This fruitcake recipe will adjust your head about fruitcake endlessly

For generations, fruitcake has been the butt of lots of getaway jokes: likened to a fewer tasty doorstop, offered as a gift to a person you essentially loathe, etcetera. The thought of fruitcake reappears in sarcastic getaway discussions calendar year following calendar year. It’s loathed, but it doesn’t have to be.

I never ever in fact knew any individual my age that at any time ate fruitcake, mainly because of to its adverse track record in Television set and flicks across the many years. This quote from the late, wonderful, Aunt Edna from Nationwide Lampoon’s Family vacation very substantially sums it up:

Aunt Edna: You are the kinds who despatched me the fruitcake for Xmas. It designed me so sick!

Ellen: Oh—we’re sorry. We believed you relished fruitcake.

Aunt Edna: Do you love throwing up just about every five minutes, Claude?

So, we get it. It’s gross. It’s dry. The “fruit” inside of it is perhaps just chippings of Yankee Candle wax. But not long ago, the fruitcake recreation modified for me forever.

See, fruitcake seems on my family’s vacation desk each and every yr, and I’m not kidding when I say that it is an complete showstopper. Section of me questioned if individuals ended up just seeking to be well mannered when they raved about it. But when you are staying polite about food items you really don’t essentially like, you are going to take 1, maybe two bites, and then make a massive to-do about how whole you are. You could possibly even check with to have it wrapped up “to go” to increase coloration to your fibs.

Rather, what I have noticed in excess of the decades is a total team of company grabbing multiple slices of this fruitcake, ingesting each individual final crumb, and then conversing excitedly about it. I have hardly ever read folks communicate about a fruitcake the way persons converse about this fruitcake. I had in no way touched the things until eventually very last yr when I attained for a slice to see what the hype was about.

And then I recognized. It is not that fruitcake as a strategy is delicious–it’s that this fruitcake is delectable. The recipe I’m about to share is effortlessly 70+ years aged. My late, excellent Aunt Jane was the fruitcake learn. Like all of us, she liked expressing adore via dishes served with a heavy aspect of sass. In my aunt’s tiny Midwestern farm city this fruitcake was her declare to fame, and she did not want just any one acquiring the accolades that belonged to her.

At the time she handed this recipe down to my mom, I’m absolutely sure the really notion of publishing her treasured recipe on the online would have been thought of sacrilege. But when we enable individuals acquire their recipes to the grave, we all pass up out. I feel in sharing the prosperity and holding reminiscences of our cherished kinds alive by continuing to use their recipes right after they are gone.

With that explained, I am assured that this is the reboot/comeback/revival that fruitcake justifies.

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Fruitcake for People Who Never Like Fruitcake

Generate: 2 cakes

• 1½ cups flour
• 1½ cups Sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 lb. candied or dried sweetened pineapple chunks
• 1 lb. total dates, pitted
• 2 (16-oz.) jars maraschino cherries, without the need of stems, drained
• 5½ cups walnut or pecan halves
• 6 eggs, overwhelmed
• 1/3 cup gentle rum
• 8 oz. Karo mild corn syrup

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two 9×5” loaf pans with aluminum foil, then grease them well with shortening. Be thorough not to poke holes in the foil even though greasing—if you do, only include another layer of foil and grease once more.

In a quite significant mixing bowl, whisk together your dry components, and then blend in your fruits and nuts. In a independent bowl, incorporate the eggs and rum. Pour that mixture around the fruit combination until eventually all components are integrated and coated. Fill bread pans evenly though pressing the mixture down firmly with the again of a fork or spoon to do away with air pockets.

Bake the loaves on the middle rack of the oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes right until a cake tester will come out cleanse. Take away the pans and cool them for 15 minutes, then elevate the cakes by the foil to transport them on to cake racks. Glaze the cakes by brushing Karo syrup on the tops and sides.

When glazed cakes are fully awesome, wrap just about every tightly in wax or parchment paper and retailer in the refrigerator. To provide, reduce slices with a serrated knife, then lower just about every slice in 50 percent. Love, and welcome fruitcake back to the getaway party—indefinitely!