Columnist and wit Calvin Trillian once said nobody ever buys a fruitcake for oneself. Comedian Johnny Carson once remarked that there’s only one fruitcake in the world, and each Christmas, it’s just traded from house to house.
Judging from the one my great-grandmother fed me when I was about 7, it’s been circling the globe for a long time.
To say it was a disappointment from my otherwise wonderfully talented great-grandmother would be an understatement. She and my great-grandfather were chefs in restaurants on Maine’s tourist coast for much of the Great Depression. They both knew food, and even 40 years after she left the industry, she knew her way around a recipe.
But not this one. It was loaded with maraschino cherries, candied pineapple and other bits of brightly colored, sweetened somethings that looked like gems but weren’t as palatable. This is a holiday staple? I think I’d rather eat the staples — the stapler, too.
So for 50 years, I’ve avoided fruitcakes, both the confection and the whack jobs. But watching a cooking show recently goosed my curiosity. Its history goes back to the Middle Ages, somewhere between 600 and 1,500 years ago. The dish incorporated dried fruit and a lot of alcohol, which would be a preservative right up until the the 19th century and the advent of refrigeration. The first fruitcakes would have been leavened with yeast, but chemical leaveners came around in the 19th century and are easier to use.
Candied fruit would also have a long shelf-life, but in the Middle Ages, sugar was too expensive, so the classic cake has dried fruit. Max Miller of Tasting History points out that fruitcake fell out of favor only with the advent of lighter chiffon cakes and boxed mixes in the 1950s. The fruitcake is dense and heavy and very un-’50s, but I think the growth of mail-order fruitcakes of questionable quality is a big factor, too.
I looked around and cobbled together a few of the traditional recipes, including one from Alton Brown of Good Eats and another from Miller. Other than candied ginger, it’s all dried fruit and nuts rather than candied fruit.
Some recipes call for brushing the freshly baked fruitcake with brandy, others with rum. Use what you prefer. The fruitcake fans say it gets better over a couple of weeks with every brush of booze.
So I brushed and waited. Ohmigod, it was good when I finally cut into it.
It’s heavy, to be sure, certainly not a birthday cake in texture. It’s more like a pumpkin bread. The alcohol kept it moist. My wife, a teetolaer, said she couldn’t taste it, even though we could smell the alcohol when we opened the air-tight container.
It’s darker than those purchased fruitcakes with fruit in colors not found in nature, but it’s also tastier. I’d absolutely make this again.
So if there was one fruitcake before, now there are two.
FRUITCAKE
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
1/2 cup dried apples, cut small
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
Zest of one lemon, chopped coarsely
Zest of one orange, chopped coarsely
1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped
1 cup rum
1 cup sugar
5 ounces unsalted butter (1 1/4 sticks)
1 cup apple cider
6 whole cloves, ground
6 allspice berries, ground
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 to 1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts
Rum for basting or spritzing
Combine dried fruits, candied ginger and zest. Add rum and macerate overnight, or microwave for 5 minutes to re-hydrate fruit.
Place fruit and liquid in a non-reactive pot with the sugar, butter, cider and spices. Bring mixture to a boil stirring often, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool for at least 15 minutes.
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Combine dry ingredients and sift into fruit mixture. Quickly bring batter together with a large wooden spoon, then stir in eggs one at a time until completely integrated, then fold in nuts.
Spoon into a 10-inch loaf pan or bundt pan (both sprayed with nonstick oil) and bake for 1 hour. Check for doneness by inserting toothpick into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it’s done. Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack or trivet.
Baste or spritz top with rum and allow to cool completely. When cake is completely cooled, seal in a tight sealing, food safe container. Brush with rum every couple of days.
Play with it: Raisins and currants are standard, but you can select what fruit you want for the remaining 2 cups: dried cranberries maybe, or mango or papaya. You can substitute brandy for the rum, too.
