Well, for plastic fruitcake fruit, you're probably better off ordering online. I don't think you'll ever be able to "equal" the flavor with homemade, LOL.

If you want to give it a shot, usually it's candied red and green cherries; candied red, green and yellow pineapple; some proportion of candied lemon, orange and citron peel. The colored fruits may have flavorings added (i.e. almond with the red cherries) and definitely food color.

The time-consuming part is that ideally each fruit needs to be done separately, so with cherries, pineapple and peels, you'd have hypothetically 5 different batches.

You could make everything but the cherries now because fresh pineapple is available but not fresh cherries, I assume. Normally I candy fruits seasonally, citrus in the winter, strawberries, cherries, apricots, etc. in the summer.

Another option would be to candy cranberries, pears, seasonal fruits. That would be lovely (but probably taste too good, LOL).

Here's one recipe for Glace fruit, but there are lots of them on the Web, including some quicker versions. However, it's still a series of days for the process.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Glace Fruit

I used the glazed fruit from my bulk store for my fruitcakes. My fruitcakes are fermenting now with still 2 more weeks of brandy basting before they will be ready.

Could I have made my own glazed fruit...oh probably. Would I make my own...probably not.

My fruitcake recipes call for the fruit and nuts to be soaked 24 hrs in almost a fifth of rum before making the cake batter. And I had about 1 c. left after the initial soaking. And then after the cakes are baked, there is a weekly basting with more booze.

I don't know, maybe I'm way out on a limb here, but really with all that booze, would the homemade glazed fruits make that much difference?

Michelle

Thanks Carol. That does seem like a lot of effort for someone who is far from picky.

The first time I made this fruitcake for my dad, it was wonderful--lots of dried fruit and nuts soaked in goo (mostly dark rum) for over a week. I'm sure it was a fire hazard. The response? "This is really good. You now what it needs...? Some of those red and green candied fruit things." Sigh.

But would he notice homemade versus store-bought? nah. If he did, he'd probably prefer the store stuff. I guess I'll probably look around and find some tubs of plastic fruit. And make 2 batches--one for normal people and one for my dad. (I actually like the stuff in smaller amounts, but my dad would eat the glaceed fruit out of the tub before my mother could get around to baking. Ew. That's who I'm cooking for!)

I agree with you, Michelle. I think an infused cake with rum or brandy wouldn't necessarily benefit from the time and expense of making candied fruits.

I'm fortunate that I can buy the conventional commercial candied cherries and pineapple scooped out of barrels. But really, barring local availability, you could order candied fruits online and get them at least as quickly as making your own.

In my case it's a little different because I don't use any alcohol in my fruitcake. It's a rich white recipe with just enough batter (10 eggs, 1 pound of butter, 4 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar) to support the weight of the fruit and nuts. The total batch is 11+ pounds. Last year I made half a batch with conventional candied cherries, pineapple, dates, golden raisins, walnuts and pecans. The other half was candied apricots, candied pineapple and wild pecans. That was truly wonderful.

I don't use any candied peel and especially not citron. (No citron ever comes through this door, LOL.) Like a lot of fruitcakes it's almost more of a confection than a cake, but since I don't baste, the biggest issue is not the fruit, it's being sure not to over-bake.

Carol

Oh good...I was afraid if the homemade candied fruit made a big difference I would think my fruitcakes were junk!! I'm into my second fifth of basting brandy and it is just too expensive a process to have a bad attitude about the outcome. LOL!

Wow...10 eggs! The candied apricots sound wonderful!

I don't think I've ever tasted citron. But I've heard many negative comments about it. Maybe an acquired taste?

Michelle

all this fruitcake talk is really making me have a new-found respect for them. my brother makes one every year and he's so into it - the whole process from start to finish.

carol, how many cups of fruit do you add to the one you make? and how many do you get from that amount of batter, or is it just for one cake? what temp does it get baked at? and do you soak your fruits and nuts in anything at all? do you eat this right away or wrap it and put it away like the boozed cakes?

michelle, so you soaked your stuff in rum and now basting in brandy. do the two tastes complement each other? are you using a flavored brandy? and how many fruit cakes do you have going that you are using that much booze?

i'm already thinking next year's project.

maryanne

fori: my stepfather would also have liked the "plastic" candied fruit -- skip the cake. If I could, I would cover the top of that fruitcake with as many cherries as it would hold -- just to make him happy. Count your blessings.

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

so you soaked your stuff in rum and now basting in brandy. do the two tastes complement each other? are you using a flavored brandy? and how many fruit cakes do you have going that you are using that much booze?

I guess rum and brandy compliment each other as much as whiskey and rum which is how my grama used to make it.

The recipe called for rum for the initial soaking of the fruit and nuts. Personally, I don't like rum but we had over half of a party sized bottle of rum and I wanted to use it up. So I used Rum. Next time I would use a good whiskey for the soaking. Last week I bought a pint of Peach Brandy for the white cakes and Cherry Brandy for the dark cakes for the final 2 weeks of basting.

I wanted to make both a white fruit cake and a dark fruit cake but could not find a dark fruit cake that I like. So I took the white fruit cake and modified it with molasses, cinnamon, ginger and orange juice and the batter was just delicious!!

I just went downstairs and counted the little cakes and I have 3 full sized loaf cakes and 20-5" cakes. The recipe said it made 2 loaf cakes for a single recipe, doubling it I should have had 4 cakes but as you see it made far more then that!!!

I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with all this fruit cake!!

Michelle

If nothing else, I'm relieved that fruitcake isn't really a dead art! Not only did my grocery store not have the candied fruit, it didn't even have the cheap "fruitcakes" that are probably what gave fruitcake the bad reputation in the first place.

Michelle, "High-Octane" fruitcakes like yours can easily last 10 years, so if you don't finish all you baked this season there's always another year. Just don't wrap it in foil for long-term storage. The liquor will eat holes in the foil.

Now if you want a big fruitcake, there's Martha Washington's "Great Cake" with 40 eggs, 4 pounds of butter and 5 pounds of fruit. I wonder just how many people that would serve?

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Mt. Vernon and Martha Washington's Great Cake

Just in case you're not up to making your own fruitcake, we have a local business that makes the best fruitcakes from the fruit and nuts grown in the San Joaquin Valley, CA. ( They also make the best biscotti, but that's another thread.) They're unlike any fruitcake I've ever had... just the dried fruit and nuts "glued" together with something yummy. You actually need to pop them in the freezer for a few minutes just so you can cut the pieces. There are several varieties, but my favorite is the "Fruits of the San Joaquin".

Here is a link that might be useful: Rosetti's Biscotti House