boy’ – he has already established a name for himself.”
She said her son is passionate about farming. “It is from dust to dawn with Omari. He’s up and about all the time. He’s not a party guy. His recreation really is his garden. He not going on no football field.
“When he comes from school, he has his lettuce and them to tend to. He would take his bicycle and go down the road from house to house and sell his lettuce. Regardless they say yes or no, he would go from house to house,” the proud mother said.
Source:  Newsday, May 29, 2019

Clink on this link for the full list and some links to recipes.  

The ochroes grow­ing in the back­yard of Harold and Par­batie Boodoo have again grown to ex­tra­or­di­nary lengths.
The last time the Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed their crop was in 2018 when the ochroes had grown to stag­ger­ing 20 inch­es but now a year lat­er, the ochroes have grown an inch longer.
Dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Par­batie said she was hop­ing that they could fi­nal­ly en­ter the Guin­ness World Book of Records.
The last time the en­try for an ap­pli­ca­tion was not pos­si­ble as Par­batie had har­vest­ed the ochro.
There is no record in the Guin­ness World Book of Records for the world longest ochro, al­so known as okra. How­ev­er, re­search shows that a Malaysian woman grew an ochro to a length of 18 inch­es while Sud­hish Ku­mar, of Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates broke the Li­ma World Record with ochro mea­sur­ing 16.3 inch­es.
Par­batie said her daugh­ter Kim­ber­ly Fung plans to make an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Guin­ness World Book of Records on their be­half. “We want to have an ad­ju­di­ca­tor come to our home at Tem­ple Street, Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do to view the ochroes. This is the first time the ochroes grew so long. It seems every time we plant they get longer and longer,” she said.
Harold, 76, said he spends most of his time car­ing for his plants in his lit­tle back­yard gar­den. “I talk to the plants a lot. Maybe that is why they grow so big,” Harold quipped.
He said the on­ly fer­tilis­er he us­es is Blauko­rn.
“I have the seeds. They are a va­ri­ety of ochroes called Deer­horn but it is not usu­al for them to grow this big,” Harold said.
He added that the few ochro trees in his yard pro­duce more than two dozen ochroes each.
“You know how much ochroes we gave away. It is amaz­ing how much these few trees pro­duce,” he added.
The cou­ple al­so said they want­ed re­searchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to vis­it their home and con­duct tests to de­ter­mine how the soil was so fer­tile.
“This is nor­mal sap­atay clay. We don’t use any big set of fer­tilis­er. There must be some rea­son why the crops come so good. I think there should be some test­ing,” Boodoo said.
He al­so agreed to share some of his ochro seeds to the Min­istry to do ex­per­i­ments.
Source: Trinidad Guardian, April 2019

Toronto’s a city of many neighbourhoods and many nationalities, so finding that one oh-so-Toronto dish is an impossible task. We're asking some of the city’s top food folks about their favourite T.O. meals.​

Restaurateur Roger Yang didn’t always call himself a vegan. He was just a guy who decided he didn’t like eating animals or things produced by animals. Over the years, Yang has had to send many dishes back—not because he’s picky, but because for a long time restaurants just didn’t get the whole plant-based diet thing. He’s ordered cheese-less pizza, only for it to come with cheese. He’s ordered “vegetarian couscous” only to find out “vegetarian” meant meatless couscous…cooked in beef fat. “Now any restaurant worth its salt has at least a couple of vegan options,” says Yang who now owns three vegan restaurants: the upscale Awai (which does plant-based tasting menus) and its two casual younger siblings both called Away Kitchen (there’s one on College and another on Queen).
While renovating his College location, Yang stumbled across an A-frame sign on the sidewalk advertising something called La Limonada, which promised Trini doubles. He followed the arrow down an alley and into the side door of a church, which led into a basement hall where Yang found Jane Frank selling her West Indian dishes. Yang started visiting her kitchen three times a week for doubles and corn soup. “It’s kind of like a secret club,” says Yang. Frank says that only adventurous people end up finding her wee restaurant. Back then, La Limonada wasn’t fully vegan, but the doubles were. Then, last winter, the sign changed to read, “As of today, our menu will be holy vegan (pun intended).” Frank and her husband had embraced a plant-based lifestyle. The Trini doubles, though, never had to change. They’re still the same mix of chickpeas and tamarind sandwiched between two baras, fried flatbread popular in Trinidad.
Frank worked on the recipe for her doubles over a few years. She’s a Muskoka girl, and there isn’t a huge West Indian community in Gravenhurst. She had to glean her recipe from Trinidadian grandmothers in Toronto. “I would corner them at the West Indian grocery stores and ask them how they make their doubles,” she says with a laugh, before adding that it took a whole lot of trial and error to perfect hers.


She moved her business (which also sells freshly squeezed lemonade, thus the restaurant’s name) from a seasonal kiosk at David Pecaut Square into a church basement in 2016, after the city tried to hike her rent. The Toronto Spiritualist Temple was actually founded by Frank’s uncle, who has since passed away. She donates what she can to help the church, which recently installed a new roof and fire doors.
The restaurant operates Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 7:30 p.m.—but not Sundays, because that’s when mass is held. On Sundays, after church, you can often find Frank enjoying a bagel and coffee—at Away, just a block east.
Source:  Toronto Life, March 2019

The word "cocktail" is tossed around pretty loosely these days, used to describe
just about any liquid sum that is greater than its parts. That wasn't always the case. When the term was first coined by a newspaper editor back in 1806, it referred specifically to a beverage comprised of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. Today, we call it an Old Fashioned, and anyone who's ever made one, well, the old-fashioned way, knows it can't be done without Angostura bitters.
But what are Angostura bitters, and how did they earn their place in some of the most classic cocktails on the planet? What's with that label? In the interest of helping you go to the bar smarter, here are five facts worth learning about the best-known bottle of bitters.
Angostura was developed as a cure for upset stomachs.As is typical in the spirits world, Angostura's place in society pre-dates its spot at the bar. All the way back in 1824, Dr. Johann Siegert—surgeon general for Venezuelan military leader Simón Bolívar—developed the stuff as a medicinal tonic for Bolívar's army. Created from a blend of herbs and spices, it was intended to cure upset stomachs. Originally called Dr. Siegert's Aromatic Bitters, it would later be renamed for the Venezuelan city of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar) where it was concocted. Operations eventually moved to Trinidad, where it is still produced today.

That label was a mistake.Besides its bright yellow cap, what really distinguishes a bottle of Angostura bitters is the label: It's too big. As legend goes, once Siegert's sons took over the business from their dad, they set out to market the bitters however they could, which included entering them in a competition. In a scramble to get their product ready for judging, one brother was assigned the task of retrieving bottles, while another went to print labels. Due to a miscommunication or mistake, they ended up with labels too big for their bottles, or bottles too small for their labels. By the time they realized the error, it was too late to correct. Though Angostura lost the competition, a friendly judge suggested the brothers make that label their signature. The advice stuck.
The recipe is a closely guarded secret.Allegedly, only five people in the entire world know the exact combination of herbs and spices that go into a bottle of Angostura. As the only people with the recipe, they've even made a pact to never fly together or so much as eat together at the same restaurant, should, god forbid, the worst happen, according to VinePair. Guessing how much of this is fact, fiction, or just good marketing is all part of the fun, but it's clear the secret formula is kept close to the chest.
Some people use it as a cooking ingredient.As anyone who has ever cracked an old cookbook knows, the sixties and seventies were a weird time for food. (Check out this Twitter account for examples.) In 1961, the brand capitalized on some of that weirdness, releasing The Secret of Good Taste: The Angostura Cookbook. From turkey to pies to bean soup, the book suggests a number of ways to incorporate bitters into everyday cooking. Why not?
Wisconsinites drink it by the glass.There's a bar in the Badger State called Nelsen’s Hall and Bitters Club that serves full shots of Angostura to patrons, a practice that's been kept alive since 1920. It began as a means of skirting the rules of Prohibition—it's simply a medicine for upset stomachs, after all—but as Punch reports, the tradition has lived on, giving Wisconsin the unique distinction of selling more Angostura per capita than any other state.
Source: Esquire.com, January 2019

When you meet Myles Marbella, you quickly learn that she does not easily take no for an answer.
That tenacity and determination were vital to her simultaneously holding the portfolios of co-owner and Executive Chef at Roll Sushi and owner of Myles Express at the age of 23.
Her ability to say ‘no’ extended even to her parents. Although they wanted her to pursue architecture and petroleum engineering, her love for cooking and strong-willed nature led her to pursue the culinary arts at TTHTI instead.
While studying, she started her first job working at Kaizen Sushi at the age of 19. While the experience helped, Hyatt Regency was always her end goal, as she wanted to become the first female sushi chef at the hotel, something that had never been accomplished before in Trinidad.
Persistence is in her blood. Her drive to work at the Hyatt would not be outweighed by idle rejection. ​​“I applied 10 times to work at the Hyatt and got declined nine of those times”.
She was there for about six months and was already receiving rave reviews about her sushi from guests, local and international. It was there she also met her future business partner, Dana Balliram.
Like the other guests, Balliram was impressed with not just with Myles’ sushi but her work ethic. Balliram said that she saw a lot of potential in Myles and decided to invest in her.
“She has the potential, she is a house of talent. Being around Myles and seeing what she’s done, what she’s offered people and her creativity, I realized that she has talent worth investing in. All she needed was that push to bring it out and present to the world.”
She later also worked alongside Joe Brown (Jaffa at the Oval, Solimar) but it was Dana's faith in her craft that led to her recommending Myles for the role of Executive Chef for a new sushi spot on  Ariapita Avenue. She faced stiff competition at the time. Not only was she the lone female applying for the job, but she was going up against chefs who were many years her senior with more culinary experience. Myles, however, had a cutting edge with a unique taste and presentation, which led to her becoming Executive Chef at Roll at 23, a rarity in the industry.
While it was a monumental achievement in itself, it wasn’t enough for Myles. When a business space became available downstairs from Roll, her business partner, Dana, was the one that pushed her to take it.
“I know Myles’ potential and I knew that she could do so much more than sushi. She’s very creative in the culinary arts, always sampling with different tastes and styles of food.”
The two played around with ideas, concepts and menu, eventually settling on a takeout spot, with a deli-style menu. Soon after, Myles Express was born.
She has accomplished a lot such a short period of time at such a young age, but sometimes it can be a double-edged sword as she might not be taken as seriously given her young age.
“It’s challenging, but I get strength because people like Dana push me; I sometimes find it challenging to manage people who are older than me but I’m learning and I’m conquering.”
Running multiple businesses, of course, requires sacrifice.
Her day starts at 4AM, where she preps to open Myles Express for 6AM to 1PM; from 1PM to 3PM she begins prep for Roll. She then naps for about an hour before working at Roll from 4PM to 1AM. However, when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like too much of a sacrifice.
"I always say do what you  love, love what you do. You can’t give up, especially, if you have a dream. I learned that, especially with regard to Hyatt.  I was turned down nine times! But this was my goal, I wanted to be the first female sushi chef there so I couldn’t give up.”
At such a young age, Myles is an inspiration, not only for other entrepreneurs but young women as well. Her steadfast nature and refusal to take 'no' for an answer has allowed her to achieve her goals and break down barriers in a male-dominated industry. 
Source: The Loop T&T

When it comes to goat meat, Caribbean people are fond of cooking it the same way: in curry.
One woman is intent on changing that.
Franka Philip, a popular media personality in Trinidad and Tobago, wants to expand the variety of ways goat meat is cooked, educate Caribbean people about goat meat in general and improve the goat industry.
This October, she will be introducing Goatober to the Caribbean, starting first in T&T.
Goatober began when an American woman, Erin Fairbanks and renowned cheesemaker Anne Saxelby, wanted to end the practice of euthanizing young male goats that the dairy industry had no use for.
Goatober was created as a month-long celebration on the menu of New York restaurants as a way to promote goat meat as delicious, ethical and sustainable.
In 2016, UK chef James Whetlor introduced Goatober to the UK and to mainland Europe the following year.
“I follow Cabrito, a website run by James who is a chef concerned about waste in the dairy goat industry. You only need girl goats for milk and cheese and they would euthanize boy goats so he started to raise and rear boy goats and sell to restaurants. A friend connected James and me and we hit it off. I discovered he was doing Goatober which started in the States. James formalised it in the UK and is moving it through Europe and I said hey, Trinidad need to get in on that, we love goat and our meat is pretty decent and I just decided I am doing this,” said Philip.
On December 9, Philip launched the first in a series of events leading up to Goatober. The intimate dinner at Aroma Culinary Studio in Woodbrook, Port-of-Spain, was attended by specially invited friends including top chefs in the country and representatives of the Goat and Sheep Society.
An Italian trained T&T Chef by the unique name of Bianca Bianco whipped up the menu which included steamed goat wontons, hops with sliced goat meat, goat and cheese ravioli and corn cake with goat milk, sour cherry ice cream, and coconut tuile. It was her first time working with goat meat.
“We used James’ book Goat as a guide and adapted recipes to suit our palette. We tried to get a nice Caribbean flavour,” said Philip.
he said one of the challenges they faced in preparing the dinner was the butchery of the meat. 
“We practiced on half a goat and it was really badly butchered. We wanted to get bones to make stock and that wasn’t readily available because of how the meat was cut. There are different little elements we realise if we need to bring this up to a different standard and accessibility we have to work with the butchers,” said Philip, who has a deep interest in the way meat is cut after living in the UK for over 13 years.
Deep diving into the world of food
In an age when food blogging has exploded in popularity and self-professed foodies are everywhere, Philip’s foray into food may seem opportunistic.
But when blogging was in its nascent stage in T&T, around 2007, Philip ran a food blog called Can Cook, Must Cook where she experimented with recipes, wrote about personalities, explored cooking in a Caribbean style and did book reviews. She had been living in England since 2000 following her graduation from the University of Sussex.
The blog, she said, was started out of anger.
“Going to England I saw what was on offer. In every one of the big newspapers you had a cooking section, food TV was more accessible and I became more interested in food. I lived with Bostwanian, Norwegian and English people so I was exposed to different types of food. At Sussex University there was a very diverse postgraduate cohort so I got to meet different kinds of people, ate different types of food but Caribbean food was not represented. I thought I should pitch an idea for Caribbean food to a media outlet. The editor of UK TV Food said she loved the idea but she didn’t think Caribbean food was anything to shout about and I got damn vex. That is how I started the blog. 
Philip’s passion for food was sparked from an early age. Her late mother, she said, was a really good cook and she spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen. An only child, Philip accompanied her mother to the market and admired the orderly fashion in which she would put away her goods and prep for the week.
“That helped her to manage cooking during the week. She wasn’t a gourmet type chef but what she cooked she did very well. Daddy was into oxtail, cowheel, and souse and Mummy would make oxtail soup but in a nice way, she used plenty greens and had a very balanced approach to the way she looked at food,” Philip recalled.
When cable TV arrived in T&T that opened up a world of food for Philip who would devour food shows on the Travel Channel, one in particular that took viewers across the USA exploring different cuisines.
As a journalist in the Trinidad Express newspaper, even before she left for England, Philip got even more exposure to food.
From 1992 to 1996 she was the social events reporter which allowed her to interact with chefs at all types of events, and they were only too happy to fill her curious mind with their knowledge.
In England, Philip worked at the BBC and became friends with those who worked in the food section. She said Susan Low, an editor at BBC with a progressive approach to food, encouraged her to write for them.
The Food Editor who happened to be Susan’s husband, Guy Dimond, he was very encouraging, he taught a course at City University on food writing and he would ask me to come in and talk to students. I did that for a while and I started to meet more people in food such as Dan Lepard, a well-known baker and food writer in the UK. We became friends and I did a couple Caribbean Beat stories on things we did together. Two recipes we did ended up in his book Short and Sweet. I became familiar with Yotam Ottolenghi, he has a series of books that are very well-known,” she said.
Philip’s plan was to pen her own book about Caribbean food stories but life took another course.
Renewing her passion
In 2012, Philip returned to T&T when her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died within months of her diagnosis and Philip had to look after her father, who also passed away a few years later.
“I had to make a decision to stay in Trinidad and I had to start working. I was in a high-pressure job at the Trinidad Guardian and I put food on the back burner. I maintained an interest but my actual forays, cooking a lot and experimenting, was on the back burner,”’ she said.
In 2018, Philip left the Guardian and started to renew her passion for food.
“I started to cook more, started going back through cookbooks, going through magazines and rekindled that feeling. I started to get excited by food again,” she said.
She credited a close friend for reminding her about her love for food.
“I was reminded by my friend that I get more excited when I talk about food. It really rang for me. I continued to write for Caribbean Beat. I have been doing that since 2007 and it is a gig that I love, it gets me to write about things I love and I started to get more passionate about doing it. That, combined with the buff from my friend, made me dig out the notes about the book I want to write,” she said, also crediting her partner Ardene, who, she said, has been very encouraging and supportive.
Philip sees her role as stimulating the food industry in different areas. She is keen on food security and sovereignty, innovations, challenges in eating local, issues affecting farmers and wants to educate people about where food comes from. Philip, who runs a digital platform called Trini Good Media (TGM), intends to turn Can Cook, Must Cook into a food podcast where those topics can be explored.
Through Goatober, she will execute her plans to encourage more adventure and creativity with local food, stimulate more activity in the goat industry which has already begun improvements to deliver higher quality goat products and put the Caribbean on the map.
Source: The Loop, January 2019

​Our own local restuarant Baccanalle has been nominated  for Favourite Caribbean Restaurant for the 2019 Faces Magazine Ottawa Awards thanks to its many supporters.

If you'd like to vote for Baccannalle to win, you can vote here (once per day) until January 24th:   http://facesmag.ca/awards/
Congratulations to all the Faces Awards Finalists!. Tickets for the Faces Awards Show January 25 (Brookstreet Hotel) are available here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-faces-of-ottawa-awards-pr…
Good luck Baccannalle!

Today the Chamber of Industry and Commerce is pleased to profile the runner-up in the Small to Medium Entrepreneur category (sponsored by EY) of the 2018 Champions of Business.
In 2004, Allana and her husband Bertie Steuart wanted to raise funds to purchase a refrigerator for a community member in need. Instead of doing the usual barbecue fund raiser, Bertie and Allana decided to make pepper sauce using Bertie’s unique recipe. They made 400 bottles of pepper sauce which sold out in record time. After the fundraiser, they started receiving calls for pepper sauce orders and Allana convinced Bertie to make another batch. This second batch sold just as quickly. The demand was continuous so the Steuarts continued production at their home. Eventually, Allana started distributing on a small scale to local restaurants and mini marts. In 2008, a breakthrough came when Tony Roma’s approached her to supply its restaurant on an exclusive basis.
In August 2012, the company landed its first major supermarket – Massy Stores (then Hi-Lo). This was the impetus to increasing the brand’s presence in the retail market. Then, in November 2014, PriceSmart approached the company to be its sole pepper sauce brand. This forced the company to scale up their operations. They subsequently moved to Woodbrook. With new staff added and a larger facility, the company was able to increase production significantly.
When Allana’s son Logan joined the business in 2015, sales increased significantly, and the company needed to find additional sources of pepper. Logan was instrumental in negotiating supplies from a local farmer with large acreage, who was able to meet the increased demand and with whom Bertie’s has forged a strong working relationship. Logan has also been instrumental in formalizing the company’s operations, its processes and increasing distribution and brand awareness. In 2016, the company moved to its current location in Aranguez.
To date, Bertie’s sauces are sold at most major supermarkets like Xtra Foods, JTA and Penny Savers in Tobago and other retailers nationwide. The product is also served at an increasing number of restaurants and restaurant chains locally. Bertie’s pepper sauce has become a household name in Trinidad and Tobago and is one of the most popular commercial pepper sauces on the market. In spite of the company’s success, it has remained true to the original Bertie’s recipe and maintained its commitment to using only fresh local peppers. The Bertie’s product line has expanded and now includes their original Bertie’s Pepper Sauce, a Pimento Sauce and a Scorpion Pepper sauce.
Bertie’s continues to be a major buyer of hot peppers and is proud to be a supporter of local farmers. They are “proudly TT” and this is reflected on all product packaging. Allana and Logan are currently exploring possibilities for the export market, starting with the Caribbean.
Source: Newsday, Dec 20, 2018

A Trini Christmas is the best. And in large, contributing to this are our festive Christmas foods. We have perfected the grand art of fusion and created an original cuisine for this season. Some food gurus thumb their noses at the term fusion, however, we would not have this outstanding cuisine if our ancestral cooks had not utilised the art of fusion. Really, what they tried to do is recreate the familiar foods of their past, using ingredients available to them locally, and so through the years, we inherited what we know as our true Trini Christmas cuisine.
These include boiling hams in pitch-oil tins, soaking black cake fruits for up to one year in advance to use in our black cakes; securing fig leaves to wrap pastelles, stocking up on enough rum for use in black cake and ponche de crème and baking bread to sandwich the ham and preparing garlic pork. Making pepper jelly and chow-chow to dress our meals, and preparing sorrel and ginger beer to cool us all down.
Most of these traditions still live on today, thankfully, although some have sadly been substituted for more non-traditional foods at this time.
For me, I am a lover of tradition and our Christmas cuisine. Making black cake is a big part of my Christmas tradition which I begin in October. I soak my fruits in a mixture of rum and cherry brandy for up to one month or more. I omit the browning, which I think imparts a bitter flavour to the cake, and I use a higher ratio of fruit which results in a dense, moist and very dark cake. It’s important to continue nursing the cake after baking for a few days with your choice of rum or brandy to keep it moist until use. Of course, you can opt for a non-alcohol version by replacing the alcohol with pure grape juice. And if you are not a lover of dark fruit cake, you can make a light fruit cake which is equally alluring on a different level!

Light fruit cake
1 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup candied cherries, finely chopped
1/2 cup mixed peel
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or almonds, (optional)
2 cups all-purpose flour
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Finely chop fruits.
Grease, line and flour 1 nine-inch round pan.
With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time beating well between additions.
Fold in flour and fruits. Pour batter into a 9-inch round pan.
Bake for about 11/2 hours. Cool.

Best ever Christmas black cake
1 lb raisins
1 /2 lb currants
1/2 lb sultanas
1/2 lb prunes
1/2 lb chopped walnuts
1/4 lb mixed peel
1/4 lb cherries
1 2/3 cups dark rum
1 2/3 cups cherry brandy
1 lb Butter
1 lb all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 lb brown sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon and allspice, mixed
2 tsp mixed essence
Combine rum and cherry brandy and add fruits to mixture. Let soak overnight or up to one week.
Preheat oven to 300F.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift together flour and baking powder, cinnamon and allspice.
Drain fruits reserve liquid. Chop or mince in food processor.
Add drained fruits to butter and sugar mixture.
Add cut up cherries and nuts.
Fold flour into fruits and butter mixture.
Add mixed essence, mix well.
Grease and line two 9-inch cake pans with waxed paper, grease and flour paper.
Spoon cake batter equally into prepared baking pans.
Bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Source: Newsday, Dec 2018