who all has started making their Christmas fruitcakes?

**CopperNGold** · 10th October 11, 10:08 PM

I'm a fairly good cook, but I tried to make a fruitcake years ago, and it was a collosal failure! Sawdust-dry and it could easily have kept a very heavy door propped open. So I'm afraid I order my fruitcakes from Collins Street Bakery in Texas. They are delicious! I would love a home made one someday, though.

Cheers, Jocelyn

**Meggers** · 11th October 11, 05:57 AM

Originally Posted by piperdbh

Meghan, you really do need to get out more.

Fruitcakes are made well in advance of the date you want to eat so the flavors have a chance to mix and mingle. "Ripen" is the word bakers use for it. Some fruitcakes, like mine and I would imagine paulhenry's, are "fed" with a few tablespoons of brandy, rum, Amaretto, or some other spirit, every few days or weeks while ripening. The alcohol, which evaporates off (eventually) preserves the cake and helps carry the flavors around within the cake.
Fruitcake should be exempt from your "fruit not mixing with non-sweet stuff" rule

, and it can be made without the alcohol.

hmmm.....I dont know...When I bite into something soft and then have a random thing to chew, it tends to freak me out.

maybe someday I will have one.

Originally Posted by CDNSushi

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

LOL!

**Meggers** · 11th October 11, 06:03 AM

speaking of fruitcake....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o-u4IwXkbE

**Bugbear** · 11th October 11, 06:09 AM

Now I'm going to have to plan on buying a fruitcake. I usually make one last for about a month by eating one thin slice a day; although it is tempting to eat half the cake all at one time...

**piperdbh** · 11th October 11, 07:14 AM

Originally Posted by Bugbear

Now I'm going to have to plan on buying a fruitcake.

NOOOOOO, Ted!!! Don'y buy a fruitcake, unless it's from a real baker. Don't resort to those store-boughten things.

**Bugbear** · 11th October 11, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by piperdbh

NOOOOOO, Ted!!! Don'y buy a fruitcake, unless it's from a real baker. Don't resort to those store-boughten things.

Shhh, I have a dealer...

I have to pay partly in fruit.

**Old Hippie** · 20th October 11, 03:59 PM

Now that we've finished off the spring fruitcakes and are well into the summer fruitcakes while the autumn fruitcakes mature, it's time to start on Christmas. I have a sizable and growing collection of fruitcake recipes.

Every year I make a large batch and send them out to my extensive list called "Friends of Fruitcake.' (There are, at present, no openings on the list but reserve applications will be considered).

This year's offering will be a Tequila-Lime Fruitcake. I'm trialling the recipe now and it looks promising.

One of the best recipe collections I've seen is "Christmas Cakes and Puddings" edited and published by the Australian Womens' Weekly.

Wishin' y'all a merry cake in yer mailbox...

:ootd:

**pugcasso** · 20th October 11, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by MeghanWalker

idk....Im weird about funky chunkies in soft food. That means no fruit chunks in my yogurt, no nuts in my brownies, no fruit in my cake, etc.

BUT this xmas I do really want to make a yule cake

I made one a few years ago and it was gorgeous.

You could make a fruit cake with all banana chunks in it

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I've never made a fruit cake but made some nice vegan carrot cakes some years

**Bugbear** · 20th October 11, 04:06 PM

All right, I apologize for having to ask, but what is a yule cake.

**cruiser348** · 20th October 11, 04:18 PM

Yule cake is a cake which has some sort of a filling normally a cream which is moistened with simple syrup so that it can be rolled. It's made to look like a yule log when it is finished. An aunt of mine used to make one that looked like it had mushrooms growing on it and she would use powdered sugar to look like snow on the log.