Weekly Baking: Fruitcake!

I’ve either got the flu, mono, an iron deficiency, the stomach flu, or nothing wrong.  In any case, during algebraic topology class today instead of paying attention to applying the Lefschetz fixed point theorem to the homology of spheres, I started googling on my phone for ‘fruitcake with ginger’.

Right now I have six cups of dried fruits soaking (“macerating”) in brandy.  Wow fruitcake is expensive!  And time consuming.  Well, go big or go…. I guess just go big.  Because I’m already home.

I’ve never bought brandy before.  I was surprised by the cork top!

Also both my peeler and grater were hopelessly dull so I ended up chopping up some orange and lemon peels with a sad little paring knife.

After 24 hours in the brandy, I started putting together the rest of the recipe.  So many dry ingredients and spices later, I realized that I needed a POUND AND A HALF OF BUTTER.  Holy clogged arteries, Batman!  Good thing my house shops at Costco.  I found some in the freezer and melted it over low heat so as to not brown it, licking my fat-loving lips the entire time.  Err I meant I was disgusted.  By how gross it was.  Deliciously gross.  (Last few sentences are on behalf of my health-conscious boyfriend).

I whisked the eggs into the melted butter, which I was afraid would poach the eggs in butter (and come on, how delicious would that be??), but luckily the butter had cooled by then.

This is about when I realized that I had already used my two of my largest b0wls, one for the alcoholic fruit, and one for the 10 cups of dry ingredients.  There was no way to mix them with the pot of golden splendor.  So I ended up mixing about half of all the things together at one time, and then the other half.

Finally, I slapped about three spatula-fulls of batter into each of my mini-loaf pans, which I bought because they were on sale at the store and came with teeny lids, and threw it in my 275 degree oven.

All that’s left is to let them cool, wrap them up, and baste them in brandy every few days for a few weeks.  I’ll update later on how this turns out!

Here’s the recipe, adapted from a random recipe on allrecipes.

Macerate overnight:

1 cup brandy

3 cups golden raisins

1 cup chopped candied ginger

2 cups dried cherries, pineapple, and cranberries

zests from one lemon and one orange

Sift together:

2 cups EACH brown sugar and white sugar

6 cups flour

2 TB baking soda

1 TB ground ginger

4 TB cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg

Then mix:

3 C melted butter

8 eggs

4 TB vanilla

with the fruits, the dry mix, and 3 C toasted walnuts.

Pour into N greased and floured mini loaf pans (I had N=10, but I think N=8 or 9 would also be fine), and bake in a 275 oven for 2 hours.

Let the cake cool completely, then wrap in foil.  Sprinkle 2 TB of brandy over it every other day until you forget about it.  Eat about a month later.

Tags: cake, fruit, holiday, special