For Sri Lankans In LA, It Isn’t Christmas Without Their Traditional, Decadent, Spicy Christmas Cake

When I walk into Saumya Dharmasiriwardena’s home in Canoga Park, I am immediately transported to balmy December evenings at the Galle Face Hotel in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, the sweet smell of sugared fruits intermingled with the heady aromas of cardamom and cloves hanging in the air.

Chefs use wooden paddles to stir dried fruits and nuts, while hotel staff pour in copious amounts of brandy. This is Christmas as we know it in Sri Lanka.

Candied chow chow, candied pumpkin, candied ginger, maraschino cherries, dried fruit and nuts left to stew in brandy.

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Courtesy Navodya Dharmasiriwardena

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“You would've got the Christmas cake smell,” Dharmasiriwardena tells me. The baking of a Christmas cake kicks off the holiday season in Sri Lanka, a relic of the time when the teardrop-shaped island nation to the south of India was colonized by the British.

When they ruled Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was known at the time, they brought with them a Christmas tradition of making fruit cake, packed with candied orange peel, glace cherries and sultanas.

The islanders then took this treat and made it their own, using locally sourced ingredients like candied chayote (a type of squash known as chow chow), candied ginger and candied peel from lime and green oranges.

Behold the cake

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Courtesy Saumya Dharmsiriwardena

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Saumya Dharmasiriwardena mixes the crumbed cake mixture.

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Courtesy Navodya Dharmasiriwardena

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The candied version of Sri Lankan pumpkin — a large green vegetable with white flesh — also gets added to the cake mix, along with cashews and maraschino cherries. And with everything Sri Lankan, added spices are a necessity, including cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, along with vanilla, rose and almond essences.

She gets all her spices directly from Sri Lanka — “the best,” she declared emphatically, because what she can buy here in L.A. is “nothing like what you get there.”

Dharmasiriwardena began making the Christmas cake in Sri Lanka in 1984, and when she moved to California 13 years ago, she brought this little piece of home with her. Since then, she has purchased the cashews, maraschino cherries, raisins and sultanas stateside, but for other ingredients she still relies on trips back to Sri Lanka to stock up.

The spices and essences Saumya brings from Sri Lanka.

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Courtesy Navodya Dharmasiriwardena

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For the candied ingredients, she specifically travels to Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Pettah to shop from Latheefia Stores — a small store that has been around since the 1960s with a red and white sign — because their versions are not heavy in sugar syrup. She says she sometimes brings back “about 27-30 kilos — just cake ingredients only.”

That’s 50 pounds.

The candied ginger, candied peel, candied chow chow and candied pumpkin that Saumya Dharmasiriwardena brings from Sri Lanka.

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Courtesy Navodya Dharmasiriwardena

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Sri-lankan Anne Renuka Perera, who lives in Santa Clarita, is also a fan of Latheefia stores. She enlisted the help of her son this year to bring her the ingredients.

“Last time when he came with his wife … he was allowed to bring four suitcases,” Perera said. “I asked him, 'Can you give me one suitcase?’ And the whole suitcase was full of my stuff.”

Religious acceptance

Only 7% of the country’s population is Christian, and despite a civil war from 1983 to 2009 fought on ethnic lines, the people in the country tend to be tolerant of other religions. A Pew research study, earlier this year, found that 62% of Sri Lankans believed that religious, ethnic and cultural diversity made their country a better place to live. Only 6% said it made it a worse place to live.

“Christmas in Sri Lanka isn’t just for Christians or Catholics, everyone shared that time,” said Dharmasiriwardena.

As a kid, she dragged a makeshift fern plant into her home and decorated it with toys and balloons to bring that festive spirit into her home. Now, at her home in Canoga Park, a statue of Lord Buddha hangs on her wall and in a corner, fairy lights twinkle on a Christmas tree.

Saumya Dharmasiriwardena sits beside the Christmas tree in her home.

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Courtesy Navodya Dharmasiriwardena

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That kind of cultural mixing is common. Yasodhara Sonali Tucker, who has lived in Los Angeles since 1981, said when she was growing up in Sri Lanka and even now, visiting, she observes how everyone goes out during the Buddhist holiday of Vesak to see colorful lantern decorations and get free food from dansals (food stands). When the Hindu festival of Vel comes around, people line the street to observe the Vel cart, an intricately carved wooden structure decorated with fresh flower garlands. And come the Muslim festivals of Eid, the “big food holidays,” her friends would bring biryani and a jaggery custard pudding, wattalapam.

“Everyone had very good friends that they moved around with from all faiths,” Tucker said. “We were beneficiaries of all of these culinary experiences and were able to partake of any festival that was on the calendar at that time.”

Holding on to traditions

Perera, who has been making the Christmas cake for 40 years, still continues to make it because the Sri Lankan community in Southern California wants it, she said.

She uses a hand mixer to mix the candied fruit, vegetables and essences which have been left to soak in brandy with eggs, semolina and butter before baking the cake.

Once the cake is baked, it is broken into crumbs by hand. Perera mixes jam in but Dharmasiriwardena does not, instead keeping the crumbed mixture in an airtight container, mixing it with a wooden spoon daily.

It looked like physically taxing work from what I saw, but Dharmasiriwardena does not think so.

“I feel that whatever you do with love, it doesn't affect much,” she said. “But if you do something that you don't like, yes, of course, then you're stressed and you get upset with everyone.”

The crumbed mixture gets shaped into rectangles and then packaged with festive paper.

Anne Renuka Perera packs her Christmas cake into individual portions and chose a festive green and red paper.

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Courtesy Anne Renuka Perera

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The cake then takes a place of pride on the breakfast table on Christmas morning. Since it's so decadent, most people savor a 2-inch piece. Then they do it again at lunch time and then dinner time. And fine, some of us have it at teatime too, with a cup of Sri Lankan ginger tea.