Mother's Fruit Cake: Boozeless (Mostly) Fruit Cake

I love a good fruit cake. I even like a mediocre fruit cake. The fact that so many people mock fruit cake makes me sad, mostly because I really would love to start getting fruit cakes as gifts again as folks did in days of whatnot. We've already covered one fruit cake option (Brandied Fruitcake Drops) here, but Presbyterian Palate Pleasers gives us a proper, mostly-full-on recipe.

Mother's Fruit Cake

1 lb. brown sugar
6 eggs
1/2 lb. butter
1-1/2 lb. flour (6 c.)
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. milk
1 c. wine
1 lb. currants
1 c. black walnuts
1 lb. raisins
1/2 lb. dates
1/4 lb. citron
1 lb. English Walnuts
1/4 lb. cherries
1/2 lb. figs
1/4 lb. lemon peel
1/4 lb. orange peel
1 c. flour to dredge fruit

Mix ingredients. Grease and flour one large tube pan and one 9x3" loaf pan. Fill each pan 2/3 full and bake at 275° until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Serves about 25. Old recipe.

Anne Hinkle

Oh, Anne. We had such high hopes, seeing as how your churchly volunteering led you to take a bartending course. One cup of wine hardly seems properly boozy for such a lot of cake. Especially seeing as how the wine is baked with the cake, and so much of the alcohol goes away.

To fix this, I'd suggest basting the finished cake in rum, and then soaking cheesecloth in rum and wrapping the cake up with the cheesecloth and basting it every few days/weeks for a good long time.

My mother, however, prefers her fruitcake boozeless. No, really. She has many other fine qualities, I assure you.

Though the recipe doesn't specify, I'm betting all the fruit in this recipe should be dried and/or candied/glaceed. The cloves should be ground. The nuts can be swapped with other nuts if you're anti-walnut. The wine can be whatever you have -- knowing that it will lend color to the cake if you use red wine. I'd go for a sherry, or a tawny port, likely.

My favorite thing about this recipe has got to be the fact that there are two cake pans in use here. One gives you a big, pretty, take-it-to-the-church-pot-luck sort of cake. The other one is what you keep for yourself, to nibble on next to a cup of tea or a glass of sherry or port.