Milk wine and Christmas cake

Sri Lankan Christmas cake is quite unlike a British fruit cake. It is made with semolina rather than mostly flour, which gives it a dense, slightly grainy texture. It is packed with chopped preserves, including pumpkin preserve, ginger preserve and chow chow, a candied gourd, along with cashews, raisins and sultanas.

The spicing is generous: cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg, with rose essence, vanilla, almond essence and honey in many recipes. Brandy or arrack is added to the batter, and some families brush more on after baking.

The cake is baked in a large flat tin lined with paper, cooled and cut into small squares. Each square is wrapped in coloured cellophane or waxed paper, ready to offer to guests or send home with them.

The cake and milk wine share a set of flavours. Cinnamon, cloves and cardamom run through both, and the citrus in milk wine echoes the candied peel and preserves in the cake. Tasted together, they seem to belong to the same recipe book, which in many homes they literally do.

The textures balance each other too. The cake is rich, sticky and heavy, and a sip of milk wine, warming and clean, refreshes the palate between bites. Without the drink, a second square can feel like too much.

Both also contain a little of the same spirit. Arrack or brandy goes into the cake batter as well as the milk wine, which links them further.

In many homes, Christmas cake and milk wine are made in the same weeks of November and early December. Fruit and preserves for the cake are chopped and soaked in spirit, sometimes for weeks, while the milk wine is mixed and strained.

The cake improves with rest, like the milk wine. It is wrapped and stored for days or weeks before cutting, and some families add more spirit to keep it moist. By Christmas Eve, both are mature and ready.

The work is often shared. Chopping fruit for the cake takes hours, and families gather to do it, with children given simpler tasks.

On the tray, cake squares are piled on a plate, often with each one in coloured wrapping, and small glasses of milk wine are set beside them. Guests take a square, unwrap it, and sip the milk wine between bites.

Hosts often offer love cake and breudher alongside. Love cake, made with semolina, cashews and spice, is lighter and more fragrant. Breudher, a Dutch yeast cake, is sliced and buttered, sometimes with cheese. Milk wine goes with all three.

Guests usually take some cake home. A host may press a few wrapped squares into each visitor's hand as they leave, so over a week of visits a guest can taste many families' cakes.

Bakeries, hotels and home bakers sell Sri Lankan Christmas cake in December, often in boxes or by the piece. Some home bakers sell milk wine in the same Christmas hampers, and church fairs sometimes have both on one table.

Lankan Stays & Trails can point December travellers towards Colombo and Negombo, where Christmas cake and milk wine are easiest to find together, and can suggest hotels that serve the pairing in the festive season.

Christmas cake travels well in its wrapping and keeps for weeks, so it makes a good gift to take home, though check your home country's rules on bringing in food.

British Christmas cake is usually made with flour and dried fruit, often fed with brandy and covered with marzipan and icing. It is lighter in texture and less spiced than the Sri Lankan version.

Sri Lankan cake is denser, darker and more aromatic, thanks to the semolina, preserves and spices. It is usually not iced, though some families add a thin layer of marzipan or icing on special cakes.

Both are served with a festive drink, but in Sri Lanka the drink is milk wine, not sherry or port.