who all has started making their Christmas fruitcakes?

[piperdbh]

I bought a 25-lb. box of pecans this past weekend, and I have most of a 50-lb. box of candied cherries in the pantry. I just need some customers now!

[Bugbear]

I bought a 25-lb. box of pecans this past weekend, and I have most of a 50-lb. box of candied cherries in the pantry. I just need some customers now!

[piperdbh]

Sorry, Ted. I have 30 pounds of candied cherries, not 50. I must have overloaded my memory and caused an internal error.

Anyway, I just pulled #4 of the season out of the oven and it smells really good. I left out the black raisins and instead used dried blueberries, cranberries and apples. I also invented a (brilliant, by my reckoning) system to "feed" the cake: I mix Grand Marnier and Amaretto in a small spray bottle, then when the cake comes out of the oven, I give it a good spraying, then spray it once a week thereafter. The spraying is much more even and easier than dousing a cake with a bottle of spirits.

[Bugbear]

Don't spray too close to the stove, piperdbh: Fruitcake flombe'.


Hmmm, that sounds good.

[McFarkus]

My recipe "the Archbishop of York's Flaming Plum Puddng" is so large I only make it occasionally. Not every year.

[Braemar Kiltmaker]

There's NOTHING better than GOOD fruitcake ... and nothing WORSE than BAD fruitcake!!!

My wife and I made one for our wedding, and we used Jamaican Spiced Rum to medicate it - she is a nurse, so she used a hypodermic needle to apply the doses PRN! It was BRILLIANT! We saved the top layer to use as a christening cake for our first grandbaby (it was a late, second marriage), and regrettably are still waiting to use it ... sigh.

[Paul Henry]

It's time for the marizpanning to start...

Basic ingredients, with a lovely mature cake

Adding a thin layer of home made quince honey to the sides of the cake to stick on the marizpan sides

trimming the top marizpan , and putting somewhere safe and dry for a few days before icing

[Bugbear]

Make us fatter, Fruitcake Daddy! That way we can't squeeze through the door and waddle away.


Actually, paulhenry, that sounds really good.

[Oviatt]

And this is stir up Sunday, at least in the US--very applicable for puddings, not so sure about fruitcakes, though.....

[Paul Henry]

I decorated the cake this morning, it is a gift so it was completed a little earlier than our own! I hope they like it!