Fruitcake

My mom made the best fruitcake. Honestly.

Yes, I know. Fruitcake. That much maligned sweet bread that people love to mock and make fun of at Christmastime.

But my mom’s fruitcake was delicious. And, for her, it was an annual event when Dad would help her put together the fruitcake at Christmas.

Mom’s fruitcake was a dense quickbread chock full of candied cherries, candied pineapple, golden raisins and chopped pecans. It took quite a bit of effort to mix and, when she developed arthritis, she sometimes needed help mixing it up.

Dad’s role in this was to prepare the pan. Mom had this high sided square pan that Dad would grease with shortening. Then he would take a brown paper bag, cut it to fit the pan with part of the bag jutting up in the middle to divide the pan in two. Then he would liberally grease the paper so that the fruitcake wouldn’t stick to it.

In discussing this with my sister this year, we can’t quite figure out why they went to all this effort. Not the baking of the fruitcake, which is worth every effort in the book, but the brown paper bag thing. After all, our mom owned loaf pans and the fruitcake can be baked in loaf pans. But she always used the square pan that had been modified with the brown paper bag. Must be another “pot roast” reasoning (see this blog posting: http://www.julianemarie.com/?p=2049)

My sister and I both made fruitcakes this year. She made two (since the recipe makes two loaves) and I made four. It is quite the expensive recipe since it calls for a pound of candied cherries (at about $8 per pound), a pound of candied pineapple (also about $8 per pound), a cup and a half of golden raisins and three cups of chopped pecans (which run a little over $5 for a two cup bag).  But this is well worth it!

My mom wrote out the recipe for this fruitcake on index cards for both Amy (my sister) and myself. But, just to make life interesting, she didn’t write the recipe the same way on each card. My recipe card had the list of ingredients and then the instructions. In the instructions was a line that said to soften the apple jelly and add to the creamed butter mixture. Would love to do that but my mom left out the apple jelly in the list of ingredients.

I contacted my sister and she looked up her recipe and told me that she thought it was 1/3 to 1/2 of a cup, depending on how one would interpret Mom’s handwriting. We decided that 1/2 a cup sounded like the correct amount.

After that conversation, Amy called me back to ask me how many cups of nuts to put in. I told her that my card said 3 cups of chopped walnuts or pecans but that Mom had underlined pecans about three times so I was guessing that is the nut she recommended. Amy agreed with that assessment.

We then had a discussion on how long to bake the fruitcake and at what temperature. My card said to bake it 3 hours and 10 minutes at 275 degrees if using the square pan (with the brown paper bag) but 2 1/2 hours for loaf pans. Amy’s card said 3 hours at 250 degrees with no distinction between pans. Amy decided to bake hers at 250 for 3 hours and I decided on 275 for 2 1/2 hours. Mine ended up getting done in less than 2 1/2 hours but not much less.

Despite our difficulties with Mom’s recipe cards, our fruitcakes turned out really well. They really do taste delicious and are chock full of wonderful fruity goodness!

I bring all this up because my brother bought one of my fruitcakes to give to our mechanic. I drove it out to his place today and gave it to him. He, the mechanic, picked it up and commented on how heavy it was. Well, yes, I said, it is full of all kinds of fruit and nuts but it tastes really, really good!. He looked a little skeptical and so I pointed out that my brother was almost done with his fruitcake and he doesn’t even eat sweet things normally. That impressed our mechanic and he thanked me and said he would let me know what he thought about it.

I never really thought about how heavy the fruitcake is compared to other breads.  I guess because I am used to it. But for someone who is not used to fruitcake, it is very heavy for it’s size. But with that amount of fruit, I would be surprised if it wasn’t heavy.

For those of you out there who make fun of fruitcake, don’t mock it until you have some of my mom’s fruitcake. If you don’t think you will like it, just taste it. It really is yummy and is the epitome of Christmas.

PS: the fruit is on sale right now at the grocery store and is 50% off. I also have a number of coupons that came with the containers of fruit. So I am going to stock up now for next year’s baking.  It will last that long since the expiration date on the containers is 2014. Just need to store it someplace safe so I am prepared for next year’s fruitcake baking extravaganza!