There's No Cake in Fruitcake

Only fruit. And rum. Lots of rum.

I'm a little apprehensive about a fruitcake recipe ending up in this book. There's been so many fantastic and unique and delicious recipes, and then, out of nowhere, fruitcake?! Dr. Robinson assures us that there really is such a thing as a good fruitcake. But I'm a skeptic. Then again, remember the Tomato Cake...

This cake was actually the cake from two weeks ago, but I wanted to wait until the first check and rum re-soaking to see how things were looking and then write about it. (That's totally a lie, I've just been extremely busy with the holidays and other top-secret life things, and have gotten home too late and/or too exhausted to write about it.)

Making a fruitcake is an adventure and a half, and not for the faint of heart (or wallet) because the list of ingredients is a mile long and full of things you've never heard of (what the heck is a citron?!), and the directions are very specific. All of the fruits are candied, and I had no idea where to find candied fruits, much less candied fruits I'd never heard of, but decided to start at our international Farmers Market, since, usually, if it's weird, they have it. And they did not let me down this time--citron and all, I found my candied fruits. Except for candied red cherries, which you'd think would be the easiest to find. They had candied green cherries, but I figured there was a reason the recipe specifically calls for red, which I assume is that no one should put something as unnaturally colored as a candied green cherry into his or her body.

The next debacle was the pan for the cake. The recipe calls for a 10" tube pan. I had no idea what that was. A quick search revealed something like a bundt pan but not fluted... think angel food cake pan. After spending my monthly grocery budget on cake ingredients, the last thing I wanted to buy was another pan, so I continued my searching for an acceptable substitute. Not as easy as you might think. But thank Google this recipe is famous and some poor soul was as lost as I was, and I discovered two loaf pans would work if I just decreased the baking time by an hour. I actually heard my credit card sigh in relief. (Also, by switching to loaf pans, my instructions went from some convoluted nonsense about drawing circles on paper bags and folding and cutting to "line pans with heavy brown paper." Fruitcake for Dummies.)

So the raisins and currants soak in rum overnight. Then you add all your other fruits and nuts and you get a giant vat of candied trail mix that looks like this:



Then you mix up the cake batter and add it to the fruit vat and it looks... well, pretty much the same. There's barely enough batter to moisten all the fruits and nuts. I was slightly concerned about the physical possibility of "baking" the cake, but I'd come this far and I was not turning back. So, pans into oven, and 2.5 hours later, fruitcake! Somewhat cakey-er than the batter going in, but still mostly a solid 2.5 pounds of candied fruit per loaf.


The cakes now have to "cure" for several weeks wrapped in a cheesecloth soaked in rum. Every week I have to check the cakes and re-soak the cheesecloth if it's dry. Today was my first check, and the cakes look pretty much like what one might imagine--golden, fruity, rum-soaked little mummies.

13 more days to go. I'm still a skeptic. But, like I said, remember the Tomato Cake...