Bengaluru adds a healthy twist to Chistmas with plum cakes, gingerbread made from millet

BENGALURU: Angella Pacheco, 42, is giving a twist to her Christmas bakes this year. She is gifting plum cakes made with millets instead of refined flour. It’s a detour from Pacheco’s 19-year-old tradition, but the indigenous grain is the talk of the town and has turned her into a fan.

“Millet plum cakes will make a thoughtful gift this festive season as people are getting increasingly health-conscious. It’s a new culinary trend that will also make a good impression,” says Pacheco, administration head at investment bank DCS Advisory.

With the government’s push to popularise millets as a health food, many start-ups and restaurants are going a step further this Christmas season to make millet Christmas cakes and traditional goodies like gingerbread cookies and kalkals using millets.


“Millet is now a status symbol. It’s healthier and cheaper than white flour. Millet-based Christmas goodies are our way to support indigenous grains in place of trendy imported ingredients like quinoa,” says Abhishek Sahay, corporate chef at nutrition food tech firm GrowFit.

Sahay has used locally sourced seasonal millets to make in-house flour to make traditional plum cakes and ginger-bread cookies. He claims to have already received 200 orders for the liquor-soaked and orange-soaked options of millet cakes this season.

Ramasamy Selvaraju, executive chef at Taj Yeshwanthpur, says foxtail millet is a good flour option for dessert preparations. Besides millet plum cakes, he is also making traditional chocolate bunnies and cookies using millets to cater to the growing demand in the city.

“The foxtail-and-pearl millet plum cake, made using honey and jaggery, has 205 calories less than regular plum cake,” says Selvaraju. “People are changing their eating habits and we, as chefs, need to keep up.”

After selling out its millet-based Diwali laddoos, Kaulige Millet Corner decided to make plum cakes, kalkals and rose cookies using foxtail millets and sorghum. Known for its traditional millet lunch thalis, the restaurant on Brigade Road has experimented with western style of cooking with millets for the first time.

“We see a steady 15% growth in our restaurant revenue in the last three years. The 35-year-olds and above in the city are fitness-conscious and want to make a change,” says Arun Kaulige, the restaurant’s director.

While smaller millets are grown on wasteland in south Karnataka, northern parts of the state grow large-sized options like sorghum. The department of agriculture has been encouraging the use of millets for both its health benefits and creating a market for local farmers.

“Bengaluru has a cosmopolitan culture where all festivals are celebrated equally. We want to integrate the eco-friendly millet — be it in the form of burgers, donuts, pizza or plum cakes — to add a healthy eating culture to this modern city,” says KG Jagadeesha, commissioner for state department of agriculture.