Fruitcakes, biscotti and ?

16 years ago

Hey all

With the impending arrival of my new range on Friday, I am already getting excited to start my pre-holiday baking. What do you make now (or in the next few weeks) that will hold up, freeze or even improve with flavor as the holidays approach.

One definite for me is my fruit/nut cake that gets marinated in booze. In the past I've used apricot brandy, Black Bush, bourbon, spiced rum... not sure which one I will do this year but it is guaranteed to be high test LOL!

AlexaÂs Christmas Cake

INGREDIENTS:

2 (8 ounce) containers candied cherries

1 (8 ounce) container candied citrus peel

1 (8 ounce) container candied pineapple

2 cups pecan halves

1 cup apricot brandy

1/2 cup all-purpose flour + 2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter

2 cups packed brown sugar

6 eggs

3/4 cup molasses

3/4 cup apple juice or cider

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a medium bowl, combine cherries, citrus peel, pineapple and pecans. Stir in apricot brandy; let stand 2 hours, or overnight. Dredge soaked fruit with 1/2 cup flour.

2. Preheat oven to 275 degrees F (135 degrees C). Grease bundt pan. In a small bowl, mix together 2 cups flour, baking soda, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and salt; set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream butter until light. Gradually blend in brown sugar and eggs. Mix together molasses and apple juice. Beat into butter mixture alternately with flour mixture, making 4 dry and 3 liquid additions. Fold in floured fruit. Turn batter into prepared pan.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of cake comes out clean. Remove from pan. Cool cake completely, then wrap loosely in cheesecloth. Soak with additional apricot brandy, rum, bourbon, or other liquor. Store in an airtight container.

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Comments (6)

lackboys3
16 years ago
Alexa, I've baked and frozen quick breads, like pumpkin and banana breads, with no appreciable loss of flavor or texture. They've lasted quite well for several months in my garage freezer. I wrap them in heavy duty foil, the in sealed plastic bags. The pumpkin bread is my boys' all time favorite.

PUMPKIN BREAD

1 Cup sugar (I use 1/2 white and 1/2 brown)
1 C canned pumpkin
1/3 C canola oil
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 C AP flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 t pumpkin pie spice
************************************************
Heat oven to 350. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan well. Whisk sugar, pumpkin, oil, eggs and vanilla together well in large bowl. Combine remaining dry ingredients in separate small bowl, then add them to the pumpkin mixture just until combined, do not overbeat.

Bake 50-60 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack 10 minutes, then turn out on rack to cool completely. ***I usually sprinkle the top of the bread with coarse sugar (brown or white) before baking, it makes a nice crackly top.***

DONNA
annie1992
16 years ago
Alexa, I make lots of different cookie doughs and freeze them unbaked. I just roll them into logs and slice, then bake them when I want them, or roll them into balls and then thaw and bake. I find that peanut butter, chocolate chip and shortbread doughs all freeze well.

Annie
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There have been some wonderful threads on fruitcake in past years on the Harvest Forum, but not this year, unfortunately, and the really good threads have long dropped off. Food preservers are as interested in mincemeat and fruitcake as they are in jams and chutneys. There were some fabulous recipes posted. There's so much history in them. My mother's dark recipe also makes a huge batch and is a kind of litany of rural America in its ingredients: sugar, honey, lard, butter, hard cider (grape juice for teetotalers), prune butter, cherries, raisins, currants, dates, apricots, candied pineapple, almonds, walnuts, filberts. Bake batter in a slow wood stove 5-6 hours. Yield is 5 7-inch saucepans with pebble-filled Alka-Selzer bottles in the center of each to conduct heat. I love reading that old recipe that way I'd love a good novel. I'd never say what the "perfect" fruitcake is because I've seen how powerful people's preferences are. One person will love the dark fruitcakes while another loathes them. I detest citron but some people just wouldn't consider it fruitcake without it. One of my favorite fruitcakes is a Golden Fruitcake on Epicurious. All kinds of dried apricots, pears, figs, dates and raisins soaked in brandy. Cubes of marzipan in a brown-sugar and cardamom-nutmeg spiced batter and lightly toasted pine nuts folded in at the end. Unforgettable. But a lot of traditionalists feel a sense of loss if you serve them something like that for the holidays. I used the conventional candied fruits in my last batch and just gave a mini-loaf to a friend nearly 80 years old from Louisiana. A dyed-in-the-wool Southerner and fruitcake aficionado. He said it was the best he'd ever tasted in his life. So I wouldn't knock the commercial candied cherries and pineapple. They definitely have their fans. In my recipe (if I'm doing the whole batch as originally written and not making the apricot-pecan variation) I use 1 pound of candied pineapple, 2 pounds of candied cherries (red and green but not the green "mint" flavor just green color), 1 pound of Medjool dates, 1 box of golden raisins, 4 cups of walnuts (toasted) and 4 cups of pecans (toasted). No spices, just vanilla. This would yield about 5 8 1/2x5 loaf pans or 12 3 1/2x5. I've also used brown paper pans and the really tiny petite pans or mini-muffins lined with red and silver foil papers for gifting. I bake at 250 (not pre-heated) anywhere from about 60 minutes for the petite loaves up to 2 1/2 hours or so for the larger loaves. But that was my old non-convection oven. I have not attempted this in my new one yet. I watch the baking times like a hawk. Over-baking is the death of fruitcake. Any more I just do the smaller loaves, double-wrap in Saran and foil then bag and freeze. We love it year-round a little at a time. Once a loaf is thawed I keep it in the refrigerator. It's more like a candy than a cake and chilled it can be sliced in thin "stained-glass window" pieces. AFAIK, I'm the 4th generation to make this, though we've each made changes along the way. I added "instructions," LOL. I inherited it as just a list of ingredients. Originally the recipe called for 1 cup of corn syrup heated and used as a glaze when the cakes come out of the oven, but in generation #2 a baker accidentally added the corn syrup to the batter and we've made it that way ever since. It's more moist and candy-like. Good cooks and their fortuitous errors! Carol
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lindac
16 years ago
Fruit cake is all I make much ahead....but for jams and jellys for gift baskets.

Linda's Fruit cake
3 cups nuts
I use a mixture of pecans hazelnuts and a few almonds...like 1 1'2 cups pecans, 1 cup hazel nuts and 1/2 cup blanched almonds
3 1/2 cups dried and candied fruit
I use lots of pineapple. only about 1/2 cup citrus peel, aboput 1 cup golden raisins and at least a cup of candied cherries
Then 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Sift together and toss with the fruit and nuts
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Beat eggs until light with vanilla and flod into the fruit mixture
Butter a loaf pan ( actually you should have done this before you started!)
line it with parchment and butter the parchment. Place mixture in pan,
pressing down to eliminate air bubbles and bake 300deg. for 1/1/2 to 1 3/4
hrs....test with a toothpick. I soak with brandy and wrap in cheese cloth
and foil and a plastic bag and store in the refrig. for at least a month.
Keeps for years as long as you replenish the brandy from time to time to
keep it from molding!
Of course you can save some of the nut halves to decorate the top before
baking if you want to be fancy schmancy.

I don't start with the biscotti until after Thanks giving.
Linda C
hawk307
16 years ago
{{!gwi}}

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hawk307
16 years ago
I didn't realize the recipe for Biscotti didn't go in.
LOU

Biscotti - Luigi

Preheat Oven to 325 Deg.

Ingredients:
4 Large eggs
1 1/3 cups Sugar
Â¾ cup of Oil + Â¼ cup of Butter ( Softened )
4 teaspoons Anise Flavor
1/3 teaspoon Salt (optional )
4 Â½ cups Flour ?
3 Teaspoons Baking Powder

In a Large bowl, place - the Eggs, Oil, Butter, Sugar, Anise Flavor, Salt.
Mix with a mixer and add 3 cups of Flour and Baking Powder.
Beat well then add remaining Flour and knead by hand on a floured worktop.
Add just enough flour so the dough doesnÂt stick to your hands.
Form into a soft ball and cut in two pieces. Roll and shape into12 to 14 inch rolls..
If the dough has slight cracks, push the ends together, to shorten, roll out again.
Repeat this until there are no more cracks showing. Roll out to the right length .
Place on a lightly oiled cookie tin and flatten slightly, leaving the center higher.
Leave a space between the 2 and the pan, they will grow.
Bake in a 325 Deg. Oven for approx. 30 to 40 minutes. Or until slightly tan.
Remove from the oven and place on a cutting board.
Slice across , diagonally, making pieces about 7/8 in. ( size of a Nickel )
Separate slightly. Control yourself !!! Let them cool, before eating. Save one for me.
msafirstein
16 years ago
I can not wait to make fruit cake this year. I've never forgotten a fruit cake I had years ago that was so rich it was almost black and sooooooo good!

Thanks so much for the recipes. And btw, if you'd like to review other fruitcake recipes if you do a search on the Harvest Forum you will find quite a few.

Michelle

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest Forum

Fruitcakes, biscotti and ?

Comments (6)

lackboys3

annie1992

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hawk307

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