who all has started making their Christmas fruitcakes?

[pugcasso]

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.

Just curious if they were red mushrooms with white dots - these Amanita Muscaria mushrooms have been popular with Christmas symbolism at least back to the early 1900's (some postcards and Christmas tree ornaments I've seen online). Some say that these mushrooms and the northern Siberian reindeer herding Sami people with their shamans (who ate these powerful mushrooms) have given some symbolism to modern Christmas.
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(I've never tried these mushrooms and it's advisable for anyone not to just eat random wild mushrooms as some can be toxin and deadly)

[Bugbear]

Oh, oh, oh, ok. I know about the Yule log that can be eaten or is made of candy. I just saw Yule cake, and it didn't click in my mind as the same.

[starbkjrus]

In my experience fruitcakes make a wonderful door stop. -OR- with a whole bunch you can make a house the Big Bad Wolf can't blow down.

[EHCAlum]

Mmmmm, yule cake. My gran over in Newcastle used to make them when we visited a couple of times. Bread pudding, however is my favourite dessert.

[piperdbh]

Just curious if they were red mushrooms with white dots - these Amanita Muscaria mushrooms have been popular with Christmas symbolism at least back to the early 1900's...

Most of the time, bakers will make the mushrooms from meringue, and when they're dried a powdered sugar/cocoa mixture is sifted over them.

(I've never tried these mushrooms and it's advisable for anyone not to just eat random wild mushrooms as some can be toxin and deadly)

Yea, verily.

[Pleater]

My own Christmas cake recipe is involved in one of the stories of the MHICE - they are in the misc section - the search function should find them.

I used it for my wedding cake, but absent mindedly forgot to double the fruit portion - there are different parts to the recipe. It was necessary to improvise, but it worked out. I made the marzipan and hard icing and piped the decoration.

I add vermouth to the fruit mixture. It only needs a couple of weeks to taste mature - though it is, apparently quite an experience if left for several months in an enclosed tin.

Some years I make a Twelfth cake, which is for the 6th of January, and consists mostly of the largest raisins I can find, three colours of glace cherries, lots of whole nuts and a silly little amount of batter to stick them together, baked in a ring tin - there should be two made and put together to make a torus shape.

In my native Yorkshire fruitcake is traditionally eaten with a white crumbly cheese, usually Cheshire but I have bought something similar in Leicestershire, a local farmhouse cheese.

The family's traditional Christmas Cake is not iced, it is cooked in a deep loaf tin and has whole almonds placed on the top about 2/3rds the way through the cooking time. Sponges are cooked in round tins, but brown cakes are always square - my Wedding cake was square. I even have a photo of it - almost 32 years old.



Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

That sounds very yummy, Pleater.

[piperdbh]

That's the happiest-looking bride I've seen in pictures in along time, Anne. You were smiling because you wanted to, not because a photographer told you to.

Over here, fruitcake is most often served plain, with no marzipan and definitely no royal icing.

[Meggers]

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

I do! It's called banana bread

[Pleater]

That's the happiest-looking bride I've seen in pictures in along time, Anne. You were smiling because you wanted to, not because a photographer told you to.

The several glasses of vodka and bitter lemon could also have had something to do with it, along with very little sleep the night before, finishing off the suit. I realised that the jacket just had to have shoulder pads or be remade, and I wasn't going to risk ripping seams at almost midnight.

The reception was in a pub, 'The old house at home' which was about fifteen seconds walk away from our front door at the time, and it had a folk club.

Anne the Pleater :ootd: