We went hunting for the best places in the city to get your hands on the best rich plum cake. We found it – Saldanha’s Bakery does it the best! Dense, rich, laden with spices and dried fruit – it’s everything you love about plum cake. The cakes are always fresh as they are made to order (you can smell the aroma of fresh cakes up and down the lane).
Run by the Saldanha family, they work out of their kitchen on the premises of their home (they don’t have an outlet yet). All the work for the cakes is done by hand from whipping the eggs to separating the dried fruit – this is a no-machine zone. They even use their old traditional ovens which give the cakes the perfect temperature to cook in.
They make hundreds of cakes every day leading up to Christmas (for everyone from families to the government) and they still sell out. The Goan family has been baking cakes for years and passing the age-old recipes down the generations. They also make French macarons and exquisite cakes, if that's what you're looking for.
You’ll have to go pick up the order from their home – it’s in the lane adjacent to the BC Sen jewellery shop on Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road. Walk through the narrow lane for about 500m till you reach a yellow wall that has ‘Saldanha’ written on it. Ask anyone in the neighbourhood and they’ll direct you.