The dreaded fruitcake. My Mother made it at Christmas when I was a child and I hated it. My husband likes it so I usually get him one for Christmas. I have tried several bakeries over the years. This year I got a “My Grandma’s” from Amazon and it’s good. Real good.
Claxton is great, if you’ve never tried it you should.
People always joke about fruitcake. If they don’t like them, they could send them all to me! (But nobody ever gives me a fruitcake. I don’t know if I’ve had one in 20 years. 
)
There are many fruitcake threads here on the SDMB, most people seem to accept the fruitcake=awful meme as gospel without qualification. IMHO, the glaceed fruit is tasteless, and has an awful texture. There are many good recipes out there – replacing fruits with dried fruits, or making your own candied fruits and citrus peels, moistening the cake with ever stronger booze until its practically drinkable. But its really not hard to have a dense, fruit and nut cake that’s worth having a slice of.
I make an awesome fruitcake, of the sort that people fight over, dried fruits, kumquat peel instead of candied peel, pecans the only nuts (hey, good enough for Buddy, good enough for me.) Glazed with reduced spicy apple cider (no booze, for people who avoid.) And I serve it on my birthday. Extra nutty fruitcake. Insert own punchline here.
My family got a Texas Manor Fruitcake every year when I was a kid, and I loved it. When I started hearing jokes about this “inedible holiday tradition”, I didn’t get them. However, I’ve since had lesser fruitcakes (including, IMHO, Claxton), and now I understand…
I’m allergic to pecans, so I make my own with walnuts from my late uncle’s recipe. No booze. Brandy also makes me sick. I could put some bourbon in it but I don’t. Thanks for the cider idea.
I just bought two Claxton fruitcakes, leftover from Christmas, at the grocery store - $1 each! They usually cost $8 or more. I might go get a couple more and put them in the freezer. Claxton is more of a confection than a cake, a moist bar of fruit and nuts, and my favorite of any fruitcake I ever had.
I’ve wanted to try this recipe since I saw it on Good Eats many years ago.
First: What if I want to put it into a round tin? Can I make it in a cake pan? Or should I use a bundt cake pan?
Second: The recipe says the flavour enhances over two weeks. How long will one of these keep, assuming periodic spritzing with brandy?
That is my basic recipe. If you count his measurements, you see its 3-1/2 cups of fruits. I substitute dried fruits, just keeping the amounts relative to flour and liquid the same.
I usually use a large 8 cup fruit cake pan, which is essentially a tall Bundt cake pan. Right now, I’m using mini loaf pans to make 8 mini ones at a time. I use a meat thermometer to be sure the interior temperature is above 190 F for doneness. If your pan doesn’t have the interior Bundt “spire” then keep paying attention to interior doneness.
Years, by most estimations. How can anyone really know? If no one eats it after a little while, why would they ever? I don’t put any alcohol in mine, so I keep them in the freezer. My birthday isn’t until next month.
You substitute dried fruits for the *sun-*dried fruits? 
I count four cups of fruit. Are you leaving out the blueberries? Because I’m not sure I’ve had blueberries in a fruitcake.
I had no idea they made fruitcake pans!
Personal use. Make one to eat, and another to let ‘age’. 
Yeah, blueberries seems “off” to me. I’m also not a fan of dried apricots, they have an off texture when baked in a cake. Maybe if dried more, and cut smaller, I dunno. Many people I know are allergic to pineapple, and so hate the flavor of even sugared and dried pineapple, which should be OK. So, I’m using:
1 cup golden raisins – for golden color, flavor, and a texture people expect
1 cup dried cherries – taste them first, tart cherries are the best when dried
These are soaked in apple cider, then strained. Together, when moistened and then baked, they add a boozy flavor that people notice. Even 'tho I leave off alcohol. No dark raisins or currants, cherries replace them for color.
1 cup dried cranberries – red color, with there manufacturing method, they don’t need a soaking. Nice tart flavor.
1/4 cup candied citron – yikes, I know, but people expect the glaced fruit. Just for texture and faint green color, really. And its just a tiny bit.
1/4 cup diced candied ginger – not too much, but its fun to bit into, good flavor, good texture.
1/2 cup diced kumquat peels – they’re already sweet, so they don’t need candying. They are just coming into season. Their flavor is unique and the texture is just right.
1/2 cup of pecans – if you don’t get the reference, I’m mad at you
Go ahead and make your own, maybe use those dried tropical fruits and macadamia nuts. Heck, even put the whole glaced, flavorless red and green cherries on top as decoration. Just mix and match flavors and textures keeping Alton Brown’s flour and liquid ratios the same.
My pan looks like this: (assuming it show up here)
I tells ya, buttering and flouring it was quite a chore before baking spray was invented
There’s a monastery near here that makes a good fruitcake and I would get a small one every year, but this year the store where I normally got it didn’t have any. An employee told me they quit making them for ‘insurance reasons’. I don’t know about that, since I still see them on Amazon, for about 1.5 times what I’m used to paying.
I should have just driven out to the monastery, but my wife was/is recovering from surgery and I didn’t have the time. sigh
I told my wife I wanted to do something I’d never done this year, like a Christmas pudding or a fruitcake. I went with the fruitcake, using Alton Brown’s “free-range fruitcake” recipe that Johnny L.A. linked. Some of the stuff was hard to find, but I wanted to stick as close to the recipe as possible, so I ordered it on Amazon well in advance.
I did deviate in a couple of ways: as noted above, apricots are just too darn big when they’re whole, so I cut the dried apricots into pieces no bigger than the cherries, just snipping them up with kitchen shears. I did the same with the candied ginger, cutting it up quite tiny, because biting into a big chunk of candied ginger may be off-putting for some.
And I made one major mistake. Our neighbors have a big pecan tree in their back yard, which overhangs our yard and drops a lot of pecans in the fall. So, I went out and gathered a large bucketful of them (most eventually became Rolo pretzel turtles) and shelled them. I carefully toasted them in the oven, and chopped them up using an old nut grinder I borrowed from my mother. And then…I completely forgot to put them into the batter. Damn.
Batter went into a loaf pan like this, and baked. I did the “store it a while and spray with booze periodically” thing. It all turned out quite well, I thought, although the amount of ginger gave the cake a sort of “heat” to the tongue when you eat it. At least, it was the first fruitcake that I can recall eating with true eagerness and finishing gladly.
Blueberry sounds good. I’m also intrigued by the cider idea. My mom really likes fruitcakes, but has given up because no one will eat them with her. I think I’ll try one with some of these variation and take it to her when I go to see her.
Intrigued…talk me through some North American expectations of ‘generic’ fruitcake. I’m assuming from the lingo that most of what I’m reading here is North American? Apologies if not!
In the UK, we’re basically talking about raisins, sultanas (which I believe are essentially “golden raisins”?), currants and probably some glacé cherries. You might get some sort of chopped nuts in there - most likely almonds if so - but not necessarily. Cinnamon/nutmeg type flavours too, to a greater or lesser extent.
A typical ‘generic’ fruitcake would come in a decorative tin, and would be a pretty stale dark dry cake with a bunch of mysterious yellow, red and green things and some nuts tossed in. It looked better than it tasted, which really was dry and stale and…well, ‘cheap’ tasting. Mass produced, and…cheap. More of a symbol of the holidays than an actual treasured treat of the holidays…Is that what you mean? Because moist, nutty fruity concoctions are out there, as described above. The generic drugstore fruitcake is a whole other thing, and most people don’t like it…I’ve seen fruitcake flings (on tv), launching unwanted fruitcakes through the air on trebuchets!
Maybe I should have said “archetypal” or “typical” rather than “generic”: I’m just aware that “fruit” and “cake” are very far-reaching terms, so what it tends to mean here might be very different to what it means there!
+1
My wife makes a ton of delicious sweets over the holidays so I never get around to eating the fruitcake until January. But it’s a must have, and Claxton is my favourite.
It’s not a “traditional” fruitcake, but this version is utterly fantastic:
“Panforte Margherita is one of the most classic combinations of flavors: candied citrus peel, almonds, and spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove combine to create a cake that’s rich, spicy, intense. The cake isn’t leavened, so it has a texture similar to a fig cake or a dense brownie.”
Mrs. J. made an excellent classic fruitcake for the holidays as well.
I have never had a bad fruitcake, just a spectrum from OK to terrific. It’s once a year, so enjoy.