September 6, 2017 by Tien Chiu

Fruitcake season!

The holiday season is fast approaching. Fortunately, retailers have not yet realized that September is the perfect month for putting out Christmas decorations (though with the ongoing retail arms race, they may get there in a few years), leaving the field wide open for…fruitcake!

I love making fruitcake. Not the dry, tasteless fruit brick that appears in shops around Christmastime – real fruitcake, with all kinds of tasty goodies in it, lovingly sprinkled with liquor once a week for six weeks, then given an extra month for all the flavors to mellow together. A good fruitcake is like fine wine: while you can eat it right out of the oven, it only reaches the height of its complex, delicious flavor if allowed to age first.

Because good fruitcake takes time, August and early September are fruitcake-making time, at least in this household. (And thank goodness I can beat the retailers to the gun on SOMETHING!)

Of course, you can take fruitcake-aging too far. The Antarctic Heritage Trust reports that a 106-year-old fruitcake has been found in the huts used by early Antarctic explorers, and was probably part of Captain Robert Scott’s doomed expedition, as he attempted to reach the South Pole in 1911. The fruitcake tin was rusted through, but the fruitcake itself was in excellent condition. Lizzie Meek of the Antarctic Heritage Trust reported, “There was a very, very slight rancid butter smell to it, but other than that, the cake looked and smelled edible!”

106 year old fruitcake (Antarctic Heritage Trust)

Because my fruitcakes contain 16 kinds of fruits, nuts, and candied citrus peel, it’s not practical to make just one fruitcake. (Especially since I candy all the fruit and citrus peels myself, so they come in pint jars.) Since I don’t want to skimp on the additions, and anything worth doing is worth overdoing, I typically make quite a few fruitcakes. This year, I made 6 large fruitcakes and 10 small ones. They contained 17.5 pounds of goodies:

17.5 pounds of fruitcake additions — 17.5 pounds of fruitcake goodies!

Plus 7 quarts of cake batter:

Mixed into a lusciously full-of-treats batter:

…baked in a 275-degree oven for 2.5 hours…

…until golden brown:

Now they’re wrapped in plastic wrap and nestled into clean loaf pans, ready to be sprinkled with liquor. One tablespoon of liquor for the big cakes, half a tablespoon for the little cakes, once a week for six weeks. 1/3 of the cakes are being soaked with rum, 1/3 with bourbon whiskey, and 1/3 with a mix of Amaretto and Southern Comfort.

Of course, the arrival of fruitcake season foreshadows the beginning of chocolate season….the test kitchen won’t open until mid-October, but I’m already starting to think about potential new flavors!

August 5, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Fruitcake recipes

As promised, here is “my” fruitcake recipe. I say “my” because most of it comes from a good family friend, and since her recipe may be more accessible to those who aren’t into crazed citrus-candying, I’ve included the original version (with her permission) as well. Since the process of making it is identical across the two recipes, I’m only going to include her instructions once. All you need to do is substitute my ingredients into the recipe, and you’ll have my version.

Jeanne is a wonderful woman, with a great sense of humor – as you can see from the recipe.

Jeanne’s Fruitcake Recipe

I have been making and distributing these cakes to my friends (those who love fruitcake and promise not to use it as a door stop, and you know who you are) for at least 25 years, with love, and since I am getting old and may not be available or able to do it another 25 years, this year I am sending along the recipe. It is highly modified by me from the original one I got out of a very old Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I hope one or more of you will take up the tradition and keep this wonderful method alive. The amounts listed here make 10 loaves of the size mentioned. You can make fewer cakes in larger loaf pans, or in a tube pan, or just proportionally reduce the recipe and make fewer cakes. The most essential, and thoroughly naughty, step, of course (you just knew my fruitcakes would have a naughty step) is the final soaking after baking. To omit it would be a tragedy.

Ingredients:

8 oz	Dried papaya
16 oz	Dried apricots
16 oz	Dried (not glace) pineapple slices
12 oz	Dried Calimyrna figs
16 oz	Glace green cherries
16 oz	Glace red cherries
16 oz	Crystallized ginger chunks
16 oz	Pitted chopped dates
32 oz	Golden raisins, seedless
16 oz	Candied mixed fruits and peels, diced
16 oz	Candied diced citron peel
24 oz	Candied diced orange peel
16 oz	Candied diced lemon peel
1.5 14-oz packages (8 cups)	Bakers Sweetened Angel Flake Coconut
32 oz	Slivered blanched almonds

2 lb	Unsalted butter, room temperature
4 cups	Sugar
4 tbsp	Orange blossom water
1.5 tbsp	Vanilla extract
20	Extra large eggs, room temperature
8 cups + 1 cup for sprinkling	Unbleached flour, sifted
2 tbsp	Baking powder
4 tsp	Salt
18 oz	Pineapple juice

10	8″ x 3-7/8″ x 2-15/16″ aluminum loaf pans
	Large container to make batter in
	VERY large container to mix cakes in. I use a round plastic storage container, about 20 gallon capacity.
2	Aluminum baking trays, each of which can hold 5 of the cakes
	Shallow pan for builing water, placed on the floor of the oven and with the water topped up as the cakes bake.
2	Racks in the oven for the trays. Rotate the trays front to back and up and down in the oven about every 20 minutes so the cakes are evenly exposed to heat during the long slow baking process.

	Amaretto and Southern Comfort to soak the finished cakes.

Prepare the fruit, nuts, etc:

Drain any extra thick sugar syrup from the candied (glace) fruits. Some fo the fruits will be pre-chopped but most things will have to be cut up into small cubes, no larger than a half inch cube. Cut cherries in half. As you complete chopping up each species of fruit, dried or candied, sprinkle on a few tablespoons of flour, just enough to very lightly coat the sticky cut surfaces, and stir with a spoon or your hands until the pieces are quite separate. It should take about a cup of extra flour to do all the batches, which should be combined one at a time after flouring. Add the raisins, coconut, and almond slivers at the end and mix the whole thoroughly in the very large container.

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Thoroughly cream together the butter, sugar, vanilla, and the orange water with a hand-held mixer in the large container. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with the pineapple juice, beating well after each addition.

Pour batter over fruit mixture in very large container and mix the stiff dough thoroughly. You will have to use your spotlessly clean hands to do this job, and it is hard work.

Spray the disposable aluminum loaf pans with non stick spray. Then fit a piece of aluminum foil into the pan just the size of the bottom, and spray again. This will help the cakes release when cooled. Place a large spoonful of batter on the middle of the foil in the bottom of each baking pan, and gently spread it to the edges so the foil is correctly positioned and weighted down. Then fill the pans, dividing the batter evenly among the 10, and pressing the batter down, especially in the corners, so there will be no voids or empty spaces. The batter should come almost to the top of the pan. Smooth the top of each cake with the back of a spoon. Place 5 pans on each aluminum tray, and put the trays on the rack in the oven.

Bake cakes in preheated 275 degree oven, approximately 2.5 hours, rotating every 20 minutes as mentioned, until the tops are medium brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on racks uncovered overnight.

Next day, one at a time, tip the cooled cakes out of the baking pans. usually they come out easily because of the high butter content, but if they stick a bit, tug gently on the flexible sides of the baking pans and push gently on the bottoms. Peel the aluminum foil off the bottom of each cake. Tear long strips of plastic wrap, and lay each one down on a flat surface. Set each cake crosswise on the plastic and bring up the cut ends over the top of the cake. Allow enough to overlap generously. Put the cakes back into their respective baking pans.

Pull back the plastic wrap exposing the tops of the cakes, and sprinkle a full tablespoon of amaretto on top of each cake. Replace the plastic wrap and cover the cakes with an additional layer of plastic or clean kitchen towels, and let them rest at cool room temperature for a week. Each week thereafter, uncover the tops of the cakes and sprinkle evenly a full tablespoon of Southern Comfort on top, re-wrapping and covering the cakes, until you have done this 5 or 6 weeks in a row. Whiskey is the traditional liquor for this but I don’t like whiskey and the Amaretto/Southern Comfort combination is divinely fragrant and tasty.

When the soaking phase is done, I wrap the entire cake, in its plastic wrap and baking pan, in aluminum foil, then place the package in a plastic grocery bag, which I hoard from the vegetable department of the grocery store all year. These cakes last at least a year, even without refrigeration. If you eat them slowly, as I do (about one slice a month with a cup of tea), you can keep the cake in the refrigerator and refresh the cake with a tablespoon of Southern Comfort every 3-4 months. Or, if you eat it as I suspect one friend does, by tearing off the wrappings, and diving into the crawl space under his house with the cake and a 2 liter bottle of root beer, and polishing it off just before he goes into diabetic coma, longevity is not an issue. Either way, the cake and this recipe come with best wishes for all the joys of the season, from a loving friend.

Jeanne

—————

Ingredients for Tien’s version:

8 oz	Dried papaya or persimmon
16 oz	Dried apricots
16 oz	Dried (not glace) pineapple slices
12 oz	Dried Calimyrna figs
16 oz	home-candied sweet cherries
16 oz	home-candied sour cherries
16 oz	Crystallized ginger chunks
16 oz	Pitted chopped dates
32 oz	Golden raisins, seedless
16 oz	candied bergamot peel
16 oz	Candied diced citron peel
16 oz	Candied diced Seville orange peel
16 oz	Candied diced lemon peel
16 oz	Candied diced sweet orange peel (lime peel, yuzu peel, etc.)
1.5 14-oz packages (8 cups)	Bakers Sweetened Angel Flake Coconut
32 oz	Slivered blanched almonds

2 lb	Unsalted butter, room temperature
4 cups	Sugar
4 tbsp	Orange blossom water
1.5 tbsp	Vanilla extract
20	Extra large eggs, room temperature
8 cups + 1 cup for sprinkling	Unbleached flour, sifted
2 tbsp	Baking powder
4 tsp	Salt
18 oz	Pineapple juice

10	8″ x 3-7/8″ x 2-15/16″ aluminum loaf pans
	Large container to make batter in
	VERY large container to mix cakes in. I use a round plastic storage container, about 20 gallon capacity.
2	Aluminum baking trays, each of which can hold 5 of the cakes
	Shallow pan for boiling water, placed on the floor of the oven and with the water topped up as the cakes bake.
2	Racks in the oven for the trays. Rotate the trays front to back and up and down in the oven about every 20 minutes so the cakes are evenly exposed to heat during the long slow baking process.

	Amaretto and Southern Comfort to soak the finished cakes (or Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey, or a dark rum)

Note: I like variety, so I soak 1/3 of the cakes in Amaretto and Southern Comfort, 1/3 of them in bourbon whiskey, and 1/3 of them in rum. Each flavor has its devotees.

August 5, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Nutty as a fruitcake

The last few days have been a rush of interesting events and creative adventures, the most notable of which was baking seventeen fruitcakes on Sunday! Nine big fruitcakes and eight small ones. I was seriously worried that they wouldn’t all fit in the oven, but somehow I managed to cram them in there. I kept rotating them so they would bake evenly, and all was well in the end. Today I need to get them out of the pans and begin the long, slow process of drenching them in booze.

Here are some photos from the fruitcake factory.

I started by chopping the eighteen pounds of additions – a daunting task! Here’s seven pints of candied citrus peels, just a small part of what I started with:

I had to chop them into pieces no bigger than half an inch on a side. Like this:

After that, it was a simple matter of chopping up another 11 pounds of candied cherries, slivered almonds, candied ginger, dates, figs, dried persimmons, dried apricots, and dried pineapple. (Plus almost two pounds of shredded coconut, but that didn’t need chopping.)

Here I’m adding the last of the fruitcake additions, the shredded coconut:

Here’s the full, mixed-up pile of yummy fruitcake additions, sprinkled with flour to keep them from sticking to each other:

Next I had to mix up seven quarts of fruitcake batter, which barely fit into my giant stand mixer. Here I am, starting to pour out the batter:

And then I dumped it in:

Adding the fruitcake batter to the additions

Next I had to mix it up. I scrubbed my hands spotlessly clean up to the elbows, and gleefully mixed the batter and the goodies into a wonderful, gloppy mess:

(I really should have tied my hair back – usually I do, but I forgot this time. I’m going to add it to my recipe so I don’t forget again!)

Finally, I put the fruitcakes into the oven:

And here are the baked fruitcakes:

They aren’t ready to eat yet, of course! First they will have to be sprinkled with liquor, a little bit each week, for six weeks. Then they need to be aged for another month or so. And then they’ll be done!

A few people have asked for my fruitcake recipe, so I’ll post it later today. Right now, I gotta get to work!