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Dish · Guyana
Cook-up rice
Rice cooked in a single pot with beans or peas, salted or fresh meat, coconut milk and herbs. It’s an everyday food in Guyana and the tradition for the last night of the year, Old Year’s Night.
Flavors · Guyana
Black cake
Dark fruit cake made with dried fruits ground and soaked in rum for weeks, darkened with burnt caramel and doused with rum after baking. It's the Christmas cake in Guyana.
Traditional sweet from Guyana
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Black cake — Guyana
Black cake is a dense, dark fruit cake. Raisins, currants, prunes and preserved starfruit are ground and soaked in rum in a sealed glass jar for two weeks or more. The color comes from the caramel: sugar is melted in a heavy pan until very dark brown and added to the batter.
After baking, the cake is doused with more rum, which helps preserve it through the holidays. The result is moist, aromatic and very dark, almost black.
In Guyana, black cake is part of Christmas, alongside pepperpot and garlic pork, and appears among the dishes families consider indispensable for the holiday.
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Where it comes from
Guyana
Guyanese Christmas cake, made throughout the country.
Ingredients
Raisins, currants, prunes and preserved starfruit, ground and macerated in rum; flour, eggs, butter, sugar, spices and burnt caramel.
How it is eaten
Sliced, during the year-end festivities.
When it is eaten
Christmas and year-end; the fruits begin macerating weeks beforehand.
Your questions
Questions about Black cake
Why is black cake so dark?
Because of the mix of rum-macerated fruits with burnt caramel, made by melting sugar until it turns very dark brown.
How long are the fruits kept in rum?
At least two weeks, in a sealed glass jar, before being incorporated into the batter.
Flavors of Guyana
Discover other flavors of Guyana
Dish · Guyana
Dhal puri
Roti stuffed with ground, seasoned split pea, griddled and served with curry. It arrived with indentured workers from India, beginning in 1838, and today is one of Guyana’s most common snacks.
Dish · Guyana
Garlic pork
Pork cured for days in vinegar with garlic, pepper and thyme, then fried. It arrived in Guyana with Portuguese settlers and is served at Christmas breakfast, with bread.
Dish · Guyana
Pepperpot
Dark meat stew slowly cooked in cassareep, a sauce made from the juice of bitter cassava, with cinnamon, clove and pepper. It originated with the Indigenous peoples, is called the national dish and is the morning Christmas dish in Guyana.
Drink · Demerara-Mahaica
Demerara rum
Rum made at Diamond Distillery on the east bank of the Demerara River near Georgetown, the last distillery in Guyana. Its historic wooden stills came from the distilleries of former sugar plantations.