Christmas (Cake) Is Coming!

It took a bit longer than expected, but I did finally get the Christmas Cake put together tonight.

I started - as you may have seen last week - by getting out the recipe

I got the recipe from a friend of mine in England - via her husband, who is on social media. The notes on it are hers.

I started by going into the downstairs pantry (yes, we have a back-up pantry in the basement for things we seldom use), and figuring out what dried and/or candied fruit we had on hand, then went to the store to supplement.

I don't know that I've ever really known what currants are. These are them when they're dried. I'm still not sure what they are when they're just current currants. 

Most of this stage of the prep process was just amassing and weighing things, but the dates did need to be chopped. I could have bought chopped dates, but - once chopped - they all seem to be coated in sugar (I'm guessing so they don't stick together). I didn't want the extra sugar, so I went for whole dates.

Don't worry - I bought them pitted. I'm not that crazy.

After much chopping and knife-clearing-off and more chopping, they got to here.

Yes. Still glad I didn't buy the chopped ones.

The following photo may look like a duplicate, but it is - in fact - a photo of raisins being chopped. 

How can I be so sure? I enlarged it to verify.

Finally, I reached for the tower o' questionable fruits that has been in the basement pantry for a few years. One of the nice things about candied fruits is that they seem to have a shelf-life which is roughly the length of an ice age. 

Biggest problem: Figuring out which ones I wanted to use.

The Candied Red Cherries were obviously a must.

Yes, they also come in green. No, I didn't have any green ones that were "pre-chipped" - and the whole ones have their own use in Spritz cookie wreaths.

The note on the side of the recipe specifically calls out the ability to ignore the grated lemon peel because it's already in the mixed fruit. So that meant that the Candied Lemon Peel was a must.

You know how you're only supposed to use the bright yellow zest, and not the white pith in most things? That rule apparently doesn't apply, here. 

Finally, I decided to go with a fruit I remember from my grandmother's fruitcake: Candied Pineapple.

All done atop the scale, so I could make sure I was getting decent proportions.

After a quick stir, it all seemed rather festive.

And what makes a fruitcake more festive than dousing it with booze? I have no idea!

I recommend not prepping this recipe around open flames.

Into a bowl and covered to hang out for 4 hours...

Then, when you realize that you're missing an ingredient for your cake, into a Ziploc bag so you can put it in the fridge until you're ready to use it all...

Some of the colors have definitely melted together since I started, which wasn't a big surprise considering how the entire bag seemed to have become a solid boozy fruity mass.

This brings us to tonight, so let me recap:

Yep. We're finally to the point of using eggs!

Everyone ready? Let's get this put together!

First, the ingredients (with stunt-double dried and candied fruit, since the rest is already prepped):

I mentioned the mixer in the video, but I ended up doing this all by hand - it just seemed easier.

Does everyone remember how to cut a paper liner for the base of your pan? It's easy, if you use the "snowflake" method that we talked about a while back.

In case you're wondering, yes, that's actually a 9-inch springform pan. The recipe calls for a "deep" pan, and that the smallest deep pan I have. (I probably should have just gone for a normal 8-inch. Live and learn.)

I know that I only showed one stick of softened butter in the video, but there are two in the recipe.

Butter by itself is kind of boring in a bowl.

I weighed most of the ingredients for this recipe. I figured it was the safe thing to do.

The sugar goes in with the butter (pretty standard baking procedure)...

And then the eggs go in. (I didn't pre-beat them, I just put them in one at a time.)

I think the choice of "large" eggs was the right way to go.

I was a little surprised that this only takes two tablespoons of Molasses (subbing in for the Black Treacle). But it did make the kind of anemic batter...

Molasses - the sulfur-y, tangy, sweet smell - is a Holiday scent for me, because we really only use it in cookies we make this time of year. 

...take on a ruddy complexion.

Oops. You can see lumps of butter, now. Maybe I should have used the mixer...

Weighing out the flour, mixed spices, pecans, and almond flour looked (and smelled) rather festive.

The first half of the flour and nuts and such went in quite quickly, followed by the - whew - pungent - boozy fruits. 

Remarkably, out of the bag, the fruits were back to being rather vibrant. Kind of makes me wish I'd had those green cherries, after all.

Mixing all of this together - and the second half of the flour - did get a bit more difficult as it built up a rather solid batter.

Could have left that spoon in there for days and it wouldn't have fallen over.

 Into the pan...

...which got a nice Edwardian collar...

...then into the oven.

I'd like to point out that this photo - though taken while the cake was still in the oven - was taken after the full cooking time had elapsed and the oven was turned off.

After it cooled for an hour (note to self: if I make this again, I need to start early on a weekend day - not after work on a Wednesday), I flipped it over and removed the pan.

SO glad I'd done this in the springform! Yes, it's a bit wider and flatter than it would have been, but at least it came out with no issues.

I was honestly a little nervous about peeling off the paper, but it came off with nary a crumb attached.

Somewhere in the midst of all of the evening's activity (probably about an hour into the cooking time, really), I started to notice how nice it smelled. As I peeled the paper back, I got another strong whiff of the spicy, fruity, boozy, Holiday-y aroma. It's a comforting smell, really. Even though I don't truly love fruitcake.

Next up: more Brandy, because something has to preserve this cake for the next 6 weeks.

I just realized that this photo looks a little like Neil Armstrong on the moon. Or maybe Matt Damon on Mars. 

I did add just a bit more than the prescribed two tablespoons at this point, because the wider surface area of the cake made it nearly impossible to cover with just that bit of liquid.

You can actually see the darker areas where it has been drizzled upon.

So... How does it taste at this point? Let's find out:

Yes, I changed clothes between videos. After all, it was past my bedtime by this point!

I think I already warned you that this isn't being seriously cut into until... well... Christmas. So we'll be checking back in on it in a few weeks. (Question for those who've made these before: Do I really have to do almond paste and fondant and things on top of it?)

-----
What food is the perfect ingredient in your Holidays? Is it something you want me to try out on the blog? Let me know what you're looking for, and I'll see what I can do! (Assuming, of course, that I don't keep misplacing ingredients...)