Fruitcake

[minoanmiss]

I miss fruitcake.

No, really.

I am a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't make a batch this year, since I had the time (otoh, no money for proper booze, but I have the time). I bought a fruitcake from the supermarket on a whim, forgetting that it was an American fruitcake so it has nuts in it which a couple of my roommates are allergic to. I forget that Americans put nuts in their fruitcake and don't put in booze.

No wonder Americans hate fruitcake. Who wants to eat a bunch of gummy un-crunchy nuts and dry cake?

I am from Jamaica, and fruitcake there is descended from British fruitcakes. It starts, not with cake, not with fruit, but with ALCOHOL. Proper fruitcake should smell intoxicating when unwrapped and make you tingle upon finishing a (dense, rich, fudge, jammy) slice. Next year (I hope) I will make fruitcake, and I will start with a couple bottles of Appleton Gold Rum, if I can get them. One needs enough alcohol to soak the fruit, to soak the baked cakes at least twice during their ripening, and to keep the cook lubricated as well.

Also, good fruitcake needs time -- the flavor and texture deepen and ripen over a resting period of at least a couple of months. If I had made fruitcake I would have begun during October's "Fruitcake Weather", acquiring good dried fruits, candying some myself (Nuts.com sells good candied fruit, but most of what's in supermarkets tastes like dyed plastic), and so on. Then asoak the fruits (in the aforementioned rum, or in sherry, or in brandy) and mix up the batter and bake (I make small fruitcakes, jumbo-muffin sized. I think that improves the quality as well, and makes them not seem daunting to receive ), soak in liquor, wrap in parchment and then plastic, and leave to rest. Check on them in a month or so, and dampen with more liquor if needed, then eat or give away in December (maybe with another dousing of liquor).

My paternal grandmother, who inspired me (but refused to teach me), used to cover hers with marzipan and then royal icing. I used to decorate mine elaborately with royal icing and sugar decorations, but I found that despite my best efforts they arrived smushed.

I don't know why I wrote this today. I was just pensively thinking of fruitcake. Maybe next year I'll make some again.

Comments

[baranduin]

I love your fruitcake.

[minoanmiss]

beams a lot One of these years soon I will make it again! [insert apropos LOTR quote]

[some_stars]

I still have fond memories of the fruitcake you sent me years ago. It was DELICIOUS :D

[minoanmiss]

beams and beams I am as delighted to hear this as by the longest comment on AO3.

[ilyena_sylph]

I remember a fruitcake mailing, it was amazing!

[minoanmiss]

blushes a lot One day I will do that again. It was always fun to show up at the Post Office with two big shopping bags full of heavy little boxes.

[cmcmck]

We still make REAL fruitcake this side of the pond, especially at this time of year.

[minoanmiss]

Of course you do! Some traditions never die. :D

[cmcmck]

Usually done six months up front as my SiL still does.

[minoanmiss]

I think summer where I am is too hot for fruitcake making, so I tend to do mine two-three months ahead. I don't know how long my grandmother aged hers for, but I tend to get similar results.

[princessofgeeks]

It's good to plan ahead. I don't think I've ever eaten a good fruitcake, so maybe someday we can meet and share one.

[minoanmiss]

YOU BET YOUR BUTTONS. beams

[corylea]

How do you keep the cake from getting moldy, if you have damp cake sitting around for months?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

It's damp with high proof alcohol. This is one of the uses of alcohol, preserving calories.

This is part of the reason American fruitcake can be dry and hard. If you take a recipe meant to be soused and Prohibition it, that's not going to work. I like fruitcake, but the ones I was used to (in the blue tins with the horses) were dried fruit reconstituted with fat, eggs and enough flour to hold it all together. Again, calories preserved.

I'm from the Midwest. We eat during the winter.

[minoanmiss]

fruitcare fistbump

I never understood why American fruitcake didn't recover from prohibition, though. Maybe it also didn't fit with US instiant gratification.

And yeah, it's definitely meant to be calorie dense. When I was little child I remember slices the size of a playing card.

I continue to wonder about the nut conundrum, though.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That is about the same time Americans stop being predominately rural. And urbanization was not good for slow food.

Also, de-ethnicing was a concern and if anyone was going to be On Fruitcake Duty, it would have been the Methodists, and they are dry. The Episcopalians aren't but they've got enough money to drink their alcohol neat and take their calories from fresh foods. This quickly leads to fruitcake becoming a punchline.

[minoanmiss]

This is some A++ sociological analysis. *delights*

[tibicina]

Presbyterians are also officially dry. (Having come, in part, from a reaction to the excessive drinking problem in Scotland.) So that's another big group who'd be out. (We seriously used to have to hide the bottle of sherry we kept for cooking from some of the members, even though all the alcohol was gone by the time anything was served.)

I always liked the non-alcoholic fruitcakes you'd send me. As you know, it can be done, but it becomes a more delicate balance of timing and you NEED to start with really good dried/candied fruit because you can not hide behind the booze (and several of the good recipes involve alcohol during the process which then cooks out during the bake).

Anyway, I miss your fruitcake, too. I was considering trying to make some this year, but our kitchen is being repainted which has been dragging on for over a month now and so I can't even do much normal baking.

[minoanmiss]

As Peoria wisely put it, the alcohol preserves the cake. That's why one doesn't use fruit juice, or even wine, to soak the cake -- the liquor used has to have a high enough alcohol content.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Bourbon or rum, depending if the still is local or foreign.

Wine is for hard biscuits as you are eating them. ;)

[amaebi]

My mother made fruitcake once and ill-advisedly used Grand Marnier for the soaking, and after the baking rather than starting with the fruit. It was tasty but sticky.

Technical question: Is Appleton the rum brand you think best? I am very ignorant about rum. I don't do spiced rum, but have tended to go with cheap vast bottles of gold rum. (I also recently bought a bottle of black rum- Bacardi in this cautious case-, which I have no experience at all with. I should open it and sniff.)

And I am awfully fond of fruitcake, and should try making some with say a Francatelli recipe.

I also enjoyed the heck out of the fruitcake you sent us. :)

[minoanmiss]

TBH, half the reason I love Appleton is because it's the rum I grew up with -- it's from Jamaica and very popular there. But it is good, and inexpensive.

Basically, the rums I would NOT use are Captain Morgan, Bacardi, or anything in a plastic bottle. I prefer gold rum for fruitcake because it brings nice but not overwhelming flavor, the way raw sugar does vs dark brown sugar.

Grand Marnier is a bit... overwhelmingly orangey. Wow. But that can work with the right fruit.

[redbird]

Is that advice on what rums you would not use for baking in general, or specific to fruitcake? I have a family recipe whose "secret ingredient" is a small amount of rum, and since we wouldn't drink it, I would be tempteded to buy one of those airline-size bottles of whatever's cheap at the nearby stores here in Somerville.

(I can ask my aunt about this, if I remember.)

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, that's my general baking advice.

Try to get a nip of Old Nelson, which is nice and high-proof, or the Kraken, which is very entertaining. :D

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, fruitcake. Which, as mentioned above, never recovered from Prohibition. Fruitcake is also the title of the artwork, by Edward Gorey, on a Season's Greetings card I got from a fellow MASSFILCer in 1999. A typical black and white scene of four Edwardian / Victorian people and a dog, each carrying a fruitcake under cover of darkness. Their destination? A hole in the ice of a snow covered pond. The man is dropping his fruitcake into the hole.

Since Gorey was American, I would guess the scene takes place on this side of the Great Puddle, with American fruitcakes. It was believed that fruitcakes were eternal. Since this was before regifting was popular, it may have seemed the best way to get rid of such a monstrosity. (:-/

Ann O.

[tibicina]

Though this also reminds me, if shipping alcohol weren't so problematic, I wish I could send you some of the cordials we've made over the years. Among other things, I think you'd really like the ginger one and the allspice one. If you know anyone coming to Conflikt who'd be willing to transport some back to you in their luggage, let me know.

[minoanmiss]

Oh my goodnes, thank you! I love ginger and I love cordials so I am certain I would love your ginger cordial ever so much!

[swingandswirl]

Mmmm, fruitcake. I agree with you that the proper ones need alcohol; unfortunately where I live we get the non-booze nut kind which is THE WORST.

If you do podcasts, Savor has one on fruitcake I really enjoyed!

[minoanmiss]

Hee! I'll have to listen to that. ANd I am Making A Note for when I do manke fruitcake again to make sure to end your drought!

[mdlbear]

Mom used to make proper fruitcakes, starting in August. She'd wrap them in foil, put them in the fridge, and top off the rum every so often. I need to see if I can track down that recipe.

[petra]

I have very fond memories of sharing your fruitcake with everyone I shared Christmas with, especially the fruitcake skeptics.

[minoanmiss]

beams and beams

[cellio]

Your fruitcakes are amazing! You also taught me that fruitcake does not have to be that gross stuff with gummy candy, soggy nuts, dry cake, and no booze.