Anyone else making fruitcake for the holidays?
I finally got around to making the fruitcakes on Saturday after spending most of the week doing prep work. I use a jam cake recipe from one of my grandmas. Never could understand all the fruitcake jokes when I was a kid. Then I got older and tasted some of the things sold as fruitcake. 
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I usually don't use alcohol, but the cake still keeps a long time. I finished my fruitcake about a month ago, but mostly because I put it aside to mellow and forgot about it for a couple of months. 
Last edited Wed Dec 5, 2012, 12:47 AM - Edit history (1)
If you're baking by yourself, it's easier if you spread out prepping the fruit and nuts, cutting the paper for the pans, etc., over a couple of days.
Line with heavy paper and grease 3 9x5x3 loaf pans or a large round pan (at least 10"
or a tube pan. Reserve a few nice-looking cherries and pecans for the tops of cakes. (More on this later.)
Cream together:
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
6 large eggs (~1 cup)
Add 8 oz (by weight) jam (I prefer seedless black raspberry, but blackberry is traditional)
Sift together and stir in:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
Use an additional 1 cup of flour to coat
1 lb broken pecans
1 lb candied cherries, chopped
1/2 lb candied pineapple, chopped
1/2 lb dates, chopped
1/2 lb raisins (plump and drain them unless they're baking raisins)
Then add fruits and nuts to the batter. I usually do a final mix by hand, often literally by hand, as it's faster than using a spoon/spatula. Pour into prepared pans, about 3-3/4 cups per pan if you want 3 loaves. Press in pecans and cherries to decorate top, then bake at 275 degrees for 2-2.5 hours until pick comes out clean. Cool the fruitcakes after about 10-15 minutes, turn them out and carefully peel away the paper, then finish cooling.
Comments:
1) I've done this in loaf pans and mini-loaf pans. This year I did a mixture: two regular sized loaf pans (mine on are the large side of what they call "9 by 5" and two minis. The batter weighed approximately 3000 g, so I put 250 g in each mini-loaf pan and 1250 in each big pan. I find it easier to determine what should go in the pans by weight rather than volume. I still use brown wrapping paper (like the stuff paper grocery bags are made from), but my sister has used parchment paper to good effect. In my oven, the big loaves took 2 hours and the small ones 70 minutes.
The paper needed to line a mini loaf pan is:
one 5-1/2" by 4-3/4" piece
two 1-3/4" by 3-1/2" pieces. I put the small ones on the ends of the pan and then place the big one on the main body of the pan.
For regular-sizes loaves, cut one 9" by 8-1/4" and two 6" by 2-1/2" pieces per pan.
I usually rub them with shortening until they're no longer dry and then put them in the pan, placing the end pieces first.
2) Decorating the tops of the cakes. I pick out the nicest looking cherries and pecans and lay them out in a pattern for the "tops" of the fruitcakes. For a regular loaf, I use
---P---P---P
P C P C P C P
---P---P---P
and for the small ones I use
p---p---p
C P C P C
p---p---p
where lowercase p's are 1/2 of a pecan half and uppercase P's are pecan halves. Press them a little ways into the batter so they'll stay set but don't completely submerge them.
3) I usually dredge my fruits and nuts in a big bowl but my mom uses a pastry cloth (large white "flour sack" fabric dishtowel) and kind of tosses them inside it. How she does it without making the kitchen look like something out of I Love Lucy is a mystery to me. I usually break the nuts and cut/chop the fruit until it's roughly the size of a raisin.
I'll let you know how it turns out 
That is an amazing recipe.
...Lucy...