Old Time Fruit Cakes

[GrannyG]

Jan Baker's German Fruitcake



3/4 cup margerine

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

3 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon of Allspice,Nutmeg,and Cinnamon



1 cup buttermilk

3/4 teaspoon soda

2/3 cup cherry preserves

2/3 cup apricot preserves

2/3 cup pineapple preserves

1 2/3 cups pecans

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix in order. Grease and flour 10" tube pan. Bake at 325 degrees

for 1 1/2 hours.

--------

Brandied Fruit Cake

To begin the fruit:
Week one.....1 cup pineapple, drained. Add one cup sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon.
Week two....1 cup drained peaches,add 1 cup sugar
Week three...1 cup drained apricots, add 1 cup sugar
Week four......1 cup marischino cherries, drained, add 1 cup sugar
I keep all this in a big glass jar, stir every day with a wooden spoon, leave on a shelf, covered with some saran wrap.
Week five......the recipe:

Brandied Fruit Cake
1 1/2 cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
3 cups brandied fruit
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups pecans
Mix oil and eggs, beat well. Add flour,soda,vanilla, etc. and mix well.
Add the brandied fruit and nuts by hand last.
Bake at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.

This is an old,old recipe, have had it for years. It is also good on ice cream.

I always love to sneak pieces out of the pineapple...it is soooo goood.

 

[Sentry18]

Replace the margarine with butter and it sounds delicious!

 

[Weedygarden]

Replace the margarine with butter and it sounds delicious!

For me, replace the margarine with butter in all things. I haven't had margarine in my house in decades, if ever. But fruit cake is a guaranteed migraine for me. People either love it or hate it. I wonder if Meerkat is making fruit cake this year?

Enjoy your fruit cakes, GrannyG!

 

[WVDragonlady]

How can the fruit be "brandied" if no brandy is added according to the recipe? Just seems the fruit would be fermented


I know to make alcohol is to ferment some sort of fruit or veggies but the recipe doesn't make sense to me lol

My grandmother would actually pour brandy over the finished cakes and let it soak in and then wrap them well and let them set for a week or so ( if I remember right). We kids weren't allowed the "adult" cake , she made other cakes for us

 

[Cnsper]

And here I thought it was going to be another Pelosi joke.

 

[GrannyG]

How can the fruit be "brandied" if no brandy is added according to the recipe? Just seems the fruit would be fermented


I know to make alcohol is to ferment some sort of fruit or veggies but the recipe doesn't make sense to me lol

My grandmother would actually pour brandy over the finished cakes and let it soak in and then wrap them well and let them set for a week or so ( if I remember right). We kids weren't allowed the "adult" cake , she made other cakes for us

Just what they named it years ago...it does ferment and have an alcohol smell to it....

 

[Curmudgeon]

I wish I could say I like fruitcake, but I have yet to taste one I like.

 

[Sentry18]

I wish I could say I like fruitcake, but I have yet to taste one I like.

In my youth I don't know how many times I was forced to eat fruit cake because that is what someone was serving or provided to me. Every time it was awful, dry, crumbly stuff. And then one time I tasted a homemade brandied fruit cake made by a retired neighbor lady. It was fantastic. I quickly learned that most people don't take the time to actually make it and just bought in a store or worse yet through the mail. Or perhaps it came out of the freezer from last year. Either way the difference is instantaneously discernible.

 

[Curmudgeon]

I keep trying it, but every time I do my tongue slaps me. I have had some that was tolerable and I did eat it, still not a fan though..........lol.

 

[phideaux]

Sorry , but here I am an old man, and I have never even tried to eat fruit cake...yep, never tasted one ever.

Looks like a big old bunt of brown concrete.

I seriously doubt if I ever will.

Jim

 

[WVDragonlady]

Grandma's was the bomb! Sweet, moist, and tasted like fruit and brandy ( I actually got old "enough" to have some lol)

I'd like to taste some real Rum Balls ( made with the rum and not the flavoring). they might get ya tipsy lol

 

[SheepDog]

To make a great Fruit cake you go to the store and buy a whole fruit cake. Buy a bottle of apricot brandy and banana liqueur. Take all three home and place the fruit cake in a large stock pot. Pour a cup of each alcohol slowly over the fruit cake. When it is all soaked in pour another cup of alcohol over the cake slowly. Put a lid on the pot and let it sit while you drink the rest of the alcohol. When the alcohol is gone remove the fruit cake from the stock pot carefully so it stays in one piece. Cut a small slice and offer it to your dog. If the dog eats it then cut another small piece and give it to a child. If the child eats it offer a small piece to your wife. If she eats it then you can leave it in a covered dish for them to finish.
If at any step someone refuses to eat it throw it into the garbage, the outside can.

 

[camo2460]

Grandma's was the bomb! Sweet, moist, and tasted like fruit and brandy ( I actually got old "enough" to have some lol)

I'd like to taste some real Rum Balls ( made with the rum and not the flavoring). they might get ya tipsy lol

My Grandpa made awesome Rum Balls, the Kids weren't allowed to have any but my Brothers and I always managed to get our hands on them.

 

[Bacpacker]

I like fruit cake. The really good kind. We've never tried to make one cause the wife don't like it.

Rum balls are good, again if made right. And yep WV, they will get you tipsy if you eat enough.

 

[hashbrown]

We love them! My momma makes one every year! I think she makes them about the first of December then wraps it in cheese cloth until Christmas and maybe soaks the cheese cloth, I cant really remember quite how she does it but this is her cake from last Christmas. She always makes sure I have a mince meat pie also, I'm the only one left in the family left that likes those.

 

[Supervisor42]

I like fruit cake. The really good kind. We've never tried to make one cause the wife don't like it.

I kinda wrote an article on the history of fruitcake a while back. Maybe it'll hold us over until Thanksgiving:

HOW FRUITCAKE BUILT AMERICA

Why it was needed:
In the early days of the country food was scarce. There were no refrigerators (trying to keep it millennial-friendly).
When foodstuffs were gathered in the summer and fall it had to be consumed or preserved. If not, it spoiled and early pioneers would run out of food during the winter and spring.
These people worked long hours at hard manual labor from daylight to dark. This physical exertion burned a tremendous amount of calories.

Expending over 4000 calories per day was common. If this output was not replenished daily, the person would lose weight. If one became skinny and sickly, they almost certainly would succumb to disease and die.
Preserving calorie-rich foodstuffs in a tasty concoction was essential to survival.
These people needed a compact high-power fuel to carry in their lunch pail.

The miracle discovery:
The early pioneers knew what foodstuffs had the most caloric density; just toss some in a fire. The high-calorie stuff only had one problem; it spoiled quickly. You could salt down fat pork and it would preserve it, but the salt would prevent a person from eating very much of it. Large amounts of fruit would spoil before they needed it the most - the winter. Drying fruit removed nutrition along with the water; and it wasn't tasty.
Then someone discovered that fruit could be 'candied'.

Wikipedia said:
"Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created an excess of candied fruit, thus making fruitcakes more affordable and popular."

This created a very potent 'fuel' for workers that had a nearly unlimited shelf-life.

We need more power!
Adding what was plentiful: pecans, raisins, maple syrup, hazelnuts or walnuts, to the candied fruit with just a little flour and a few other ingredients created an extremely potent, calorie-dense cake. If it's made right, a 1" slice of a 4"x4" bar is probably close to 1,000 calories. This found it's way into the lunch pails of common people doing hard work and provided essential power needed to build a new country by hand. More importantly, it kept workers from losing weight and falling ill.

Why the downfall and stigma happened:
As the country progressed thru the years people got jobs instead of working on farms. They also got refrigerators.
Gone were the days of surviving on only food that could be preserved and endless manual labor. People could buy fresh food weekly and no longer needed 4,000 calories a day to live. Class bias also grew.
When a person brought out a fruitcake, it was the same as admitting that they did manual labor and couldn't afford a refrigerator.
Regardless how delicious fruitcake was, it lost popularity because it became considered "poor-folks" cake.
Today we live a life of leisure and gaining too much weight and dying is now the danger so high-calorie foods are taboo.
Occasionally you can still find it wearing a disguise, as wedding cake:

BTW, you can't slice real fruitcake because it falls apart:

And it is gooey enough to stick to your fingers.

 

[Bacpacker]

The crumbly and gooey ones are the real fruitcake and very good to boot.

Never heard that story before, but I have very little doubt that it true. In some ways similar to the story of how and why pasties came to be.

 

[Patchouli]

Seriously don't know what the problem is with people hating fruitcake. My mom made light and dark. Both were equally tasty and moist and without alcohol.
She also made rum balls (must be a Virginia/W. Virginia thing), @WVDragonlady back when the family wasn't sober.
My grandpa was especially fond of them and once I found them, turns out I was too.
She quit making them or got rid of them right quick after that one year.

 

[CalicoKatie]

I don't like the traditional fruitcake with the citron and bitter candied lemon/orange peels. I remember my mother making fruitcake in the early 60s using cherry and pineapple preserves like the recipe GrannyG posted. I think she called it German Fruitcake and it was pretty good. If I'm going to have fruitcake, I prefer it to be made with cherries, pineapple, dates and raisins. Funny how the subject of fruitcake brings out so many different opinions.

 

[phideaux]

My bad...

I thought this thread was referring to me.

Jim

 

[SheepDog]

Jim,
There is nothing traditional about you!

 

[joel]

My mother made jams & jellies, candied rinds, but not Fruit cakes.
My mother in law made fruit cakes, the first thing my wife ever cooked for me was a upside down pineapple cake for my Sixteenth Birthday.
I have loved Fruit Cake ever since that first bite. Like everyone, I have ate thing that I would not have if not for hurting someone feelings.
But home made fruit cake from a hundred year old recipe, made by a master hands Heavenly.

 

[Wingnut]

Do Army C-rations fruitcakes count? Because those things were not only horrible, I believe they could stop a 7.62mm NATO round, lol. In THAT sense, maybe they actually served a purpose, but for EATIN'?

"FUHGEDDABOUTIT!!!"

P.S. Those fruitcakes which were "made right" look & sound pretty good...

 

[joel]

Army C-rations are bad so you will win the war & get back home to mother's/wife's cooking.

 

[Magus]

I love fruitcake! a big warm hunk that was soaked in spiced rum and a big smear of cream cheese and it's hog heaven time!