Thursday, December 01, 2005

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...


I love fruitcake. Well, not any commercially baked fruitcake, not ever, not under any circumstances, but...I have an old family recipe, a Southern recipe that's close to a hundred years old. I've made it many times, and it's delicious: a dense cake fragrant with various spices (cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg), and filled with currants and raisins, assorted dried fruits, pecans, and of course...brandy...LOTS of brandy. I'm going to start making it today. The recipe begins by mixing the dried fruits and pecans and soaking them in brandy overnight. How could a recipe that begins like that be anything but good? Tomorrow, I'll add the dry ingredients and then bake it, slowly, for hours. After it cools, I'll put it in a tightly closed tin, where it will stay, undisturbed except to be basted once a week with more brandy, until Christmas Day. Then I'll open the tin, baste the cake once more with brandy, and cut thin slices that I'll serve with a generous dollop of chantilly....

Mmmmmmmmm...I can't wait.

6 comments:

Tammy Brierly said...

I don't think I have ever tried a fruit cake but it sounds delicious! Must be the Brandy! LOL

Tammy

Vivian said...

OMG I love fruitcake...even the commercial ones (I know I'm in the minority on that one) please save me a piece....you know I'm close enough to come and get it LOL

Kris said...

I can't see how anyone can eat those store-bought fruitcakes. It's like trying to cut through a hockey puck.

The recipe you have sounds delicious. Save me a piece, too.

-Kris

Globetrotter said...

I adore a good fruitcake, too. (probably because I am one...)

Could you possibly share that recipe with us? I tried making fruitcake from scratch once and it was dry as cardboard.

Judith HeartSong said...

I have made a lot of jokes about fruitcake...... but that looks beautiful!

Robbie said...

Wow! There's only one fruit cake that I have ever liked and I don't think it had brandy. But, yours made my mouth water. :-)