So last Monday was an experience I never thought I would ever have: I walked into work with a fruitcake in my purse in February. I’m honestly not sure which part of that sentence is the strangest to me (probably the fact I had the loaf in my purse rather than some sort of platter…), but I’ll admit I never expected to make a fruitcake ever, let alone at a non-Christmas time of the year.
Apparently, as I dived into this particular project, it came to my attention that traditional fruitcakes are made as early as possible, and then preserved with copious amounts of liquor. Well that explains how the things became popular in the first place.
Though in all honestly, this was one of those bakes that turned out surprising me in multiple ways.
But first, I made sure I didn’t repeat my blunder from the Buttermilk Sheet Cake. So I took my trusty loaf pan (if you guys haven’t noticed, I have one cake pan) and made sure that it was well oiled and floured.
But obviously, that wasn’t enough, so I also got some parchment to help me out!
Once my pan was ready to go, it was time to get my stuff mixed!
And this is where I made my first deviation from the recipe. The original recipe calls for ground almonds, which I don’t have, either the product or the means to grind almonds. What I did have, however, was almond flour.
The number of spices in this particular batter made my house smell amazing!
I thought it was interesting that this recipe doesn’t call for white sugar at all, but rather dark brown sugar. Of course, this will go great lengths in the richness of flavor. The recipe also called for the zest of an orange and a lemon, which I decided to use a Meyer Lemon and the largest Navel orange I could find. My hands smelled amazing after this, which made me happy!
Once I got my wet and dry ingredients mixed up, it came time to put the fruit in fruitcake.
Specifically, raisins. Confession: I hate raisins. Even as an adult, I never developed a taste for them.
So this was a bit of a challenge.
I ended up buying the smallest possible quantity of raisins possible (including some snack boxes!) as well as some cherry craisins, I had my fruit.
The finishing touches for this fruitcake were maramalade and apple juice. Neither of which I use much. Now I like maramalade, though I must admit, I’m a bit spoiled in that my favorite marmalade is the triple citrus marmalade that came straight from a canning session with my best friend and her family (but that is a story for another time).
As for the apple juice, I don’t keep much juice in my house at all, I just don’t go through juice that fast. But wouldn’t you know it, Martinelli’s sells these little apple juice bottles for about $1.50 at my local Safeway. Now, I’ve come to learn a bit more about the process of fruitcake making, and that in more “classical” fruitcake recipes, brandy (or other liquors) would be used in place of the apple juice…not to mention copious amounts of coating to preserve the cake in the months leading up to the holiday season.
But I’ll be using apple juice because of the fact that: 1. I’m not much of a drinker and 2. liquor is quite expensive.
Now I’m starting to get the hang of baking these half-recipe cakes (or at least I think I am), since I was able to gauge this bake while juggling grading and my weekly D&D session via Discord. But silly me forgot to take a picture until after I had eaten a couple slices of cake.
Now comes the interesting part to this story. As I said, I’m not the biggest fan of raisins and, while I did enjoy the slices of cake that I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish this fruitcake in a timely fashion.
Hence why I walked into work with a fruitcake in my purse. I don’t know if any of you know any teachers personally, but there is something to be said about their ravenous appetite. So much so that our unofficial staff room is our culinary room, where we will gladly feast upon whatever leftovers left behind by our culinary students.
Anyways, in the midst of all our culinary goodness, I set my modest fruitcake all wrapped up with foil.
It was promptly unwrapped.
Slices were handed out to our small staff (there’s only 13 of us, and only half of that are full time teachers).
And, in the words of our gym teacher it was “the bomb” (specifically, his words were “oh man, warm a slice of that with some butter and it is the bomb”, but I decided to air on the side of brevity).
Even our culinary teacher enjoyed it. According to her, this fruitcake would be described as a “light” fruitcake due to the amount of fruit in the cake itself (which admittedly, isn’t very much, all things considered), not to mention the fact that it is a “dry” fruitcake due to the lack of liquor used. But considering the fact that in traditional fruitcake, the alcohol is added after baking, and therefore not cooked out, it was probably for the best that I didn’t go the traditional route (I’m sure it would have been frowned upon to bring an alcoholic cake on a public school campus).
But now that I know my staff love the fruitcake, and that I have copious amounts of raisins in need of being used up, this does pose an interesting endeavor of if I shall repeat this recipe…
One thing is for sure: unlike Uncle Vernon, I shall not be using this fruitcake to nail a letterbox shut.
Erin, Get Your Pen 