Can do - I’ll have to come type it in later, after school. It’s an authentic Mennonite fruitcake recipe (well, it’s my mom’s recipe, and she was raised as an authentic Mennonite. 
)
I made Stollen (German Christmas Fruitcake) several years back and didn’t have the rum that it called for, so I used tequila instead. I thought I could get away with it but the results were pretty bad. It wasn’t inedible but there was a serious bitterness and an off taste. Stollen is a really good alternative to traditional “American” style fruitcake, it’s really more of a fruited sweetbread. Delish.
Another alternative to the “classic” Fruitcake is a Great Cake or Martha Washington Cake. It sounds really good, but the cake is supposed to be huge! Something like an 11 pound fruitcake.
It bears mentioning that there are as many types of stollen as there are cooks in Germany. Some are very different from others. Hmm, anyone know any Chicagoland sources for candied angelica?
It is a great recipe. I am normally a “If it doesn’t contain chocolate, why bother?” kind of person, but I made this a couple Xmases ago and brought it to my parents’ house for dinner. It was so good, I was tempted to throw etiquette to the wind and try to bring the leftovers back home with me!
Of course, when I made it, I manually picked out all the stem bits from the raisins and currants (OK, my husband did most of it), because I hate biting into a raisin and getting that disturbing crunch. It made the process unbearably labor-intensive. But honestly, now that I’ve eaten it, I think the cake is nutty enough I don’t think that texture difference would be noticeable. So I may make this again this year!
That recipe hardly has any nuts whatsoever. I may have to try this one!!
BTW - stumbled across a website that sells candied fruit including citron rind - do any of you fruitcake-makers ever use that? I vaguely recall that stuff appearing the fruitcakes my folks used to get as gifts.
BTW - I got curious about candied angelica and googled it; this site sells it: Market Hall Foods | Artisan Food Online | Gifts & Ingredients
That’s where I saw the candied citron I referred to 
Hokay - Fruitcake with molasses in it:
(Makes about six cakes.)
1 lb butter
7 eggs
4 c brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
5 c flour
1/2 c hot water
1 c molasses
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 lb mixed nuts
1/2 lb almonds
2 lb raisins
1 lb currants
1 lb dates
1/2 lb mixed peel
1/2 lb cherries
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tbsp brandy extract
1 tbsp rum extract
Pour batter in lined or floured loaf pans.
Bake at 325º F for 1/2 hour, then 250º F for 2- 2 1/2 hours. Optionally, can be wrapped in brandy-soaked cheesecloth and stored.
I think an amalgamation of my recipe and yours (with all the fruit, pecans, and real liquor in it) would be most excellent, lee.
::: rolls up sleeves, prods the zombie, wonders if zombies like fruitcake for dessert after a meal of brains… :::
Checked the rules / guidelines, looks like it’s legit to reopen old threads in Cafe Society on occasion, noted that all contributors are still current on the board, and this thread had a pretty good discussion of fruitcake, so…
I’ve decided that this is the year I’m going to make a fruitcake. In addition to the ones in (or linked from) this thread, I googled “nut-free fruitcake” and found this one: Spiced dark fruitcake with brandy. It looks like the sort my folks used to get as gifts, that I loved (aside from the nuts). Yeah, I know it relies almost entirely on the brightly-colored glace fruits that are roughly 50% corn syrup, 50% artificial color, and 50% plastic 
but, well, I love that stuff. So I’ve ordered the assorted glace fruits online, and next weekend will trot out the stand mixer and get busy.
Some questions about this recipe, and fruitcake recipes in general:
This recipe (and all the others I’ve looked at) don’t call for dredging the soaked fruit in flour but I know the reasoning for doing that. Think I oughta add a bit more liquid or something to compensate for the extra flour?
What’s with the baking in a paper bag? Wouldn’t that be risky - you know, flammable 'n all? I admit, I don’t know the flash point of paper but I’d be inclined to just loosely cover the top with foil while baking.
I saw something on the Washington Post that mentioned soaking the fruit in liquor for a month in advance. Why??? Surely the idea is just to moisten / plump it up and a couple hours would do?
All of them say “put fruitcake in tin” but many of them make loaf pans - I’ve never seen a tin of that size/shape. Why a tin aside from tradition? Would a zip-loc bag or something else that reduced airflow work?
Would freezing a fruitcake (once it’s had a few weeks to mellow and get nice and tipsy) totally ruin it? How long would it keep if not frozen and would I need to splash the alcohol on it indefinitely?
Why don’t they mold/get dry? Does the alcohol content retard the mold? I guess the liquid from adding alcohol remoistens the cake.
I wonder how the cake would turn out if I used Grand Marnier or Framboise as part of the pickling juice I’ve got bottles of both and heaven knows when I’ll use them otherwise. I’m guessing I wouldn’t want to do that if I were also to use bourbon but they might not be incompatible with brandy?
Oh - and lee? your instructions say to glaze the cake but with what? simple syrup? a milk/powdered sugar glaze? something else?
I used to make my own fruitcake every year. My secret ingredient was Southern Comfort instead of brandy/bourbon/rum.
Thanks for dusting this one off 
(except for my ever growing waistline)
I adore good fruitcake - and that’s not anything you’ll ever see on display in the middle of an isle in your local discount store.
I used a different spice mix this year. For a quadruple batch, I used:
star anise 4g
mace 13g
cinnamon 17g
clove 10g
black pepper 13g
allspice 16g
nutmeg 16g
coriander 5g
I stuck to pecans only for the nuts, but I used different fruits. I used candied lemon and orange peels, candied ginger and I used the following dried fruits:
Apples
Pears
pineapple
Green Papaya and Cantaloupe
Orange Mango and Papaya
cranberries
strawberries
large green grapes
blueberries
sour cherries
bing cherries
apricots
I decorated the top with red and green candied cherries and pecan halves. I did not soak the candied cherries in brandy.
After the quadruple batch, I mixed up a double batch to use up the rest of the fruit. The six batches together made four ten inch ring shaped cakes, 3 loafs, and a dozen mini bundt muffins. All are currently aging in tins in brandy soaked cloths after being injected with bourbon.
I find that Binny’s has huge bottles of brandy on sale this time of year, so I use that for the soaking of the fruit. I use good bourbon for the injection. I am toying with alternating doing one feeding with dark rum.
I have two recipes for stollen. One is from an English language Oetker baking book, that my mom got for me in Cologne. The other comes from the mother of a former boss, an elderly German lady who came to live for a while with her son here in the States. Both are really good.
My mother and I make fruitcake every couple of years, a big batch, and we freeze it to last. Ours doesn’t have liquor of any sort though, but it has lots of fruit and nuts and just enough batter to hold it together. We do the old traditional recipes, but the local natural foods grocery has some cool tropical dried fruits and I’ve been toying with the idea of making a single “tropical batch”, using the alternate fruits and macadamia nuts instead of pecans and almonds.
Shoot, now this thread has me looking at my watch and wondering if I have time to go to the natural foods grocery.
When I talked to my grandmother at Thanksgiving, the first thing she asked me was if I were making fruitcake this year. Not about my new son, but about her fruitcake. I can’t think of a better complement from her that I have ever received.
“Injected”? Do you have some sort of kitchen gadget that actually injects?
The recipes I found mentioned dribbling liquor on top of the cakes and that’s what I’ve been doing (though it does tend to puddle up and make the top soggy) and injecting might well work better. How much do you drizzle, inject, or whatever?
I did the soaking in framboise as I had a bottle that I’d inherited (literally). We tasted it and though it had interesting flavor, it was too sickly sweet to drink. The fruit soaked in it tasted night, though. I’m dosing the resulting cakes with brandy as we would never use leftover bourbon (I don’t like spirits; Typo Knig has tried bourbon and suggested going to Home Depot and getting paint thinner instead. Dunno whether this means he hates drinking bourbon or likes drinking paint thinner :eek: 
).
Yes, I have a large syringe and needle for injecting food. I bought it in the kitchen gadget part of the grocery store. I got the idea of injecting the cakes from the Trappist monks. There was a special on tv about how they make fruitcake. They injected their cakes with three ounces of bourbon.
I’ll let you into a secret: liqueurs are spirits and sugar and flavorings. If you soak dried fruit in bourbon or brandy, the resulting fluid is a homemade liqueur and if you start with a light spirit, and use dried or candied berries, you may get something rather like framboise. I soaked some dried pineapple in a fairly cheap grappa which I found undrinkable by itself, and the resulting liqueur was extremely yummy. Keep in mind homemade concoctions may not be as stable as commercial liqueurs and may not keep for extended periods. Also, I don’t recommend using gin as it has a flavor incompatible with fruitcake.
I don’t use much of the sugary liqueurs in fruit cake because the fruit and candied peels have so much sugar, more is not needed. The alcohol provides a medium that allows the fruit and spice flavors to mingle. This is one reason the alcohol cakes need to ripen at least a month. I use 1792 for the bourbon. It has a rich, spicy flavor that goes well with the fruity flavors. I soak lighter fruits in grappa or light rum. I soaked the green papaya and cantaloupe in grappa and midori, and the candied ginger in ginger infused vodka. All the other fruits I soaked in brandy.
I added the liquid from the ginger and and pineapple as part of the liquid used in the cakes. I did not add the green liqueur though as I thought that would look bad and the flavor would be overwhelming.
For something like a loaf-sized cake (standard loaf pan), would you inject as much as 3 ounces at one time?
I’m thinking I’ll have to get a kitchen injector soon, especially if the cakes turn out well and I want to do this again. They do smell nice and rich and don’t appear to be molding or anything.
Why a tin? All the recipes say that and I can’t figure out just why a tin, vs. wrapping in foil or plastic or something to reduce the airflow to the cake. Also I can’t find tins that fit any baking pan I own or would expect to purchase.
When do you decide the cakes are ripe enough to stop feeding after that month is up? Do you just keep feeding them until you decide you want to eat 'em?
My first ever Christmas pudding is hanging in the spare room as we speak after boiling for four hours yesterday.
I’ve got raisins, dates, dried figs and craisins (dried cranberries) that have been soaked in brandy in mine. I’m tossing up whether to feed mine with more brandy whilst it’s hanging, but I know my family don’t like overly boozy puds so I probably won’t.
It’s just a pity that I hate Christmas pudding, so I’ll never know if it’s good or bad or not.
For loaf sized ones I inject about 2 ounces, for 10 inch ring shaped ones, I inject about 6 ounces. I make at least 3 injections.
I wrap my cake in brandy soaked cheese cloths, then in plastic film, then in aluminum foil, then in a tin or some other container. I see the plastic wrap and foil as a barrier to moisture loss and the tin as providing physical security to the cake. It keeps critters out and keeps the cakes in one piece.
And I feed the cakes about every two weeks as long as they are in my custody. I have been told they are ripe after a month, so I took the condition of the cakes after a month as an indication they were ripe.
I’m a big fan of the Alton Brown recipe. We put our brandy in a spray bottle and spritz the cake with it once or twice a week for four weeks. We keep it sealed in a FoodSaver bag, which makes the cake more dense but moister. Love it.
Report on fruitcake condition:
We sampled one fruitcake Friday night. It has that lovely “smoky”, earthy aroma (not sure how else to describe it) that I remembered from my childhood. The taste was wonderful, and it was moist, presumably due to all the tippling it’s been doing
The only thing “wrong” with it was that it crumbled when I sliced it. As in, no slices, just a pile of chunks. Any thoughts on why that is? Is it too moist? too dry? something wrong with the batter or baking time?
I will definitely make this again next year but if I can figure out the slicing problem I’ll be much happier.