who all has started making their Christmas fruitcakes?

[piperdbh]

We did!!! Made a traditional fruit cake from an old New Zealand recipe and covered it with marzipan and royal icing.

But you didn't invite me to the wedding, Brian!

The Mrs. and I made our own wedding cake, too, but it was a 10-egg pound cake recipe covered with Wilton-recipe buttercream and store-boughten fondant. I've since reformed my ways.

[Paul Henry]

We freeze them, but I tell my customers to go ahead and cut the top tier at the reception, and I make them a duplicate for their first anniversary.

Did your mother make her own fondant? I make mine with melted marshmallows and lots of powdered sugar.

Fondant icing was never used on wedding cakes, it was always royal icing, always! especially as fondant wouldn't have supported two or three tiers.
For birthday cakes and general lighter cakes, yes we did make the fondant icing ourselves, this was back perhaps over 40 years ago, when fondant paste was very much a rarity in the shops, I remember very well weighing out the liquid glucose, and mixing it for ages with icing sugar until it was beautifully smooth.

Beedee: Black Bun is normally associated with New Year over here rather than Christmas, but if you like it, eat it whenever you can!

[piperdbh]

In my experience, royal icing is only used for piping flowers and other small decorations that need to stay hard. Most cakes are iced in buttercream, although in the last ten years, thanks to Martha Stewart, fondant has become more popular.


Very different traditions, eh, Paul?

[JCheshire]

I start my fruitcakes the weekend before Thanksgiving on a Friday night after everyone's gone to sleep. I usually make 3 batches, which will yield 4 large loaves and 7 small ones, plus a large festive ring shape that I keep for the house. I'll sip a hot buttered rum or 2, maybe a shot of rum before I get started to make sure it's acceptable, and put on some Christmas CDs. I usually finish by 2 or 3 AM, let the cakes cool all the next day on a rack and then I brush them with rum using a pastry brush. I then wrap them in cheese cloth, REALLY soak them and do an over wrap of plastic. I let them sit quietly in the fridge for a week and then I unwrap the plastic and brush the cheesecloth with another dose of rum. Back into the fridge they go for another week and then, you guessed it, ANOTHER rum treatment. I let them sit for 3 more weeks and send them as gifts. The cost of postage is staggering! I think I spent close to $90 last year on postage alone, but my gosh they sure are good. I'm told by people my father's age (69) that they're better than their grandmothers used to make. Now, THAT is a compliment!

[Lyle1]

I will probably start making fruitcakes next month. The recipe that I use is not as heavy as some (lots of whipped egg whites), and calls for marinating the fruit overnight in white wine; no other liquor is added. I like it, and people usually ask if I'm making it about Thanksgiving; one friend in his 90's expects two, but he promises not to tell anybody else that he gets an extra one! It freezes and ships well. The recipe makes a single seven pound cake or seven one pound cakes.

[CDNSushi]

<sigh> What would I want with another fruitcake when I'm already surrounded by 'em?

[piperdbh]

I was thinking as I made mine about the expense of the ingredients, and how in the Victorian UK the cost of all the exotic fruits must have been exorbitantly high. It seems to me that a fruitcake would have been a delicacy, to be savored in thin slices.

[Father Bill]

Gee, we start them years early... soaking in good quality rum!

[Hocfutue]

Loves me some fruitcake!!!

To a lot of folks in the US, they're just a joke punchline, but I love the stuff. May have to try making one.

While I'm told I am a decent cook, the science of baking eludes me, even when following the directions explicitly. Fruitcakes have an advantage, though--I can cover my mistakes with more booze!

[Bugbear]

MMMM, aged fruitcake is so yum yum.