Baking for the Holidays

Starting with a very rough interpretation of the recipe Alton uses, I finally got around to putting together some fruitcake. It won’t be really done until around Christmas, of course, because of the need to spritz it every day for several weeks, and then to let it age, and let the sugars crystallize.

The fruit in these cakes is roughly equal portions of dried mango, pineapple, cherries, apricots, crystallized ginger, and raisins. This came out to about double what the recipe called for, in terms of fruit volume, so I doubled the dry ingredients in the recipe; it’s much easier to measure larger quantities of fruit, I say, and much better to be on the safe side with the amount of cake you make! What I ended up with in the end was the following recipe:

Ingredients:

• 8 cups dried fruit, chopped
• Zest of 2 oranges, chopped
• Zest of 2 grapefruit, chopped
• 2 Cups fresh-squeezed orange & grapefruit juice
• 1 Cup vodka
• 1 Cup cranberry juice
• 1 large hunk fresh ginger, crushed
• 3″ cinnamon stick
• 20 allspice berries
• 10 black peppercorns
• 10 whole cloves
• 1 Tbsp dessicated ginger
• Guts of 1 vanilla bean
• 2 Cups port wine
• 1/2 Cup butter
• 3 Cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 Cup oat bran
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp baking soda
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 4 eggs, whisked

Steps:

1. Mix fruit, peels & spices with juices & vodka. Let macerate overnight.
2. Add fruit, port wine, and butter to a large non-reactive pot; heat to boiling; let simmer for 15 minutes, then cool to room temperature.
3. Sift in dry ingredients; mix.
4. Gradually mix in eggs.
5. Pour into greased pans; bake at 325F / 160C for 1 hour
6. Test with a toothpick.
7. Spritz with port wine.
8. Spritz with more port wine.
9. De-pan onto a cooling rack, and spritz some more.
10. Spritz for several weeks, once or twice a day.

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.