Not your mother's fruitcake. Well, unless you're me, in which case yes, this is my mother's fruitcake (the recipe is reportedly centuries old)
NB: this is a difficult recipe to get right the first time. Skip Ahead to the Candied Oranges part of the recipe to get an idea how complicated this is. Read the whole recipe a couple of times before starting. I've made it 4 times and I think I got it right only the fourth time.
If you want these for Christmas, you should make them no later than mid-September
- 1 pound butter, softened overnight
- 1/2 pound sugar, brown
- 8 eggs — at room temperature,beaten slightly
- 1 cup Guinness or other stout — or more if needed
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 pounds currants
- 2 pounds golden raisins
- 1/2 pound orange peel ~ candied, chopped
- zest of two lemons
- 2 pounds flour ~ all-purpose
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg ~ freshly grated
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon ~ powdered
- 1/4 teaspoon cloves ~ powdered
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice ~ powdered
- 2 pinches salt ~ (if using salted butter, you may not need extra salt)
- Grease 4 loaf pans and line the bottoms with waxed paper. Put a pan of water on bottom shelf of oven to keep cakes from diying out.
- Measure and mix the flour, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar until quite light. (1 beat on low speed for 3 or 4 minutes.)
- Add slightly beaten eggs.
- Heat the stout a little and pour it on the baking soda to dissolve. Add to the butter, sugar and eggs.
- Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
- Add the dry ingredients to the mixture. Dough will be stiff.
- Mix the fruits and rinds into the mixture.
- This step is tricky as you need to mix everything well, without over mixing. Just enough to get the dry ingredients mixed, then just enough to mix in the fruit. Over mixing will make the loaves hard and tough.
- Divide the dough between the loaf pans and bake for approximately 3 1/2 hours or until a cake tester comes out clean. Smaller pans bake in 2 hrs.
- If the oven is not too hot, the cakes will rise without splitting. (Even if they do, they still taste good!)
- NOTE: Recipe can be halved.
Use the best spices, nuts and dried fruits you can afford. This cannot be overstated, especially for the currants and the golden raisins. It is difficult and expensive to find the best, but anything else will be very noticeable in the results.
- All ingredients, especially eggs, should be a room temperature.
- Completely dust the fruit and nuts with flour so they don't fall to the bottom of the batter while baking. Shake off excess flour before mixing in the recipe.
- Oven temperature should be low enough to cook the batter fully without drying out the cake (250°F).
- Always bake fruitcakes at a low temperature, no higher than 325 degrees and preferably much lower.
- First line the cake pans with several layers of brown paper or waxed paper. This insulates the batter against excess drying.
- Baking pans should only be filled 2/3 full of batter, not full. Pans should not be touching.
- Always place a pan of hot water on the lowest shelf of the oven. This prevents the cakes from drying out.
- While baking, if the cake is browning too fast, place a sheet of foil over the top of the cake.
- Test with a skewer; it should come out clean and moist, but not dough
- Listen to the cake as well, if there is a hissing sound, then place the cake back in the oven for 10 minutes more.
- When using greased pans, wait 10 minutes after removing the fruitcake from the oven before removing the cake from the pan to cool. After baking, the cake should be thoroughly cooled on a rack, then removed from pan and wrapped in airtight aluminum foil. Store in a cake box.
- Cake may be wrapped in several thicknesses of cheesecloth. Brandy or stout may be poured on the cloth occasionally (every few months)
- Don't freeze a fruitcake right away. Let it age at least 3 to 4 weeks first so it has a chance to build its flavor (ripen).
- Make fruitcakes at least 3 weeks before using, this allows them time to ripen. The cake Is at Its best 4 months after baking.
- Fruitcakes soaked in liquor can literally last for years if you periodically add more liquor. It is generally recommended that soaked fruitcakes be consumed within two years.
- Fruitcake should be tightly wrapped and stored in the refrigerator. Unwrap every few months and drizzle with liquor. Re-wrap tightly.
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I have used various fruits. Lemons seem to take fewer cookings before falling apart. Apples tolerate very little cooking, and leaving the peel on seemed to help the slices keep their shape. For lemons and oranges, I cut the fruit in half, squeezed out the juice and scraped out the pulp. Then I cut each of the halves into half again, removing as much of the bitter white part as was practical. Each quarter piece was then cut into thirds or fourths, depending on the size of the peel. [Others say to leave the pith on until simmering is finished -- makes the peels more tender.]
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Boil them gently for 30 minutes.
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Drain the water and add fresh, cold water, letting the peel sit for about six hours.
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Again, drain the peel, add fresh water and ...
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...simmer them for 30 minutes. Dawson doesn't specify a time for the repeated cookings, so I kept the 30-minute timing. He also specifically warns against boiling them. Simmering is sufficient.
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Continue the simmering, draining, cold-water-sitting (letting it sit for some five to six hours each time) for five more times over two additional days. I have found that the best peels result when I don't rush the process. Doing the peels with less time for "resting", and omitting some of the days, gives a good peel, but superior ones result from lengthy sitting and not rushing.
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(Here, Dawson provides the option to speed up the process.)
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I use the sugar and water combination, since sugar is cheaper now than honey, and since I am more familiar with the results of cooking with sugar. Dawson gives no amounts for the sugar and water. Therefore, I went to a contemporary recipe of John Partridge ("Sucade of Peeles of Lemmons", 1573) and "borrowed" the amount. I use one quart of liquid which includes two cups of "liquor" (the liquid the peels had cooked in at the final cooking) and one and a half cups of sugar. If the cook forgets to save the "liquor", plain water will do. (Note: I often add much more sugar, for example, 2 cups of sugar to one quart of liquid. I find that the additional sugar makes the final result less sticky, with more of a sugar coating.)
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Before adding the peels to the sugar water I let the drained peels sit on a cloth. Some of the time I sat the peels before an open oven door that I guessed might approximate the warmth of an Elizabethan hearth. I let the peels air-dry for half a day or more.
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Then, add the peels to the sugar water and let them sit overnight.
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In the morning, spoon out the peels and boil the sugar water by itself for 20 minutes on a moderate fire.
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Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool before adding the peel to it, putting it back on the moderate fire and simmering it for 20 minutes.
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Let the peel sit the rest of the day and overnight.
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Put the peel back on a moderate fire the next morning and simmer it again for 30 minutes. I have found that there is a noticeable reduction of liquid at this point, since the peel has begun to absorb the sugar water.
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Let it rest again for a day and a night.
This is (as I read the recipe) Dawson's summary of the two-day process, that is, cooking it briefly and resting it for a day and a night.
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Here Dawson specifies a 30-minute cooking period for the sugar water/peel mixture. I generally find that there is very little liquid left on the second morning. Supervise the final cooking to be sure the peel doesn't stick or burn, turn the peel out onto waxed paper (which would be similar to parchment paper) to air dry, if you want a dry sucket.
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Now Dawson gives an appropriate warning to cook the peels according to their nature. I have found that each peel takes a different amount of time to cook. Putting two different fruits in one pot generally results in one fruit disintegrating before the other is ready for the final sugar water process. If the peels seem to be too moist, roll them in granulated sugar.