On holiday fruitcake
Somehow I got on the list of a whole bunch of fancy food catalogues, which are coming to me in the mail almost every day. I’m pretty sure I earned my place on that list by sending some fruit to an elderly relative every year for the past few years. The relative is, alas, no more, but the catalogues proliferate.
And of course I look at them. Chocolates galore, even though I can’t eat chocolate because it gives me migraines. Sigh and sigh again. All sorts of other delicious-looking confections, all of them mega-expensive.
And of course fruitcake. Fruitcake has become a sort of holiday joke, but somebody must like it because all these fruitcakes start at around forty dollars a pop. I can’t imagine a fruitcake worth that sort of money, but then again, that seems to be the going rate for an entree in a restaurant these days, so what do I know?
I happen to like fruitcake, too. At least, sort of. Probably more than the average person does. But it’s the neutron star of calories, and it doesn’t seem worth that price, either. So I think I’ll desist.
I thought you were speaking of our celebrations and joy regarding the pause in the fundamental transformation project and those other associated fruitcakes.
I like the baked edible kind, those others not so much.
For the past decade or so Costco has carried a holiday fruitcake in a tin at a reasonable price, i.e. about $30. I happen to like fruitcake. I’m the only one in my family who does, so it falls to me to finish the thing off before it needs to be thrown out, and when I see them on the shelf, I can’t resist.
Since we have moved, Costco has gone from being a ten-minute drive to being an hour and a half away, so I don’t go anywhere near as often. Which is to say I have not been there this year when the fruitcakes are on display. I miss the fruitcake, but my avoirdupois does not. It might not happen this year.
F:
There’s always good old Walmart. I can’t vouch for the taste, but it sure is cheap. See this.
This is a very nice and reasonably priced fruitcake:
Old Fashion Claxton Fruit Cake 3-1 Lb. Regular Recipe Loaves – Individually Wrapped For Freshness in our Signature Red-White Carton – 3-pack
$25 for 3 one pound loaves from Amazon. They are longer than they are wide, so you can cut a couple of slices and they eat like a confection–which is the right amount for something so sweet and heavy. Pairs well with bourbon.
I wait for fruit cakes discounted the day after Christmas.
Flora’s Lebkuchen is great. When a friend tried it, he told me it tasted German. Which it was.
Definitely not the teeth-cracking lebkuchen I grew up on, but still delicious.
Gringo:
Glad you enjoy it. Aunt Flora would be glad too, I think. Her mother was born in Germany and her father in Bohemia.
I baked fruitcake last Christmas for the 1st time. I made 3 of them, two were full octane and the nonalcoholic one for myself (teetotaler) . It was great fun making them, even more fun was giving them to friends and family. I think the non-fruitcake eaters appreciated the homemade cakes, even if they didn’t indulge.
We are a family that likes fruitcake – my brother loves the Collin St. Bakery fruitcake, from Corsicana. Apparently, at about this time of year, the whole town smells the fruitcakes baking in their establishment. We have a couple of them from last year, when they were on sale at the local HEB grocery, after Christmas.
I had a recipe for a Caribbean-style fruitcake – clipped from the Stars & Stripes newspaper sometime in the 1980s – which was very good, but slightly unusual. It called for ground dried fruits of various kinds to be steeped in rum for six months, and then baked in a batter. And then the cake soaked in port for another few months. It made a very heavy, dense, gingerbready sort of dark cake. I had a friend who loved it. She kept slabs of it in her freezer, and it was so saturated in alcohol that it didn’t actually freeze…
Just for fun – this is the recipe mentioned above.
Moisten with a little rum from a 1-quart bottle of same;
1 lb dark raisins
1 lb dried currents
1 lb pitted prunes
1 lb glace cherries
Put the rum-flavored fruit through a meat-grinder, equipped with a medium blade, and combine with remainder of the quart of rum in a glass jar or other sealable container, and allow to steep for at least two weeks or up to one year.
Cream together:
1 lb butter
1 lb brown sugar
1 lb eggs (about a dozen)
The ground and steeped fruit.
Combine in another bowl, and stir into the butter/sugar mixture
1 lb flour
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
Add 3 oz burnt sugar (melt sugar until deeply caramelized, or nearly black, and dissolve with an equal amount of water to make a dark, thin syrup)
Grease and flour 2 10-in spring form pans, divide the batter half into each, and bake in a pre-heated 350° oven for two hours, or until cake-tester comes out clean. You may need to cover the cakes with tinfoil to prevent burning. Remove cakes, and allow to cool. Poor ½ of a 1-quart bottle of tawny port over each cake, and allow to absorb. (You may need to take a bamboo skewer and pierce cakes about an inch apart all over to facilitate absorbing of the port.) When absorbed, pour on remainder of port onto each cake, wrap tightly in plastic (not tinfoil!) and allow to age at room temperature for at least a week. The resulting cake is very heavy, and dense, rather like gingerbread and might be considered a sort of “pound” cake, since it calls for a pound of just about everything but the spices.
I also like fruitcake. I can no longer afford the calories.
Sgt. Mom:
Wow, that’s planning ahead!
I concur with David. Claxton is very good. Didn’t use to be so expensive. It keeps in the wrapper for a very long time.
Sgt Mom:
Thanks for the recipe. Looks similar to what my MIL liked to make.
While living in Italy we became panettone fans and rarely have fruitcake now. The cake (or is it a bread?) is lighter with more subtle flavors, particularly the classic with just candied fruit. Good ones cost $30-40 with similar calories, but it is a wonderful treat during the coming holidays.
David Pecchia:
That’s the brand they sell at Walmart for a bit less
Great fruitcake from a really cool place – Abbey of Gethsemane, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.
https://gethsemanifarms.org/product/49/2-12-lb-kentucky-bourbon-fruitcake
“Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!”
Truman Capote Reading His “A Christmas Memory” – Original 1959 Album
https://youtu.be/RUKoXXhvnyg?si=5S8TWhlHLiNc-NCM
My late wife gifted many items like those mentioned by neo. And we got lots of those catalogs. I still get some, though thankfully fewer.
I have these different groups of friends now. My community and these friends span a wide range of affluence. A few live out of RV’s, while Lady-R is into the exotic sports cars, the yacht club, and philanthropic events.
I was hanging out with a few middle class friends last night and one mentioned an event featuring the tasting of a wide array of fine whiskeys at a swanky local hotel. $200 was the ticket price. No thanks, we all agreed. Lady-R posted Facebook photos from that whiskey event that she attended. Naturally!
“The neutron star of calories.” Nice turn of a phrase!
I wonder if Aldi doesn’t have something along this line. Right now I’m enjoying beef schnitzel from there, which is much like a chicken fried steak. Various German items show up from time to time and then vanish again.
There is the story, and movie, about a teen who entered the John Beargrease Sled Dog Race in Canada, North Dakota and Minnesota. The kid figured he might have a chance if he didn’t waste time cooking. So he brought mom’s fruitcake, and did win the race.