Gumdrops?

I refuse to believe such an abomination exists.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:27 PM by Chris Clarke

a single horrible wodge of denatured maraschino cherry

That's why I was traumatized earlier in life. That and there being no soaking-in-booze involved.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:31 PM by Serge

Believe, or I'll tell you about my mother's Christmas Pudding recipe.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:31 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Use a recipe that calls for the substitution of gum drops.

Gum drops?
Gum drops?

**shudders.**

Posted December 8, 2006 12:34 PM by Madeleine Robins

Whoever makes an alleged "fruitcake" with gumdrops instead of fruit should be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:47 PM by Xopher

You know, I have to make a list of fruit to buy next summer. Most of the recipes you post here are the sort of thing I very much want to do, because it sounds so very interesting, but not necessarily consume, because I am way too picky.
I'm going to spend the rest of winter finding good jars and figuring out the oven.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:48 PM by Cassie

you aged the fruitcake some weeks or months

Woah! Really? I think I see the problem....

Greg "never met a fruitcake that couldn't double as a manhole cover" London

Posted December 8, 2006 12:51 PM by Greg London

I remember the church ladies selling home-made fruitcake when I was a kid. They did this in October, so it had time to age a bit. There were blanched almonds on top. (I remember that much, because we had a picture of about thirty square feet of fruitcakes on our dining-room table.) They got orange juice instead of liquor. I can't say that it's an improvement, but it's safe to serve to kids and teetotallers.

Somewhere in one of the boxes I have a recipe for fruitcake cookies that's an excuse for pecans.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:54 PM by P J Evans

I'm definitely in the "wouldn't eat fruitcake on a bet" category, myself.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:57 PM by Jay Lake

Teresa, I'd managed to miss the recipe containing (oh Goddess help us)...gumdrops?

Another hazard of fruitcakes is failure to chop the fruits finely enough. You get that wodge of cherry because an uncautious baker tossed the container of candied cherry halves straight into the mix. Too lazy to dice the bloody things, I suspect.

Where do you get the fresh citron to candy? I'd love to do my own. The best I've ever had came from a now defunct cooking store, they imported theirs from Israel.

I agree with you on only the best ingredients -- I probably drop $50 to $100 per batch on mine. Fruitcake baking is a weekend project for me, one day spent chopping various ingredients, the next making the batter (standard pound cake really), adding the goodies, and baking the result.

This year I didn't get around to baking mine until November. I usually try to do them Columbus Day weekend, to give the fruitcake a couple of months to mellow. If the scent coming from the tins is any indication, this year's cake should be just right in a couple of weeks.

Posted December 8, 2006 12:57 PM by Lori Coulson

Also, the melting gumdrops weld the cake into the pan.

You say that as though it were a bad thing.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:01 PM by Dave Weingart

There is ONE commercial fruitcake worth trying. It's made by a Scot's company called Walkers (they also make shortbread) and it's macerated in Glenfiddich...

Warning this is a DARK fruitcake and an addictive one.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:02 PM by Lori Coulson

Gumdrops in fruitcake sound horrible. Spice drops in oatmeal cookies, however, are delicious.

I think fruitcake has become one of the food items that are worth eating only if homemade.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:02 PM by Lexica

thirty square feet of fruitcakes on our dining-room table

That, P J, sounds like a scene from a Tim Burton movie.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:09 PM by Serge

I love Jo's Cousin Beryl's fruitcake version, as it involves neither alcohol nor molasses. Most people don't recognize it as fruitcake, though. I made a dozen of them last year, in little tins, to give to people at work.

"Do you like fruitcake?"
"Ugh! No, I can't stand fruitcake! Why?"
"Ok, I didn't want to give you a fruitcake if you didn't like them. Here's a cherry-cranberry-blueberry cake instead. It doesn't keep as long as a fruitcake, only about a week. Eat it in good health."

(Across office) "Do you like fruitcake?"
"Ooo! I love fruitcake! I'll take Billy's fruitcake, if he doesn't want it."
"All right. Let me get a fruitcake for you. This is a different kind of fruitcake..."
"That's ok, I like all kinds of fruitcake!"
"It doesn't have rum in it, so you need to eat it in less than a week."
"I can do that!"
"OK, enjoy!"
"Hey! This isn't fruitcake! This is the cherry-cranberry stuff you gave Billy!"

Posted December 8, 2006 1:16 PM by Adrian

I've heard of worse abominations than gum drops. I checked the ingredients in a fruitcake in the grocery once, and saw 'candied turnips' as one of the first ingredients. :p

My mother made wonderful fruitcake, although it was so alcoholic that we children were never allowed to eat very much of it.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:19 PM by Remus Shepherd

I refuse to believe such an abomination exists.

In a world of spam sushi, deep-fried anything, and energy beer, you have trouble with cheap candy in fruitcake?

Posted December 8, 2006 1:19 PM by Erik V. Olson

Also, what's the deal with airline peanuts?

All of your suggestions sound like a good way of making a slighlty less awful fruitcake, but nevertheless something I'd probably still avoid at the holiday dessert table.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:20 PM by Fred

Cruddy fruitcake is just one of the many atrocities for which the Bush administration should be held accountable.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:23 PM by Scott H

Have fruitcakes caught on in Japan? I can just imagine them made with shredded bits of squid and studded with corn.

Reading Jo's cousin's fruitcake recipe caused me to look up Farenheit in Wikipedia (to find out just why Farenheit degrees are the size they are), and it turns out there are a bunch of competing theories, so naturally some people blame it on Freemasonry.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:29 PM by Avram

Lori@#12:

Another genuinely good mail-order fruitcake is the Deluxe Fruitcake from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. High-grade pecans, high-quality candied fruits . . . no hooch, but they supply instructions on their web page for doctoring it. This one has been my family's Definitive Fruitcake for as long as I can remember.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:31 PM by Debra Doyle

It seems to me the really basic problem with fruitcake is a near-total lack of chocolate. That, plus an unnecessary amount of fruit.

I am not certain that Teresa's recipes properly address this issue.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:32 PM by colin roald

Avram,

Here's what I believe to be the best of the Fahrenheit degree explanations.

0 is the coldest temperature that can be achieved using ice/water/salt mixture.

100 is body temperature.

Everything else follows.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:41 PM by SamChevre

#22: use Creme de cacao as your sousing liquid.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:42 PM by Xopher

We got Collin Street fruitcakes one year from work. They're definitely Good Fruitcake.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:44 PM by P J Evans

There are many varieties of fruitcake, here is one of my favourites.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:46 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Collins Street? Oh yeah.

You find citrons by keeping a sharp eye out for them at the right time of year (now-ish). Anyone who spots citrons, Buddha's Hand citrons, or other strange citrus fruit in NYC will PLEASE LET ME KNOW at their earliest convenience.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:47 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Dang. Fragano, that is one weird fruitcake recipe. I now want to try it.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:49 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I never quite understood the hatred of fruitcake, probably because I've never had a commercial one--but I also haven't found the perfect recipe yet (my perfect fruitcake would be moist and dark, with a rich molasses-spice-rum flavor, and packed with dried fruit and candied orange peel). But what's not to like? Candied/dried fruit, spices, and rum! All good things.

I usually use dried fruit and home-candied orange peel (the stuff you can buy disturbs me). Dried papaya chunks are great in fruitcake--pretty, tasty, and hold their shape well.

This year I'm going to try a variant of Trinidad Black Cake, sans maraschino cherries and with different dried fruit.

Posted December 8, 2006 1:51 PM by Mel

If you have three weeks to prepare the fruit, and a couple of days to marinate the cake, then Jamaican Black Cake is an awesome alternative to classic fruitcake. My sister's Guyanese in-laws introduced me to it a few years ago and I've been hooked ever since. The fruits are chopped fine and integrate completely into the rich, black cake, which I prefer to chunks or strings of fruit. It's almost like a fruit and rum brownie.

This recipe is pretty close to what I've had.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:12 PM by Mary

TNH #28: That's a traditional Trinidadian black cake. My only complaint about this version is that they're rather stingy with the rum. Other versions suggest an entire bottle. It should be either Jamaica or Demerara rum, btw. No others will do.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:14 PM by Fragano Ledgister

My mother was a dedicated distributer of simple carbohydrates at Christmas, and had dozens of fruit-cake recipes. The best "normal" one involved applesauce in the batter, and macerating the fruit in brandy for six weeks before baking. She usually baked two or three kinds each year, along with several sorts of cookies and fudge. Subsisting on pancakes made from the screenings of cattle feed during the depression had a long-lasting impact on her cooking habits.

But the one fruitcake which I long for, and could not eat even if I had the recipe for reasons of diabetes and walnut allergy, was basically dates and walnuts layered in a loaf pan and covered with a batter made of eggs, butter, very little flour,and orange zest.

Really good fruit cake is ambrosial; really bad fruitcake is, unfortunatly pervasive.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:14 PM by JESR

OK, so Fragano beat me to it with his Caribbean variation. They're all good.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:15 PM by Mary

#13. Question for the group. Just what "spice" is it that is in "spice gumdrops?"

And in other "spice" things where (spice != chili)

* * *

One (new) year I bought, from a drug store sale table, maybe four of those really shabby Hostess (?) fruitcakes for perhaps $.50 each.

I used them as breakfast food, toasting a very thin slice to eat along with cereal and coffee.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:15 PM by Stefan Jones

The gumdrops-in-fruitcake notion sounds like something you'd find in a parody version of Parade magazine.

Or maybe in the real version of Parade magazine, between an article on how celebrities decorate for the holidays and a column by a doctor on telling if your teen is in danger of becoming a goth.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:22 PM by Stefan Jones

Which spices in spice gumdrops? I'm only sure of two: green is spearmint, and purple is clove.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:26 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#34 -- "Spice Gumdrops" are actually several different flavors and colors.

The most common assortment I've seen is:

White = peppermint
Green = spearmint
Yellow = Clove
Pink = wintergreen
Red = cinnamon

Posted December 8, 2006 2:28 PM by Lori Coulson

#13. Question for the group. Just what "spice" is it that is in "spice gumdrops?"

The same kind of things you get in a "spice cake"--cloves, cinammon, nutmeg, that kind of thing. I have no idea which, or in what combination, though.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:32 PM by Carrie S.

Licorice. You have to have licorice in a spice gumdrops mixture.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:36 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Mmmm, wintergreen.

There's wintergreen growing around my grandparents' house, but I hardly go up there anymore. Fresh wintergreen tea is like nothing on earth. Fabulously good.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:38 PM by Carrie S.

My mother passed on to me a recipe for "unbaked" fruitcake; that is, unbaked in its fruitcake incarnation. The cake part is made of crushed graham crackers or crumbed slightly stale spicecake, laden with good quality candied fruits and nuts and bound together and aged basted in booze. Tasty, and you don't have to worry about burning the outside while the inside stays raw.

This also turns out to be a mighty good method for producing edible sculpture (though it helps to use less fruits and nuts). My first was a dragon tail (having read Farmer Giles of Ham and being warned that real dragon tail was much to dangerous) with marzipan vertebrae, upper scales of green glazed cherries and lower of glazed pineapple and spines of candied orange slices fixed in place with festive frilled toothpicks. The most complicated was a 2 ft tall subtlety of St. Cecilia for the Southern California Early Music Society, with marzipan clothing and organ, and a halo of edible stained glass. It was a little weird having her for dessert, but we did.

My mother, bless her heart, revealed to me at Thanksgiving that she secretly likes those long fruitcake doorstops. She's 91, but not demented, so I guess this is just one of her peculiarities. My father just rolled his eyes, but I promised to bring her one of the locally-baked ones.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:39 PM by Tracie

Fragano #26: The recipe says "Cook over low heat until dark" - I assume they mean starting at first light, right?

Posted December 8, 2006 2:42 PM by Xopher

Being a performer of traditional Irish music, I feel it's my duty to post on this thread the lyrics and modern transcription and a facsimile of the sheet music of "Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake." You make seek out recordings on your own -- there are many. Best played on a slightly out of tune upright at danceable hard-shoe hornpipe tempo.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:55 PM by Tracie

My mother in law makes a beautiful English fruit cake, white soaked in sherry. Starts it in August in November it gets sealed in marzipan and royal icing.

Can we add the horror of modern mincemeat to this, as it suffers the same fate, starting with the whole "Where's the meat?" issue.

Posted December 8, 2006 2:56 PM by T.W

I have for several years now made my Meemaw's cranberry-orange cake in lieu of more traditional fruitcake (which I like, in moderation). My brother (who doesn't like traditional fruitcake) accuses me angrily every year of misrepresenting it as fruitcake so that he will decline the gift of one. Why he can't remember from year to year, I'm not sure.

I also have, somewhere, my godmother's recipe for a chocolate-cherry-pecan fruitcake (it, too, is not a traditional fruitcake)--you can too make them with chocolate.

I read Jo Walton's Cousin Beryl's recipe last year, and mean to try it, but if anyone has a really and truly traditional fruitcake (dense and spicy with only enough cake to hold the fruit together, please age for a month or two sort of thing) recipe that they like, I'd love to have one.

Posted December 8, 2006 3:05 PM by alsafi

The family fruitcake recipe involves about 10 lbs of candied fruit and peel, and quite a bit of booze and spice. It also involves separating the eggs and beating the whites until they are nice and fluffy.

As the penultimate step of the recipe, after all of the lovely boozy cake mix and the lovely fruity goodness have been mixed together in the giant stew pot, and our hands are thoroughly coated in candied fruit, we are required to "fold in eggwhites." This is the point where everyone in the kitchen indulges in a communal giggle and several sips of leftover brandy.

Posted December 8, 2006 3:13 PM by Juniper

I agree on Collin Street Bakery fruitcake. I have Aaron Allston to thank for turning me on to them.

Hokay, now where's my fifteen cents?!

Posted December 8, 2006 3:14 PM by Earl Cooley III

I think candied ginger could pretty much reconcile me to fruitcake. Is candied ginger acceptable?

Posted December 8, 2006 3:23 PM by julia

Xopher #42: Well they could, or they could mean until the colour of the cake turned dark (which seems to be what is intended, a black cake is very dark).

Posted December 8, 2006 3:26 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano, I was making a joke about how long it takes to carmelize sugar.

Posted December 8, 2006 3:31 PM by Xopher

Candied ginger is acceptable if you feel like it should be. So are candied pineapple (the dry, chewy kind, not the gooey stuff that shows up in little plastic tubs this time of year), candied papaya (likewise the dry kind), and dried apricots and cherries (cut up fine, espcially the apricots).

On advantage to using drier candied fruit, as well as simple dried fruit: This is another chance to add booze, because all that dry fruit needs to be moistened up a bit. Besides sherry, other wines good for this included Madeira and Malaga. Also malmsey, if you can get it. Mead works well, too. There's port, if you prefer.

Posted December 8, 2006 3:33 PM by fidelio

This post has finally explained to me the puzzling generational difference Americans show towards fruitcake; Under 40's won't touch it, older Americans seem to fall on it like they haven't eaten a decent fruitcake for years. (I'm in the UK).

On Christmas puddings: our family recipe contains carrot. For many years I and my Mum had assumed that this was introduced to the recipe during rationing when sugar was difficult to get hold of. But when I spoke to my Grandmother, it turns out that it was in the recipe when she learnt it in the 20s. I also learnt many of the strange things that went on during rationing, especially if you kept chickens, two of your brothers were farmers, and it turned out that they were building an airbase filled with Americans just down the road.

Posted December 8, 2006 3:47 PM by Neil Willcox

#45, Alsafi, I could post my maritimer dark fruit cake in my journal and link you up. It's like a molasses gingerbread pound cake crammed with stuff. It does not come with the aging instructions though.
I also have a white fruitcake recipe of the region and half a dozen of not really fruitcake but close alternatives.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:18 PM by T.W

Mead I can do. I have 25 gallons (yes, you read that right) waiting to bottle: starthistle mead, toyuon (California holly) mead, tanbark oakblossom mead, rhodamel and metheglyn. I'm thinking the lees would do well for a cake.

I've got a recipe I begged off my English teacher in high school, as it was the first edible fruitcake I'd ever had. I'd made it once myself then, but at the time my father had (thankfully, but recently) gone dry and there was no brandy in the house with which to dose it. So I rummaged in the back of the cabinets until I turned up the only spirits left: whiskey and vermouth.

The cake was...good, but strange. And I never tasted that same flavor combination again until twenty odd years later when a friend bought me a Manhattan. As I remarked, memories washing back, "I haven't tasted this in years. But last time it was crunchy."

I'll try to find the recipe, but I'd recommend dosing it with something other than the ingredients for a Manhattan.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:19 PM by Kevin Andrew Murphy

#54 -- I'd be willing to bet the recipe your English teacher gave you was for Emily Dickenson's fruitcake. One of the tearooms in Central Ohio used to make it...fantastic stuff.

It, too, makes a very dark rich fruitcake.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:24 PM by Lori Coulson

One of the best holiday cards I've ever seen featured a smiling woman on the cover, and the caption, "This Christmas I wanted to get you something that you last forever."

On the inside was a perfect image of one of those fruitcakes that arrives at your door in a red-and-green tin covered with Victorian Santas and similar kitsch.

My mother and I stood in the grocery store aisle where we found the card, and howled with laughter.

(My beloved grandmother used to have one of those fruitcakes shipped to us every year. Some brave soul would try a piece or two when it first arrived. And then it would sit untouched on our counter until July or August, when my mother would finally throw it away.)

But you're right, fruitcake can be good. My college roommate once made me a very light, lemony one.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:25 PM by Maud

Er, "something that WOULD last forever," I mean.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:26 PM by Maud

And there's my dad's fruitbread. All the storebought candied stuff you'd expect in a fruitcake, and walnuts, baked into a rich loaf of bread. Unfortunately, it takes 7 hours to make 2 loaves, so it's become rarer and rarer as we've gotten older...

Posted December 8, 2006 4:49 PM by Nancy C

There's another concordance of spice drop flavors here.

Posted December 8, 2006 4:51 PM by Julie L.

Collin Street is the only good *American* fruitcake.

There's an Italian version, panforte, which seems to be a specialty of the area surrounding Siena. It's a medieval recipe, flat (about 5/8 in [1cm] thick), and comes in several styles: with chocolate dusted on, with figs, and "bianca". Get an artisanal version; stuff from Italian imitators of General Foods (Bellino comes to mind) are quite horrible. The bottoms of all of them are what the ingredient lists insist on calling "wafer", presumably because it's a thin dried sugar paste stamped in a diamond pattern.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:03 PM by joann

joann @ 61

I bet the bottoms were originally something like almond paste (making them even more medieval).

Posted December 8, 2006 5:06 PM by P J Evans

And there is always German Stollen. My dad makes excellent stollen, but we've found most of the store-bought stollen to be quiet good. Aldi's carries a good one, and quite inexpensive.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:11 PM by Ursula L

Xopher #50: Oh dear, my mistake. I will now hit myself with a wet noodle.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:18 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Second the recommendation on the Aldi's stollen.

Scary, but maybe not too scary to try:

Dollar Store Penatone

Posted December 8, 2006 5:22 PM by Stefan Jones

#10

Lori,

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cosentino's groceries carry the fresh goods, one bin of sheer baking yumminess after another. They've had stuff available since mid-september, and since there's still Pannetone making (and a Portguese version of such I won't attempt to spell the name of), it will continue through the holidays.

And we have fresh citron as well. There are local growers who sell locally.

Tis the season for citrusy things--about a dozen of my Meyer lemons all decided to ripen en masse over the last week.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:36 PM by Laurie

PJ, 61: I'm pretty sure that marzipan has always been too fancy and expensive to use as parchment paper. Besides, it's sticky. It's more like that egg-white-and-sugar stuff on the sides of Provençal nougat, I bet. Probably invented when parchment was expensive and paper hadn't caught on yet.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:38 PM by TexAnne

Argh. "It" in my third sentence above refers to the stuff on the bottom of pannetoni. Sorry about that.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:39 PM by TexAnne

Teresa @27: One way to find citron is to make friends with Orthodox Jews around Sukkot, when it's used cermonially and whole, and say "Hey, that lumpy citrus fruit you usually throw away? Can I get that when you're done with it?" Unfortunately I think that holiday already happened this year.

I worked in a Kosher kitchen in college, and that was the only time I've ever seen a citron. I was told by the guys I worked with that there was an older woman who lived nearby that collected them from whoever remembered she liked them. She was probably candying them, though I can no longer recall.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:44 PM by TChem

TexAnne: not marzipan. Cooks.com has a recipe for 'banket' that's almond paste with flour, butter, and eggs, which looks like what I'm thinking of. I can see it being used instead of a pastry shell.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:48 PM by P J Evans

My family is from Texas (Dad emigrated from there to America) so Collin Street has been a tradition from before I was born. Warning: their pecan pie also has unusual range and striking power. You have been warned.

However, even though I have to avoid fruitcake these days, I still reserve some space for one that can proudly compete with Collin Street. The Camaldolese Benedictine hermits in Big Sur make a brandy soaked and aged fruitcake that has been gaining adherents out here on the West coast. So moist that I suggest leaving it overnight in the refrigerator before cutting it -- that way you actually get slices. And the monks will take regular orders for Christmas delivery through the 19th (the 20th in the West). The Hermitage is literally the farthest into Big Sur that UPS is willing to drive, and they make extra runs this time of year to keep up with the orders.

Truth in advertising notice: It is true that I am an oblate of that community, and this is one of the main forms of income for the Hermitage. But the fruitcakes are that good. Trust me -- they have been causing massive sugar highs for tourists on Highway 1 for decades.

Posted December 8, 2006 5:48 PM by Claude Muncey

Our markets here have Sunmaid fruitcake blocks that I find divine and acceptable to eat, they're really nice for breakfast--a lot of fruit, some tasty, moist cake and pecans. And, a plus for me, NO CITRON. Granted I've only had citron in traditional commercial fruitcakes, and never fresh/sugared, but I think the taste of the form I'm familiar with is abhorrent. I'd like to be proven wrong, because I like most citrus flavors more than I like vanilla or chocolate.

Posted December 8, 2006 6:04 PM by Paula Helm Murray

What would you do with Buddha's Hand citrons? Make candied peels? The fresh form has started showing up at the local farmers market ($6/lb).

(However, the candying process appears to require hours and a hot stove. I think I shall first visit all the local Asian food markets first, to see what they have in the candied fruits section.)

Posted December 8, 2006 6:06 PM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

PJ: I'd believe banket as a crust, but I don't think it could be rolled thinly enough to serve as a wafer. I wish I had time to make a batch of banket right now. Thanks for the pointer!

Posted December 8, 2006 6:11 PM by TexAnne

There is the variety known here as either bishop's cake or stained glass window cake. I love it immoderately, because it consists almost entirely of actual pieces of candied fruit soaked in brandy, and is held together by what appears to be a substance not unlike plum-pudding. It is sliced very thin, and it is extraordinarily beautiful on the plate. Whenever I hint that I would like a present of some for Christmas, my cuisine-savvy relatives always remark that it's wonderful stuff, but a pain and a chore to make, and the bought stuff is dreadful, because the fruit is never good enough. Hey-ho.

Posted December 8, 2006 6:11 PM by Dave Luckett

Yanno, I actually really like commercial fruitcake. I realize this makes me the Hawaiian Shirt Tourist of Yuletide. I'm learning to live with that.

(I also like store-bought eggnog. And wine with a screw-off cap. And the Star Wars prequels. Pardon me, I'ma go reread "Qualities of Experience" now.)

Posted December 8, 2006 6:17 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

#75: Dan, I love wine with a screw-off cap--it's a boon to single people. I don't even count it as a guilty pleasure. (Those would be Little Debbies and Duran Duran.)

Posted December 8, 2006 6:26 PM by TexAnne

Claude @70
You're an oblate at New Camaldoli?

Small world. My mother is (or has been - don't know if she still is) their lawyer. I've been addicted to their fruitcake for decades.

Posted December 8, 2006 6:30 PM by abi

I've seen Buddha's hands in NYC recently somewhere; Garden of Eden? I think so, the other gourmet place I went to last Saturday that's not Fairway doesn't do fruit.

Posted December 8, 2006 6:33 PM by Chris Quinones

TexAnne #66 It's more like that egg-white-and-sugar stuff on the sides of Provençal nougat, I bet.

And like the Italian nougat, too. Same stuff. I'd forgotten that. (Now why did I need a new filling because of a too-hard pizza crust and not because of the Torrone hard divinity>)

Posted December 8, 2006 6:48 PM by joann

Speaking of Dollar Store Panettone, there's also Cioccolettone (or reasonably near spelling) which we saw a few weeks ago and bought--and ate already. It's pretty good; better than panettone IMO.

Posted December 8, 2006 7:01 PM by joann

My mother used to make her own stollen; the store-bought variety wasn't available in Kentucky when I was young. I'm not sure what (besides a timely McCall's recipe) triggered this as a family tradition, unless she had enjoyed some during her time in Germany. The stollen was the one bit of fancy baking she ever did.

Posted December 8, 2006 7:06 PM by joann

My mother followed all of Teresa's rules except the ingredient quality one, because we were very rural and very broke and she was doing well to get her hands on any sort of nuts and candied fruits. However, she was the queen of putting stuff by, so the fruitcakes got made many months in advance and liberally doused with brandy or rum (also cheap, but given enough months, you don't notice). Periodically she would repair furtively to the The Place She Hid The Fruitcakes to turn them in their cheesecloth wraps and reapply more brandy (to the cheesecloth and to herself).

Needless to say, I love fruitcake.

The mincemeat issue IS related. She also made awesome mincemeat, starting from a recipe that says "Take twenty pounds of moose meat..." Nor did she stint of the brandy during the preparation thereof. I found an heirloom stash of quart Mason jars of the stuff (she pressure canned it) some while after her death, which I ate a bite at a time with a spoon, storing the jar in my fridge and keeping the top surface of the mincemeat in the jar under a half inch of brandy to prevent mold.

Needless to say, I don't recognize most of what's sold as mincemeat (it's what, oxidized applesauce and guar gum?) these days.

Posted December 8, 2006 7:11 PM by Daniel Boone

"I don't recognize most of what's sold as mincemeat (it's what, oxidized applesauce and guar gum?) these days."
If you're lucky. Some even put lard in to give you a 'meat' effect.

If someone wants to go on an adventure and play with these recipes by all means, go have fun.
http://sucrelefey.livejournal.com/99677.html
http://sucrelefey.livejournal.com/82353.html

Posted December 8, 2006 7:42 PM by T.W

Claude #70: I thought an oblate was a person given in infancy or childhood to be a monk.

Posted December 8, 2006 7:49 PM by Xopher

Dan @75, I mildly object to your Hawaiian Shirt Tourist claim. "Loud" Hawaiian Shirt might be better used to make the point I'm assuming you're trying to. The industry here has been trying to sell the nice reverse-print variety to the tourists for quite a while. See Reyns.

Posted December 8, 2006 7:58 PM by Linkmeister

linkmeister,

I mildly object to your Hawaiian Shirt Tourist claim.

do you also object to people characterising spam sushi/musubi as everything that is wrong with the world, as erik olson did in post 17?

i was all set to be indignant about said delicacy (indignant on snob principle, since i eat neither sushi nor pork of any kind), until it was pointed out to me that it's a hawaiian thing. & that it's actually a fascinating cultural phenomenon, melding the cuisine of two of hawai'i's longstanding ethnic groups: japanese & us army.

Posted December 8, 2006 8:29 PM by miriam beetle

Back in my Alton Brown Whore phase (tried every damn recipe he enthused about), I attempted his fruitcake recipe and was so pleased and surprised that I made it that year for the grandmother-in-law. Major brownie points there.

Haven't made it since - we found that good quality fruits and nuts makes fruitcake an expensive experiment that we can't guarantee will get eaten (considering many people's fear of the stuff).

Posted December 8, 2006 8:37 PM by Mur

No, absolutely not, if you didn't make the fruitcake yourself, it is unsuitable as a gift. That's the point of fruitcake.

(I used to like fruitcake when I was little and my mother made it every year, but then one day I realized I didn't like it anymore, so she stopped making it.)

Posted December 8, 2006 9:15 PM by Avedon

My sister and I are making Trinidad Black Cake this year. It's so good that a half-dozen of my cousins have had it at their weddings.

We're using a recipe from Naparima Girls High School Cookbook. The fruit is soaking in rum and cherry brandy as we speak.

I've increased the quantity of alcohol as per advice from my aunt, who calls it "drunken fruitcake." I've got a chunk of one of her masterpieces that she gave me when I visited, and will go nibble on it once I post.

Posted December 8, 2006 9:16 PM by Sundre

#82 Now I'm confused - what's mincemeat where you are? I thought it was a long-winded way of saying "mince", and "mince" for me means either fresh (usually cheap) meat ground up (for hamburgers or spaghetti bolognese or whatever) or occasionally, in the right context, dried fruit ground up with lots of sugar added, especially in little pies.

Neither of those seem to quite fit with both moose meat and brandy.

Posted December 8, 2006 9:16 PM by Zeborah

Re: #90,

Mincemeat, as sold commercially in the US, is generally the second product you described, dried fruit, with sugar and spices, generally sold in cans or jars, to put in pies.

This product is derived from an older product, which was mince in the first sense (chopped up meat) combined with dried fruit, sugar, and brandy, also to put in pies.

At some point, the meat, and sometimes the alcohol, was dropped from the concept of "mincemeat" in the US, at least for what is sold in stores. So older, homemade recipes are treasured for the original concept of meat, fruit, spice and alcohol. Which, when you think of it, is what a lot of medieval cooking was about.

UK English retains "mince" for both of the modern forms, while US English uses "mincemeat" for the spiced fruit and "ground meat" for the chopped up flesh.

Moose meat would suggest an old recipe from a rural area, where folks still hunt, and moose may be hunted and used for meat. A poor farmer's substitute for ground beef, which would either have to be bought or be the result of butchering a farm animal. (Prior to licensed hunting, a moose might have been shot on principle, since it might go after a farm's crops.)

Posted December 8, 2006 9:27 PM by Ursula L

If you have a cookbook of suitable age (or whatever, like Beard's American Cookery), you can find recipes for 'real' mincemeat, with meat and suet and raisins and spices and the whole nine yards (or should it be nine pints?)

It's a lot easier to buy a box of 'Nonesuch'.

Posted December 8, 2006 9:31 PM by P J Evans

TexAnne - Well, my personal weakness is for Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot, which isn't even properly wine, but I've stopped feeling guilty about it too. With the number of paycheck-reducing hobbies I have, I figure a taste for convenience store cuisine is one of the few ways I get close to maintaining solvency.

Linkmeister - Ah, yes. You're right. Chalk it up to a casualty of my lifelong battle against acute adjectivitis. (Those shirts are lovely, though. Do they come in black on black?)

Posted December 8, 2006 9:36 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

TexAnne @ 66

Or like those Mexican sugar-candies with the thin wafer on both sides of the candy; otherwise you couldn't get it off your fingers. (I seem to recall from the last time I met one, a couple of months ago, that it was labelled 'Oblate'. Just to add another use of the term - not unrelated, I'm sure.)

Posted December 8, 2006 9:42 PM by P J Evans

Alsafi @ #45, could you please post or link to the chocolate cherry fruitcake recipe?

TW @ #53, could please post or link to your gingerbread recipe?

I love gingerbread. I don't like most dried fruit, but the idea of a chocolate fruit cake intrigues me. I think I will have to experiment a little. If it comes out, I will post the recipe, something along the lines of chocolate, orange-peel, and almond cake doused with Cointreau.

On mincemeat - from what I can tell, it was originally a mixture of meat scraps and dried fruit, heavily seasoned and mixed with brandy to preserve it. I remember reading about it in "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I think. I begged my mother to make me mince pie after I read that, then hated it when actually presented with the dish.

Posted December 8, 2006 9:46 PM by Magenta Griffith

We're having our annual holiday party on Sunday, so I made Jo's Aunt Beryl's fruitcake. Won't cut into it until the party, but it came out beautifully as near as I can tell. And the house smelled gorgeous. Now to make the gingerbread, the banana bread, the pumpkin bread and the chocolate bread....

Posted December 8, 2006 9:54 PM by Madeleine Robins

Just for fun, I Googled on wafers edible - no quotes. It gets a really interesting set of results - the build-an-edible-transistor-model might be good for kids at a convention - and I discovered that edible rice paper is frequently used for bases for things like nougat. One of them - about the third page down - specifically mentions Torrone.

Just sayin'.

Posted December 8, 2006 9:58 PM by P J Evans

I thought an oblate was a person given in infancy or childhood to be a monk.

You're not mistaken, Xopher. An "oblate" is defined as a person offered or dedicated in some way to God. The original oblati were children offered to religious houses to be raised -- the practice is mentioned in chapter 59 of the Rule. Within a century the practice became increasingly regulated (for example, requiring that oblati be able to choose at puberty whether to stay or leave) and died off. The term came to be applied to one of several types of person residing with a monastic community without vows. This evolved to the current understanding that an oblate is generally a lay person with an officially recognized relationship to a particular Benedictine community. We make promises, not vows as monks do. (What confuses this is that there are some religious orders with the word "oblate" in their title. Not the same thing.) We are obligated to follow the Rule of Benedict as appropriate for someone living in the secular world. Worldwide there are currently about 25,000 Benedictine oblates.

Oblates are different from the associates or tertiaries of other orders in that we are associated not to the Ordinis Sancti Benedicti as a whole but to one specific community -- in my case New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur. Also, oblates are not necessarily Catholics. One example is Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk who is an oblate and a Presbyterian. (For some reason or another, there are a lot of Presbyterian oblates.) Other well known modern oblates were Jacques Maritain and Dorothy Day.

St. John's Abbey, Collegeville has a good page on oblates. The Camaldolese oblate rule is online, along with the article Shared Solitude by Deborah Smith Douglas , another oblate of New Camaldoli.

Posted December 8, 2006 10:01 PM by Claude Muncey

Speaking of how long fruitcake can keep--there is a fruitcake that is exhibited at the Old-Timer's exhibit at our county fair every year. It was baked in 1927.

I make this fruitcake recipe every winter.

Before I made it, I was 100% sure I didn't like fruitcake. Now I know, I just like this fruitcake; others still don't appeal much. People that usually claim to hate fruitcake often like it. Bonus, it is good fresh.

Posted December 8, 2006 10:17 PM by Joy

This is the definitive site for good fruitcake fellowship:

http://www.fruitcakesociety.org/

Posted December 8, 2006 10:20 PM by Naomi

#95, Magenta I have a basic gingerbread here:
http://sucrelefey.livejournal.com/825.html middle recipe. I'll hunt around for the other ones and add to my general list when the time comes here:
http://sucrelefey.livejournal.com/tag/recipes

Posted December 8, 2006 10:32 PM by T.W

Those of you who can't believe that the "wafer" linings of panforte could actually be fine wheaten pasty must not have seen old panforte recipes that call for the pan to be lined with communion wafers. I've had both kinds of wafer -- they sell the secular baking-supply sort at our local Polish grocery -- and they're quite similar.

I've made panforte many times. Minicon attendees from the first year I helped run programming may recall the perpetual supply of panforte in the Green Room. The principle is fairly simple: take candied citron, citrus peel, and/or melon rind, and dice it finely. Toast and chop almonds and hazelnuts in measure equal to the candied peel or rind. Pinon nuts may also be added to make up the whole. When I'm feeling daring, I add some pistachios.

Take a scant one-sixth as much flour as fruit and nut mixture, and to it add cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and white pepper, or whatever spice mixture you prefer, plus a dab of salt. Sift the flour mixture over the fruit and nuts, and mix them together well. Boil sugar and honey together to make a syrup, then pour it over the fruit, nut, and flour mixture. Mix all together well.

Meanwhile, either line a pan with wafer(s), or grease it, then line it with parchment, then grease the parchment. Press the panforte mixture into the pan. Bake at 300 F. for about half an hour. Turn it out on a cooling rack. If you used parchment, peel it off when the panforte's cool. Dust the whole with confectioner's sugar and seal it in a tightly lidded tin until you can't stand to wait any longer.

Some people put unsweetened chocolate into their panforte nero. It's a subordinate part of the flavoring, not the reason for the thing to exist in the first place.

Some decent-looking recipes for panforte:

Panforte Margherita from the middle of the bell curve.
The same, only better described.
Another unexceptionable Panforte Margherita.
Panforte nero.

T.W (53), please feel encouraged to post your maritimer dark fruit cake recipe here, ditto your white fruitcake recipe and your not really fruitcake recipes. Alternately, a link would be fine.

Stefan Jones (64): "Scary, but maybe not too scary to try: Dollar Store Penatone."

Panettone sometimes gets described as "Italian brioche". The dollar-store kind can be a little dry, but it's generally quite good. Buy it a few days in advance of use. Inside the colorful paper carton, the cake should be sealed inside a plastic bag. Open the bag and splash the cake liberally with a half-cup or more of sherry. Reseal the bag and put the whole thing away for a few days.

Panettone slices, toasted and buttered, are great. It also makes nifty French toast and bread pudding.

TChem (68): "One way to find citron is to make friends with Orthodox Jews around Sukkot, when it's used cermonially and whole, and say 'Hey, that lumpy citrus fruit you usually throw away? Can I get that when you're done with it?'"

Go ahead. Ask my Jewish friends in NYC how often I've offered to take unwanted citrons off their hands after Sukkot. So far I'm batting a big fat zero.

Paula Helm Murray (71): "Granted I've only had citron in traditional commercial fruitcakes, and never fresh/sugared, but I think the taste of the form I'm familiar with is abhorrent. I'd like to be proven wrong, because I like most citrus flavors more than I like vanilla or chocolate."

I've got some hard-candied citron left over from previous years. I'll try it on you and see if you like it.

Kathryn from Sunnyvale (72): "What would you do with Buddha's Hand citrons? Make candied peels? The fresh form has started showing up at the local farmers market ($6/lb)."

(Whimpering sounds.) The cheapest I've ever seen it out here has been $10-$15 per pound (more usually $15), and that's for BHCs in not terribly good condition.

You make candied peels. Wash them well and slice them thinly at right angles to the fingers, starting at the stem end. Follow a standard recipe for candied citrus peel, only leave out the part where you boil it in several changes of water to strip out that nasty citrus peel flavor. Stop at the syrup stage if you want candied peel in syrup, and put it up in bottles while it's still boiling. Otherwise let the syrup concentrate more. Stop before it starts browning. Fish the candied peel out of the syrup, and as soon as it's cool enough to handle, separate the slices and lay them out on boards or jelly roll pans covered with aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Turn the slices a few times while they're drying. If you have a gas range that has a pilot light burning all the time, dry them in there.

If you like such things, you can dredge them in decorative colorless large-crystal sugar before they stop being sticky. I don't do it.

Chris Quinones (78): "I've seen Buddha's hands in NYC recently somewhere; Garden of Eden?"

Which one?

Posted December 8, 2006 11:27 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I love good fruitcake.

My mother was a traditionalist who lovingly candied various things, liberally added dates and dried fruits and various nuts, then wrapped the cakes in cheesecloth and soaked em in whatever strong spirits she had in the pantry.

I, alas, am never that organized far enough ahead of time. I definitely miss good fruitcake, though.

Posted December 8, 2006 11:36 PM by Mac

Greg@7: Bad boy! Your comment is a perfect example of quoting out of context; aging and sousing are irretrievably linked. The recipe my family hasn't made in 40 years (since we started to scatter) involved chopping fruit and nuts for all day the day after Thanksgiving, marinating them in strong liquor until after Sunday church, then adding just enough batter to hold them together; the cakes were left in their disposable pans after baking, with a layer of booze-soaked cheesecloth under a lid (no point in letting it evaporate instead of going into the cake). Robert Ruark, in The Old Man and the Boy, spoke of his family's recipe cake getting weekly doses (even during Prohibition) and being moist until June.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:13 AM by CHip

Teresa, I posted some links above I just suck at code. Also add this one:
http://sucrelefey.livejournal.com/100420.html
As with most of the old family recipes they are ingredient lists with the assumption you know the correct methods.
And I find pork cake is just really gross, Mamere just used straight lard instead of rendering her own salt pork.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:45 AM by T.W

Miriam @#86, I should have objected to it at the time, but I think the 3-minute rule has gone into effect at this point.

Actually, we're kinda used to getting ridiculed for our Hormel spam habits, so maybe it just went right past me.

Dan @#93, Black on black, probably not. Green on black, quite possibly.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:56 AM by Linkmeister

[paraphrasing Carol Carr] If you cannot find citron at the store, you may grow your own: citron seed via Seed Savers Exchange

Posted December 9, 2006 12:56 AM by Bruce Arthurs

My dad loves to bake and is quite good at making panettone. He puts in a little bit of dried papaya. Usually we're lucky enough to get a loaf from him for the holidays, plus we'll buy a loaf of the commercial variety on a whim, and someone else will give us one. It's all good.

Posted December 9, 2006 1:53 AM by TomB

TNH - My local market has had Buddha's Hand citron for the last few weeks, if you would like a couple, send me your preferred address and I will ship them to you.

Posted December 9, 2006 2:47 AM by Ms. Jen

I know that my mother made fruitcake, both light and dark, but I never liked it much. People who do like such things say that hers is good. I'm just not fond of candied fruit - at all.

I also have to admit to not caring for the traditional Christmas pudding either (brought in flaming, no less). My goal was usually to see how much hard sauce (homemade, which I liked) I could get away with putting on only a very little pudding.

As someone noted above this involved shredded carrots and a lot of suet and raisin-y things. I have the recipe somewhere; my mom got it from my great aunt, I believe. My mother doesn't know where my great aunt got it from, but if she got it from her mother, it came from around Cambridge or the potteries in England, I think.

What we settled on for Christmas desert is trifle. We do not necessarily agree on the recipe; one of my brothers puts bananas in it, which is an abomination. Mine is the result of some years of poking at the recipe and consists of pound cake, creme anglaise, mixed berries (mostly blackberries and raspberries), slivered almonds, and a berry liquer (I used to use Whidbey's, but it's not made any more.)

Posted December 9, 2006 3:06 AM by Margaret Organ-Kean

Teresa #102

If you like plants, you can grow your own Buddha's Hand Lemon tree. The site says to leave them outdoors in the summer, and bring them indoors during the winter. A friend of mine whose a gardner says these people have good stuff.

Posted December 9, 2006 3:15 AM by Margaret Organ-Kean

Collin isn't the only good American fruitcake bakery; Slice O Life bakery in Colorado makes them with Palisades peaches.

Address: 105 W. 3rd St., Palisade, CO, USA
Phone: 970/464-0577

Posted December 9, 2006 4:11 AM by cgeye

Christmas wouldn't have been Christmas at our house when I was growing up without the Christmas pudding. My mother used a recipe she learned from her mother, heavy with carrots and suet and brown sugar and eggs and flour and spices and sultanas and currants and candied peel and maraschino cherries and blanched whole almonds. One Sunday in mid-November the ingredients would be stirred up in the huge enamel preserving kettle, and everyone in the family got to stir at least once and make a wish. The batter was pretty stiff, and getting it properly stirred took real muscle; the wish tradition was tacitly acknowledged to be my mother's way of getting some help with the stirring. Then the batter would be steamed for hours and hours in the three big tins.

Of course, we didn't do this every year. Those three puddings were for the following three years. Indeed, the three-year cycle was usually overlapped -- that is, the pudding served that year (half at Christmas and half at New Year's dinner) would be the last of the three puddings made in the previous batch. Our Christmas pudding would have aged, wrapped in the fridge, for all that time -- always at least a year, sometimes more than three years -- its flavour getting ever richer with time, deeper, more mysteriously complex.

It would be served, re-steamed, with a simple almond-flavored pour-on white sauce.

I have the recipe here somewhere, but I don't have the equipment to make it, or the persistence to age it properly.

Posted December 9, 2006 4:42 AM by Sylvia Li

I should probably note, in regard to my own note at #107, that I actually abhor citron ("Ack! Ptui!"), and wouldn't grow it in my garden or put it in a fruitcake on a bet.

I've been thinking of caking some fruit for Christmas, and the guidelines in my head for the fruitcake I'd like to make are: 1) NO CITRON!, 2) a light, scant batter, 3)pecans, 4) more pecans, 5) dried stone fruits (peaches, apricots), chopped small, and 6) use Myer's Rum as the alcohol.

(Some people sneer at Myer's Rum, saying it's too sweet and a "dessert" rum. Precisely. It's one of the very few that I can actually drink straight; most rums are far too harsh for me to enjoy. And Myer's is excellent for baking and cooking.)

Posted December 9, 2006 9:18 AM by Bruce Arthurs

I actually abhor citron ("Ack! Ptui!")

Is there a difference betwen citron and lemon? After all the former is the word for the latter in French.

Posted December 9, 2006 9:24 AM by Serge

Serge, citron.

Posted December 9, 2006 10:00 AM by Mary

Thanks, Mary. Interesting. The anglophone citron looks like a francophone citron that went thru the same cosmic-ray bath as Ben Grimm.

Posted December 9, 2006 10:03 AM by Serge

Serge: a citron is what is called an ertog in French, at least in the markets in Montreal.

And TNH: I'm glad the cake was good on the train. Cousin Beryl, who is my first cousin once removed and now over seventy, would be really surprised to see how far her recipe has travelled.

Posted December 9, 2006 10:32 AM by Jo Walton

An ertog, Jo? Thanks.

Posted December 9, 2006 10:37 AM by Serge

Serge, Jo: Just to make things complicated, my French-French dictionary calls it a "cédrat."

Posted December 9, 2006 10:38 AM by TexAnne

T.W. @ 53: I would love a link to your maritimer dark fruitcake--it sounds wonderful (gingerbread with my family's year-before-last's cane molasses is another one of my holiday baking traditions--candied fruit plus gingerbread could only be terrific).

Dave Luckett @ 74: Stained-glass window cake sounds like what I'm trying to find a recipe for! Do you happen to have the recipe, and would you be willing to share it?

Magenta Griffith @ 95: I will try and dig up the recipe, and post up a link to it when I do. (It will be a good excuse to get me to actually call my godmother.)

Posted December 9, 2006 10:42 AM by alsafi

Citron, ertog, cedrat and lemon... Time for a citrus-related sonnet?

And a partridge in a peartree...

(Of course, people knew already that the French word for 'partridge' is 'perdrix', pronounced, yes, 'peardree'.)

Posted December 9, 2006 10:51 AM by Serge

Colin, my roommate Ny makes an utterly amazing chocolate fruitcake (and other kinds, too).

Chocolate Fruitcake

1 1/2 cups figs (I used Black Mission figs); stemmed,-diced, dried-about 7-1/2
oz
1 c Prunes; pitted and diced
1 c Cherries, pitted and diced
1 c Dates; pitted and diced
1 c raisins, diced
1/2 c Dark rum or spiced rum
3 tb Orange peel; minced
2&1/2 c All-purpose flour; sifted
1 1/2 ts Baking powder
1 1/2 ts Baking soda
3/4 ts Ground cinnamon
3/4 ts grated nutmeg
3/4 ts Salt
2 c sugar
3 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp bland oil
2/3 cup boiling hot water
4 eggs
10 oz Bittersweet (not unsweetened OR semi-sweet chocolate, finely
chopped
1/4 cup cocoa
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3/4 c Butter; unsalted, room-temperature

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 325 degrees.

Prepare pans.

Combine fruit and rum.. Let stand 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sift
flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt into medium bowl.

Cream butter and sugar.

Place unsweetend chocolate,cocoa and molasses in a small bowl. Add oil and
boiling water, stir to combine.

Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Using rubber spatula,
mix in 1/3 of the dry ingredients. Add cocoa mixture and half of fruit, then
remaining dry ingredients, then remaining fruit and chocolate. Spoon batter
into prepared pan. Bake until tester inserted near ceeter of cake comes out
with just a few crumbs attached, covering cake loosely with foil if browning
too quickly, about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Let stand 20 minutes. Turn pan over
onto rack. Let stand 3 minutes; gently lift off pan. Cool completely.

Douse with rum, wrap and let age for at least a couple of weeks.

Posted December 9, 2006 11:26 AM by Rachel

And there's citron-the-melon, whereof Bruce produced the link for seeds, not to be confused with citron-the-citrus-fruit. (I know there's things you can make with the melon form, but I'm not going there right now. Maybe after I find the rest of the cookbooks....)

Posted December 9, 2006 11:27 AM by P J Evans

According to that Wikipedia article, 'ertog' is actually Hebrew for citron.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Montreal?

Posted December 9, 2006 12:22 PM by debcha

Oh, and TexAnne (#76): You can buy a stopper to seal wine bottles for just a couple of bucks at pretty much any wine store, and then you can drink whatever you want, not just what comes in screwtops. I have a handful of stoppers at home - they're useful after dinner parties when you have half a bottle of lots of things left - and I've even used them for prosecco (although I was careful to store the bottle upright, in case the pressure popped the stopper).

Posted December 9, 2006 12:28 PM by debcha

Debcha: Those are nifty, but even with them, I don't drink fast enough.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:40 PM by TexAnne

Hi, I'm Rachel's roommate Ny, approaching your august company with fear and trembling. A couple friends pointed us to the discussion, and that's my chocolate fruitcake recipe up there (well, one I got from someplace and modified a geat deal), but that's the version I use as a guideline when making fruitcakes for friends. For posting here I should have standardized its presentation and added some notes, so here they are belatedly, with my apologies.

The fruits listed are all dried, *not* candied. The only candied fruit I use in fruitcakes I candy myself. As Ms. Nielsen Hayden said in the original blog entry one should use the best quality ingredients possible. I use Appleton Gold rum, and I often only add part of the last 1/2 cup flour, depending on batter consistency. I usually bake these as several small cakes rather than one large one, and age them wrapped in waxed paper.

And I'll be quiet now. Sorry for the incomplete recipe.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:45 PM by Ny Martin

When I have time I make a rather nice currant cake for Christmas, using a basic pound-cakish recipe with a little less flour and adding currants soaked in peach wine; the cakes are soaked in more wine while warm (a few skewer holes help with this), wrapped in wine-soaked cheesecloth and kept cool.

Posted December 9, 2006 12:54 PM by Ledasmom

Is it terribly geek of me that whenever I hear "oblate" I have the image of someone as a slightly flattened oval?

I've made real fruitcake too, years ago. The Joy of Cooking has a pretty good recipe, including the marinating in brandy or other spirits, and we made a huge batch to give as gifts to friends and family. It was incredibly good, but turned out to be a lot of work and not at all cheap when you factored in the price of good quality ingredients and decent brandy.

Ny, most of us are in no way august and have been welcomed here nonetheless. Join the crow