My Auntie Daro’s black Christmas cake was heavy, smoky and heavenly. Baked in a traditional mud chamber, she ingeniously cut a deep rectangle in the ground, layered flickering red-hot coals and bricks, and stacked alternate shelves for cooking the countryside confection dominated by the heady base of staggering XM rum-soaked local fruits. Months before my diminutive Aunt patiently picked, cut, candied, dried, preserved and steeped the sumptuous selection including green papaya, “five finger,” golden apple and even mango.
