Christmas Fruitcake

Fruitcake is one of those misunderstood food items.  At this time of year, everyone makes jokes about fruitcakes and a person either "loves 'em" or "hates 'em".  Some fruitcakes are indeed awful, especially the ones commercially made and found in your average grocery store.   Personally, I cannot tolerate any fruitcake made with citron, or some of the glaceed fruits they sell for fruitcake mix that taste like chemical sludge.   For me, a REAL fruitcake uses real dried fruit and real nuts and real juice.  I have tried many recipes over the years, and the best one I have found is from an old Better Homes and Gardens cake cookbook from 1980.  I am typing the recipe here, and if you like fruitcake, please try it!  It takes a while to mix up a good fruitcake, and it takes a while to "mellow out" a good fruitcake.  So it is indeed a labor of love.   I don't make a fruitcake every Christmas, maybe every few years or so.   This insures that when I do make one it is really special!  Nobody ever jokes about MY fruitcakes being used for doorstops!

CHRISTMAS FRUITCAKE

3 c. flour

2 tsp. baking powder 

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. allspice

1/4 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. salt 

Mix the above in a large bowl and set aside. 

Then in a really large bowl, mix the following: 

2 c. brown raisins

2 c. golden raisins

1 12-oz pkg pitted prunes, snipped into small pieces

1 12-oz pkg dried apricots, snipped into small pieces

2 10-oz jars maraschino cherries, drained (leave cherries whole)

1 c. chopped almonds or slivered or sliced

1 c. pecan pieces

1 c. walnut pieces

Mix the flour mixture and the fruit mix together in that very large bowl.   Set aside.  

     In another bowl: 

4 eggs, beaten (I use either large or extra large)

1 3/4 c. brown sugar

1 c. freshly squeezed orange juice (yes, use fresh it is so much better!)

1/4 c. molasses

3/4 c. butter, melted (stick and a half)

     Mix the wet ingredients together and then mix this into the dry mix.  The batter will be stiff, just keep on mixing everything together until well blended.   Mix by hand with a wooden spoon - do not use an electric mixer!

Next, grease three 8 x 4 loaf pans and line with wax paper all around.  Grease the wax paper and use 2 layers for the bottoms of the pans.  Fill the loaf pans with the fruitcake batter, filling about 3/4 full.  

     Bake in a 300 degree oven for about 1 3/4 to 2 hours until cakes test done with a long tester pick.  Cool, then remove from pans and peel off the paper. 

Now, here's the fun part!  Soak 3 old linen towels or heavy cheesecloth in orange juice (for this part you can use the concentrate stuff).  Squeeze out the excess and wrap the loaves up in a cloth, one at a time.   Put into plastic bags, and store in the refrigerator for a week (two weeks is even better!), although it's still OK to eat after 3 or 4 days of mellowing.   Store fruitcakes in the refrigerator and if the cakes get a little dry, wrap them in orange juice soaked cloths again.   You can also freeze the loaves, but I have never done that because this fruitcake keeps very well, and it never lasts long anyway!  During the holidays it goes quickly and I also give some of it away.    Instead of orange juice you could use apple juice, but I find that orange juice seems to compliment the dried fruit better than apple juice.   Traditional fruitcake is soaked in brandy or rum, but I don't drink and I don't have liquor in the house.   Soaking the fruitcakes in fruit juice makes it so that even children can enjoy this fruitcake!  A very MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!!

The fruitcake batter ready to bake in the wax paper lined loaves.

The finished loaves fresh from the oven. 

The loaves are wrapped in juice soaked cloths and put into the refrigerator in plastic bags for a week before eating.  I just use bread bags to store them in.

Decoration Plan

Now that December is here and most of us are beginning to decorate for Christmas, how do you go about it?  Do you start right after Thanksgiving?  Do you put everything up at once?  Do you put outdoor decorations up?  Do you put a little bit of Christmas in every room of the house?
     Back when my children were small, I would put up all the decorations I had all at once, and put the tree up about 10 days before Christmas and take everything down either on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.   We usually had a real tree, so having the tree in the house for that long a time was probably stretching the life of the tree.   Sometimes my kids would help me decorate, but most of the time it was "Mom's job" to put up the tree and decorations.
     Now that my kids are grown, I tend to put up the decorations a little at a time.  By the time Christmas Day arrives, the house is all decorated.  I still leave things up until New Year's Eve.  I like to start the new year with a clean house and a clean slate.  So, on Dec 1st, the first thing to put out is the window candles.   I have electric candles that I put in almost every window of the house, and some larger ones on the porch.   Also on Dec 1st, I get out my Christmas dishes!  During December, I only use my Christmas dishes (unless I run out of clean ones!)  Tomorrow on Dec 2nd, I'll put up a few more decorations, and on the 3rd, a few more things, etc. etc.  By the time Dec 25 is here the tree is up and my house is fully decorated.   I do try to put a little bit of Christmas in every room of the house (even the bathroom, which gets Christmas towels and a bar of Christmas soap, and some holiday scented liquid soap.).
     This year my son Jerry is coming with my grandson Jeffrey, and we are going to have a real tree!  A while back on my blog entries I mentioned that there was a blue spruce growing in the ditch alongside the road.   That will be our tree this year.  I will put that up a few days before the 25th, and leave it up until New Year's Eve.  Ten days is plenty for a real tree in a dry house.
     Another favorite decoration item to put out is my village that a neighbor gave me as a housewarming gift many years ago.   She bought it at an auction and thought it might fit on her bay windowsill, but it didn't, so she graciously gave me the entire village when she saw my big bay window seat area.  I don't have a recent photo of the village, but here is one from a few years ago, before I added trees and people:

I put the village out sometime around the 6th of December.

The village at night

One set of my Christmas dishes is a set that Harold bought at a garage sale in Canada back in the days when he was a trucker.   They are a lovely set of Scio dishes with a 'made in Japan' on the back, so I know they are old.   I have looked up these dishes on the internet for pricing, and they sell for about $50 to $75 a set.  Harold says he gave 5 bucks for them.  When we were first married, my dishes were in storage and when Christmas time came I was upset that I wouldn't have any holiday plates to use, like I always did.  Harold just smiled and went out to a shed in the back yard and came in with a box of those lovely Scio Christmas plates and cups and saucers.  Was I surprised that he would have Christmas dishes (guys don't care about such things, right?)!  He told me how he bought them at a garage sale in Canada years ago and sort of forgot about them.   I have a couple other sets of dishes, too, so here is a sample of the plates and cups we will use during the holidays:

And here are the window candles that I put up:  triple candles on the porch, and single ones in all the other windows of the house: 

It was 15 below zero outside when I took this photo!