Fruitcake, with commentary

Well, this morning, it seemed like fruitcake weather. While I don't have to go to the same effort that Sook and young Truman had to go to to collect ingredients - nor do I stop by "Mr. Haha Jones'" to get the last ingredient necessary for their fruitcakes - I still do need that feeling of inspiration to do it.

It was cold this morning. Probably going to be cold all week, but that's fine, it's supposed to be cold this time of year.

(If you're interested, the full text of the story - which is quite wonderful, and quite amazing, considering that this is the man who also wrote "In Cold Blood" and that unfinished memoir skewering all the socialites of the 60s, here. (although I am honestly not sure how the person was able to put it up without violating some copyright)).

(I will add I also don't send them off to all and sundry, least of all the President. Can you imagine that? Secret Service men would show up at my door and I would either be branded a Threat or a Harmless Lunatic, considering how I reacted to them).

Anyway. It felt like a good day to make the fruitcakes, and so that is what I did. Here is, with some commentary, the recipe (I feel I should say "receipt," because that's what my grandmother always called them and wrote them down as).

First of all I have to make a disclaimer: I know, fruitcake is the butt of many holiday jokes. And there is a lot of bad-to-indifferent stuff out there passed off as "fruitcake." Much of it seems to merely be a vehicle for the alcohol in which it is soaked. Good fruitcake, proper fruitcake, is not like that stuff.

Also, the fruitcake I make is called "light fruitcake" (to distinguish it from "dark fruitcake," which my grandmother also made, but which I never have, as I do not like it nearly as well). The light fruitcake I make is somewhat similar to some recipes I have seen for "Dundee cake," a Scots fruitbread.

It is much like poundcake with fruit, nuts, and raisins (but less short: a true poundcake would have a full two cups of butter to only four cups of flour, and would have eight - EIGHT! - eggs in it).

You will also note that my cakes are not given the liquor treatment. Honestly, I'm not sure what you would soak them in, were you so inclined - perhaps a light sweet white wine, but I can't think of a stronger liquor that wouldn't (in my opinion at least) ruin them. Anyway, they keep fine without it - I've eaten this as late as April (after having it kept cold) and it was little worse for wear.

So here is what you do:

Take your largest mixing bowl. (You might even have to buy or borrow a larger one; at the end you will have six cups of flour plus all the other ingredients mixed in).

Soften a cup and a half of butter (no substitutions; one of the hallmarks of bad fruitcake, I think, is that manufacturers use the nasty hydrogenated vegetable oils which don't taste as good, and incidentally may be quite bad for you - worse even than butter).

Mix in three cups of white sugar. Do it gradually.

Then, add three eggs. (It is best, in baking, to let the eggs come to room temperature first. The cake rises better for some reason).

Then, you add a teaspoon of whatever flavoring you want. The reason I think this is an old "receipt" is that the original calls for rose water. I use almond, which is easier to find, and I think almond is preferable to vanilla, lemon, or rum, which are the other choices.

The next step is to add the fruit and nuts. The way I make it, it uses a 15 ounce box of raisins (you can use the yellow raisins if you want, I don't. Or you can use currants). Then add a pound of "fruit mix." This is the chopped candied fruit that appears in grocery stores this time of year. Unfortunately, there's not much choice of brands or sources and bad fruit mix can ruin the cake - I would guess Trader Joe's or somewhere like that might have a superior grade to the average grocery. But even the kind from Kroger's is not so bad. If you're morally opposed to candied fruit (some people are), feel free to substitute dried fruit, but the cake will be slightly different.

Then add a cup of chopped nuts (I use pecans) and a cup of flaked sweetened coconut. If you loathe either one, you can leave that thing out, but I wouldn't leave both out.

Mix well. It will be somewhat tiring to do so.

Next, take your second-biggest bowl, and combine six cups of flour with a tablespoon (for some reason, my recipe says 'three teaspoons,' which is the same thing) of baking powder. Mix them well.

Measure out a cup and a half of milk.

Now, add the flour and milk alternately to the butter-egg-sugar mixture. ("Start with flour, end with flour" is the rule my mother taught me). Don't add all of one all at once, space them out.

Mix well. At this point you might do well to take off your watch and rings, wash your hands well, and use them to mix. (Yet another reason why I do not wear nail polish on my fingers: my hands are pretty regularly used as cooking tools and I don't like the thought of a bit of Raven Red flaking off into whatever I am baking).

The last step is getting them ready for the oven. This is kind of an odd step, and I think it might be indicative of the age of the recipe (then again, the fact that it calls for baking powder - which I think is an early 20th century innovation - suggests it's either newer or has been updated at some point).

Anyway. You take a bunch of small loaf pans - I always use the disposable aluminium ones because if I give any of the cakes away, I don't want people to feel beholden to return a pan to me. This year I used 3 medium (about 8" by 4") and three small (5" but 3") pans. You grease the pans but then line them totally with waxed paper, and grease the paper too. Then you put the fruitcake batter in, about three-quarters of the way full. While you are doing this you should heat your oven to 325 degrees (if you use glass pans, go 25 to 50 degrees cooler).

I also typicall decorate the fruitcake tops, because that is how it was done in my family.


This is a shot of last year's cake with the traditional design in pecans and glaceed cherries. I think I made a joke then about it perhaps being a throwback to an ancient sun-symbol. (Although, honestly? I don't know. Perhaps it could be.)

Then, you bake the cakes for an hour to an hour and a half. Generally for me it takes the longer time. I highly recommend testing each one - and in more than one place - with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. You want these cakes baked entirely through; they are no good if they are still unbaked somewhere inside. About a half hour into the baking time, start checking: sometimes the tops brown early and you need to tent them with aluminium foil so they won't burn while the rest of the cake bakes.

Also, if you do all of these at once in a single oven, you would do well to swap them, position-wise, midway through cooking. (That's perhaps the one useful thing I learned from watching Martha Stewart: if you're baking with more than one pan in the oven at a time, move the one from the top shelf to the bottom shelf, and vice versa, midway through baking. Of course you would not do that with souffles or popovers, but for poundcakes and cookies it works well).

Take the cakes out when they're well and truly done, and cool them on a rack.

These keep for a very long time.