I am one of those people who actually likes fruitcake. In fact, I LOVE it! I never understood why it had such a bad rep and why people made jokes about it until in desperation to fill a fruitcake craving I bought some from the store. Store bought stuff is nasty! I really think that before you judge fruitcake you need to taste some GOOD stuff, and my family's recipe is just that! This year my Grandma taught me how to make it so now I can have all of the good fruitcake I want!
THIS is exactly how fruitcake was meant to be. YUM! And now that I'm going to share the recipe with you, you too can enjoy it as it should be.
This is by no means a small recipe. The full recipe uses 12 pounds of fruit (raisins and various glace fruits), a whole pound of butter and a dozen eggs among other things. Even if you make a full recipe you will probably want to make two half recipes and then stir them together at the end before putting them in the tins to bake. I don't have enough big bowls and roasting tins to make the full recipe so I am making the half recipe twice on separate days.
I will post the full recipe for you to cut and paste and print at the bottom of this post, but before that I will walk you through the process step by step with pictures. Also of note is that I am making a half recipe in the picture instructions, while the recipe at the bottom will be for the full recipe.
the ingredients required for a full recipe all laid out
the tall (and expensive) stack of glace fruit and raisins (beside the fruit) required for a full recipe
The day before you want to bake your fruitcake you will have some preparation to do. You will be mixing all of the raisins, fruit and nuts together with some of the flour and allowing it to sit overnight.
First you weigh out your raisins. You will need 2 pounds total. My Grandma uses 1 pounds of light raisins and 1 pounds of dark raisins. The first time I made this I used sultanas for the dark ones and golden for the light but apparently sultanas are in fact light raisins. They are brown but they are made from green grapes and therefore light. Dark raisins are california or australian raisins. This time I used all three kinds (dark california, sultana and golden) to make up the 2 pounds pictured here.
Next you will need some slivered almonds. Buy the small package (100 grams) and dump half of it in the bowl.
Next add a 225g container of glace pineapple
One pound of mixed glace fruit (2x 225g containers)
a quarter pound of mixed glace peel (half of a 225 g container)
Next you will need 1 pound of red glace cherries and 1 pound of green glace cherries. Chop them in halves (or quarters if they are quite large) and add them to the bowl.
You will now have a bowl that is nice and full of fruit.
Mix in 2 cups of flour and let it sit overnight. My big yellow bowl has a lid so that is nice and handy for this step.
To bake the fruitcake I used my Great Great Grandma Lucy Harriet Armstrong's pans. I love the history that goes with making this fruitcake!
These pans have a removable bottom, kind of like a tart pan as you can see in the picture below:
There are 4 sizes and if making a full batch you would use all of them. For the half batch I use only 2 of them. They are all about 3 inches deep and the sizes are 4x4", 5.75x5.75", 8x8", and 9x9". If you are interested in finding your own set of pans search for "Fat Daddios" brand Cheesecake pans - they are 3 inches deep and come in the 4, 6, 8, 9 and even 12 inch square sizes with removable bottoms. You could also try using springform pans since they are fairly deep and allow you to pop out the bottom. If you are using some other sort of pan you will have to line it with parchment and leave some overhang to lift it out as it will get stuck otherwise.
For the half recipe I use the 9 inch square and 5.75 inch square pans. Butter and lightly flour your pans.
Put half a pound of salted butter and one cup of sugar in a big bowl
And cream the butter and sugar together with a handmixer.
Then add 6 eggs one at a time and mix well.
Mix the remaining one cup of flour, 1.5 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt together in a small bowl
Add the dry ingredient mixture alternately with half a cup of orange juice to the butter mixture to make the batter.
Add some fruit and some batter to a very large bowl or roasting pan and mix. Keep adding some fruit and batter and mixing until they are all combined.
Once combined they will look like this. But don't stop mixing yet! You need to keep on mixing so that the flour that was on the fruit gets fully combined. You might need to click on the pictures to get a bigger and closer view to see that the batter looks different after you've mixed it lots. It gets to be more of a thicker smoother cake batter. I mixed for about 5 minutes with short breaks to rest my arms.
This is how it will look after you've fully mixed it long enough:
Transfer the batter and fruit mixture to the pans, filling 2/3 full. Press it into the corners and spread it evenly in the pans.
After you've smoothed the fruit mixture in the pans you need to scrape out the extra batter stuck in your roasting tin and spread it thinly on top of the fruit already in the pans. This gives a bit of extra batter on top to protect the fruit when baking the cakes.
Now that the extra batter is scraped and smoothed out on top they are ready to go into the oven. Bake them at 275 for one hour and then lower the temperature to 250 and bake until they are done and a cake tester comes out clean. For the large 9x9 pan in my oven it takes 2 hours and 50 minutes and the 6x6" pan takes 2 hours and 20 minutes.
The finished cakes:
When the are fully cool put them on waxed paper and press them out of the pan. You will need to loosen the sides with a knife. Let it cool some more and then use a knife to loosen the bottom and take it off of the cake. When cooled wrap it in plastic cling wrap and aluminum foil. You can keep it like this on the counter if you are eating it in the next little while. If you are saving it for a bit longer you should store it in the fridge. You can also make this recipe ahead of time and store it in the freezer wrapped in cling wrap then foil and then a ziplock baggie.
and now for the full recipe:
Aunt Jessie's Light Fruit Cake
-2 cups sugar
-1 lb salted butter
-1 dozen eggs
-6 cups flour
-3 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 cup orange juice
-4 lbs raisins (Grandma uses 2lbs dark (Australian) and 2lbs light)
-2 lb red glace cherries
-2 lb green glace cherries
-2 lb glace mixed fruit
-1/2 lb mixed peel
-1 lb Glace pineapple
-Almonds (optional), slivered, smallest size pkg (100g)
Cut cherries in half and mix the raisins, fruit and nuts together in a large bowl with 4 cups of the flour and let sit overnight. Butter and lightly flour pans. Cream butter and sugar with a handmixer. Add eggs one at a time and mix well. Mix remaining 2 cups flour, baking powder and salt together. Add alternately with orange juice to the butter mixture. Add some fruit and some batter to a large bowl or roasting pan. Mix. Keep adding some fruit and batter and mixing until they are all combined. Stir for a long time, even if it looks mixed. You need to get all the flour on the fruit combined. Transfer batter and fruit mixture to pans. Fill 2/3 full and press into corners and spread evenly in pans. Scrape out leftover batter and spread over top.
Bake at 275 for 1 hour then at 250 for 2 hours total or until done. A large cake takes about 3 hours total. Test with a cake tester.
When fully cool put on waxed paper and press out of pan (pan has a removable bottom). You may need to loosen the sides with a knife. Let cool some more and then use a knife to loosen the bottom and take it off of the cake. When cooled wrap in plastic cling wrap and aluminum foil. Can be frozen to be used at a later date.
