It’s holiday baking time. You should make a fruitcake. Yes, yes, I know. Fruitcake gets a bad rap. But this one is good, and doesn’t have the weird neon colored fruit things like cheap lousy store-bought fruitcakes. This version is adapted from Alton Brown’s recipe. Now, there are some crazy complicated fruitcake recipes out there, but this isn’t one of them. This one is pretty uncomplicated and easy to do, and the crapload of dried fruit in it will keep you from getting scurvy during the long winter. For this recipe, there are three basic preparation stages: rehydrating the dried fruit; cooking the fruit in juice, and spices; and then the final assembly and baking. If you don’t have a lot of time, this is a good holiday recipe for you, since you can do one or both of the preliminary stages and save the baking for another day.
Ingredients
- 1 cup golden raisins
- 1 cup currants
- 1/2 cup sun dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup sun dried blueberries
- 1/2 cup sun dried cherries
- 1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
- Zest of one lemon, chopped coarsely
- Zest of one orange, chopped coarsely
- 1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped
Yes, that’s four total cups of dried fruit. You can vary the fruits somewhat, as long as you keep the total volume about the same.
- 1 cup rum (Brown calls for golden rum. I usually use Kraken. You can use Gosling’s Black Seal if you are a fancy person, or that crap with the pirate if you are a sea-hobo. I think ultimately you get a deeper, more complex flavor with spiced rum than with regular rum).
- 1/2 cup sugar (Brown calls for 1 cup. I think that’s crazy. You can do what you want. If you are using Craisins–which are already sweetened– because that’s what your grocery store has, you can reduce the sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 or 1/2 a cup).
- 5 ounces unsalted butter (1 1/4 sticks)
- 1 cup unfiltered apple juice or apple cider
- 4 whole cloves, ground (about 1/4 teaspoon if you don’t have whole cloves)
- 6 allspice berries, ground (about a teaspoon of ground allspice if you don’t have berries)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup toasted pecans or walnuts, broken
- Brandy for basting and/or spritzing
Directions
There are three basic preparation stages: rehydrating the fruit; cooking the fruit, juice, and spices; and then the final assembly and baking. If you are pressed for time, you can do the preliminary stages and save the baking for another day.
Rehydrating the fruit
Combine dried fruits, candied ginger and both zests. Add rum and macerate overnight. Alternatively, you can can warm it in a pan on the stove for a few minutes. Alton Brown says you can microwave it for 5 minutes to re-hydrate fruit. I prefer a stovetop pan, because then I can use that same pan for the next step.
Cooking the fruit, juice, and spices
Place fruit and liquid in a non-reactive pot with the sugar, butter, apple juice and spices. (I use the same pot I macerated the fruit in). Bring mixture to a boil stirring often, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool for at least 15 minutes.
(You can stop at this point, and cover and refrigerate the mixture for up to 2 days. Just bring to room temperature before completing cake.)
Baking
Heat oven to 325 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale.
Combine dry ingredients and mix with fruit mixture. Quickly bring batter together with a large wooden spoon, then stir in eggs one at a time until completely integrated, then fold in nuts. Spoon into a 10-inch non-stick loaf pan and bake for 1 hour. (If you don’t have a non-stick pan, grease a regular loaf pan or line with greased parchment paper). Check for doneness by inserting toothpick into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it’s done. If not, bake another 5-10 minutes, and check again.
Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack or trivet. Baste or spritz top with brandy and allow to cool completely before turning out from pan. (For this first booze spritzing, I sometimes use Kraken rum, sometimes Gran Marnier, and then use the brandy for all the subsequent spritzing. Do what you want, I’m not the boss of you. But don’t skip this baste-while-warm step, it is important to the ultimate moistness of the fruitcake).
When cake is completely cooled, seal in a tight sealing, food safe container. Every day or two, feel the cake and if dry, spritz with brandy.
Once you’ve baked it, you have to hide it somewhere and spritz it periodically with brandy for TWO WEEKS. (In theory, you could spritz it with bourbon. I’ve never done that, but some people do). I typically spritz it every other day. I get one of the cheap, travel-sized spray bottles. You can spritz it for longer than two weeks, by the way. (I usually make it the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving). The flavor builds over the next two weeks.
This makes a good gift for people you like. For people you don’t like, get the brightly-colored fruity horrors from WalMart.
The Edward Gorey image is from here.
