Some of my favourite childhood memories are of my mom baking. There are many of her recipes that I make every Christmas season. Her shortbread – proper chewy shortbread. Her butter tarts. Her sugar cookies.
But one thing mom never made was fruitcake. About 10 years ago my grandmother gave me a recipe for a Christmas pudding that her mother made on the farm when she was a child. It was an old-world recipe adapted for the limitations imposed by winter on an isolated Alberta farm. I’ve made it, but didn’t love it.
That left me looking for a better alternative. I spent a few years searching for a fruitcake recipe I really loved. I finally found one a couple years ago, which of course I tinkered with until I got it just so.
Favourite Christmas Fruitcake
Ingredients:
- 1 lb dried fruits
- Maraschino cherries
- Rum or brandy
- Cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, cloves nutmeg, salt
- Lemon zest
- 1 1/2 C butter
- 1 C brown sugar, 3/4 C white sugar
- 3 1/4 C flour
- 6 eggs
- 3/4 C finely chopped almonds
- 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions:
Soak the dried fruits in dark rum or brandy over night. I use a mix of figs, candied peel, raisins, currents, candied ginger, dried bing cherries and mixed candied fruits (which if the label is to be believed included rutabaga). Soak the maraschino cherries as well, but separately from the other fruit.
The next day you make the cake.
Cream 1 1/2 C of room temperature butter with the sugar. Beat in the eggs one by one, then add the vanilla and 2 tb of brandy or dark rum, and 1 tsp of lemon zest.
In a separate large bowl mix:
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp each, ginger, cardamon, cloves
- 1/8 tsp each, nutmeg, salt
To this spice mix add the flour and almonds. Stir this into the butter, sugar and eggs.
Fold in your dried fruits.
Line your cake pans with parchment paper and spoon the mixture in.
Sometimes I line the bottom of the cake pan with the cherries, sometimes I arrange them on the top of the cakes. Either way works.
Bake at 350 F until you can stick a knife in the centre and it comes out clean. I also place a dish of water in the oven to create steam to keep the cakes from drying too much.
This cake is good immediately, but it is extra special good if you make it a few weeks in advance and pour some rum or brandy over it every second day.
I am told these can be soaked with brandy one last time then lit on fire, but I have never tried it myself.
Make me eat my words. 