(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Christmas Cake (aka Fruitcake -- the GOOD kind) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-12-06

Sigh. I always hated fruitcake. When I was little my mother made gifts for her friends of eggnog cake which had candied red cherries in it (eggnog I also hated, and it took me years to realize that nutmeg wasn’t necessarily always in that disgusting storebought sweet milky stuff she used in her recipe and I might like nutmeg in some things), and she also made Jack Daniels cake. For the latter she spent an afternoon carefully snipping raisins in half, then soaking them in Jack Daniels. Then she baked them in cakes.

The fruit cakes we would get from her friends had candied cherries, bright red and green things that were in no way the colors that cherries actually were. They also had nuts, which wasn’t a bad thing when I was little but my brother was allergic to them. We have ironically reversed and now I can’t eat tree nuts but he can, at least some of them. But anyway, the fruitcakes from her friends were the ones that looked like you could pass them around for years and no one would ever be the wiser.

My feelings about fruitcake changed my first Christmas away from home. I spent it with friends on an archaeological project in Egypt. We were almost all in our mid to late 20s, and it was our first season on our own first project, and it was really exciting. The British sponsors of our project sent out a “Christmas Cake” for us to enjoy, along with a box of chocolates. The cake was a fruitcake and had a layer of marzipan and then a royal icing for decoration. It was delicious. No green cherries or artificial fruit anywhere. It was real dried fruit that had been soaked in something and then baked into the cake. It didn’t taste awful. In fact, it tasted pretty darned good.

A couple of decades later I spent the autumn in London and experienced the decorations and foods of the holiday season. That included mince pies (still a definite no for me) and English fruit cake. Sadly, I was having issues with nuts so was rather hesitant. But I discovered that I could go through the ingredients and select ones that didn’t have nuts in them. And home made ones continued to be “fed” with a variety of spirits including brandy, which I did like. So after a couple of years I felt nostalgic for that holiday season in London and decided to make my own version of a Christmas cake. I took a variety of dried fruit that I liked: apricots, currants, craisins, and candied orange peel, and soaked it overnight and put it into a batter and baked it, then fed it with brandy enthusiastically. So enthusiastically that it eventually crumbled. But it was soooo good. No nuts, no silly cherries with unnatural colors, just good fruits, good brandy, and just enough batter to hold them together.

For the next couple of years I made one every November after Thanksgiving, and sent slices to friends in their Christmas packages. Eventually they gave in and tried the slices, and started to tell me they looked forward to my Christmas cakes. Two years ago I overdid things and ordered so much dried fruit (the local grocery stores didn’t have currants, and once you start looking for dried fruit online you find out that Trader Joe’s has candied orange slices and at that point you over order. I did, anyway.

So here I had all these fruits, and I had a couple of jars of cherries in brandy (one imported and one a local farmers market product), and I put the cherries, the oranges, the apricots, the craisins, and a few other things in a bowl with a good glug or two of cognac, then realized I had a lot of fruit left over. So I naturally went to the store and bought dates and crystallized ginger and cut up the rest of the fruit (some dark raisins, a package of the orange slices, some more currants), and decided to try this bowl with rum. I made two fruitcakes. And sent off slices to friends in their Christmas packages. I got great feedback (most of which consisted of “I can’t decide which of them I like better”), and thought yay, but that was ridiculous. I need to go back to making just one.

Last year was really rough for me, and I didn’t feel ambitious at all and didn’t make any fruitcake. And this year I couldn’t get started. At least at the normal time. So here it is, way too close to Christmas for these to be properly aged, and I just made my first one tonight. It is the cognac one. It has craisins, currants, apricots, and lots of candied orange slices. The other one sitting in its bowl to be made tomorrow is dates, some prunes I found at the back of my cabinet that still seemed good, candied ginger, candied lemon and citron peel (I didn’t get my own candied citron made this year, so it was store bought), currants, and fresh lemon zest and juice of two lemons. It has been soaking in dark rum and will be finally utilized tomorrow (actually later today). I haven’t decided what I am going to feed it with, but I have a bottle of Grand Marnier that might be nice…

This is the recipe I sent a friend who asked me how I made the cake. I used essentially the same thing this year, although I didn’t use honey (or molasses) as I had soaked the fruit for more than 48 hours and figured it didn’t need any more liquid or sweetness. I also used a half cup of self-raising flour along with two cups of all purpose flour. And I tossed half the AP flour with the drained fruit to make sure it didn’t clump together completely.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/6/2140470/-Christmas-Cake-aka-Fruitcake-the-GOOD-kind

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/