Go with Marilyn's Fruitcake, it's very good.

White Fruit Cake Marilyn C

It is called Cherry Pineapple Cake but I have also seen it listed as White Fruitcake, although I have seen other variations also called White Fruitcake.

4 cups chopped nuts. (I use pecans or walnuts)

1 lb. candied pineapple

1 lb. candied cherries...I use half red, half green

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter

1 cup sugar

5 large eggs

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. pure lemon extract

Chop fruit and nuts and dredge with flour (I cut the cherries in half and cut the pineapple wedges in half.) Dredge with 1/4 cup of flour. (This takes a humongous bowl...even my largest Pyrex bowl isn't big enough, but I have an extra, extra large glass mixing bowl that I use.)

Cream butter and sugar, and add eggs one at a time, beating after each. Combine remaining 1 1/2 cups flour and baking powder and add to butter, sugar, and egg mixture. Stir in the vanilla and lemon extracts. Stir in fruit and nuts.

Pour into greased 10" tube pan or two loaf pans and put in a cold oven, set at 250* and bake for two hours if using a tube pan and an hour and a half if using loaf pans.

I have made this cake 5 times....three times using a regular oven and twice in a Nesco...and it takes considerably longer to bake than the times given. So, I say to bake it at 250* until the top is well set and it tests done.

* I hope Marilyn doesn't mind me sharing.

http://ktgatheringplace.weebly.com/6-holidays.html

Marilyn, thanks I just couldn't remember the right name of tube pan!

I have made my mother in laws no bake fruit cake and it's very good. The recipe is on here somewhere.

By the way her name was Lucille also. Here's a past fruitcake thread with the recipe.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/4978675/fruit-cake-recipe

What keeps all these fruitcakes from molding?

Alcohol and dried fruit keep it safe.

I was never a big fan of fruit cake until I bought Julee Rosso's cookbook. She is an author of several cookbooks and owner of the "Wickwood Inn" in Saugatuck, Michigan. Her recipe has cream sherry, nuts, chopped dates, and dried cherries.

I've made 2 batches of Alton Brown's Free Range Fruit cake this year. I added in some dehydrated strawberries which aren't on the recipe. I make them in those small loaf pans and get 5 loaves from a batch. I doused 4 in Brandy, 4 in Amontillado Sherry and 2 plain. My wife says that this year's are the best ever.

Fruitcake must have rum for my taste.

Both sugar and salt are preservatives which it seems many people have forgotten. The natural sugar in the dried fruits keep them from molding and the alcohol helps to keep the cake portion from molding which is why my caution above about using fruit juice in place of alcohol. The wrapping up and storing in an airtight container keeps the alcohol vapors in contact with the surface keeping it from completely drying out.

You can make fruitcake using fruit juice but if you make one that will be eaten quickly and keep it in the refrigerator. Our ancestor's digestive systems might have handled mold and other things better than people do now. Probably because they were exposed to things more frequently. In the past people would just cut mold and other objectionable pieces off and eat things where now it is tossed in the trash.

I grew up eating fruitcake. My mother made it the day after Thanksgiving so it could "ripen". It was always cut on Christmas Eve, after dinner, to have with a glass of port. My mother swore I was begging for bits of this before I could walk! Could be - I love a GOOD fruitcake. Mother's was very dense and dark. I have the recipe somewhere, but about 10 years before she died (at 85), she switched to her nieces recipe for a "white" fruit cake. I loved that even more - no hard pieces of citron.

I still have the note she included with the last one she baked for me, a few months before she died in 1993. She had lupus and terrible osteoarthritis in her hands, and she said, "Made with much difficulty and much love" on her note.

I've decided to make one this year! Kroger and other local stores no longer even carry the candied fruit. I ordered it from Amazon and it will be here tomorrow. I'm making my cousin's recipe - the one my mother loved so much. I bake mine in a tube pan; my cousin divided hers into 4 loaf pans. Mine gets doused with brandy (and wrapped in cheese cloth, put in a tightly sealed tin box and doused again, weekly); my cousin is a Southern Baptist so no booze for her! The pecans make it VERY expensive to make, but I'll splurge. I'm hoping to get some "mixing" help from a grandson. It's the devil to mix, it's so full of fruit and nuts.

2 1/2 sticks butter (not margarine)

2 cups sugar

6 egg yolks

2 1/2 cups flour - reserve 1/2 cup for sprinkling over fruit and nuts

2 - 2oz bottles lemon extract

1 lb candied cherries, half red, half green

1 lb candied pineapple, diced

2 lbs pecans - chopped

1 /2 box white raisins

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks. Add lemon extract, alternating with flour. Mix batter well.

Add floured fruit and nuts to mixture and mix well.

I hope the amount of lemon extract is a typo as that is a half of a cup of the stuff and as strong as it is should knock your head back when opening the container it is stored in.

I don't make my own fruitcake -- we order one from Collin Street Bakery in Texas BUT I do make Dundee cakes for St. Nicholas Tea and often make Grandmother's Brazil Nut Cake (which is NOT a fruit cake -- it's a nutcake -- but it seems like a fruitcake to me!)

I make the Dundee's in 4 small pans and sometimes I give one or two for gifts. It's a good cake:

Mrs. Boland's Dundee Cake

2 sticks of unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 c. sugar

4 eggs

2 T. fresh orange juice (I also add the zested peel)

1 t. vanilla

1/2 c. blanched chopped almonds

2 1/2 c. cake flour

1/2 t. salt

1 t. baking powder

1 c. raisins (I use a mixture of dark and golden)

1 1/2 c. currants (if I can't find them I just use 2 c. raisins -- one dark/one golden)

1/2 c. ctiron, chopped (I often use just candied orang peel)

1/2 c. candied cherries

Preheat oven to 275. Grease and flour 2 41/2 x 9 inch loaf pans. (I always use 4 small loaf pans)

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar, mixing well. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating 5 mintues after each egg. Stir in orange juice, vanilla and almonds (this is when I stir in the zest).

Sift eh flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the fruit and mix by hand until well floured. Add the fruit to the butter/sugar mixture and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans. Decorate with cherries and almonds in festive designs.

Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven. Check with doneness with a toothpick or cake tester.

The little cakes take a lot less time -- I just watch and pull them when the toothpick comes out clean.

DO NOT OVERBAKE! When the cakes are done, cool in pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely. When cool, wrap in aluminum foil and freeze.

GRANDMOTHER'S Brazil nut CAKE (NOT MY GRANDMOTHER BUT A FRIEND'S GRANDMOTHER -- WHO INSISTS THAT IT IS NOT A FRUITCAKE!

BRAZIL NUT CAKE

3 c. nuts (1 c. Brazil nuts, 2 c. pecans; leave whole)
1 lb. dates, cut up
18-oz. jar maraschino cherries (drain)

Mix together;

3/4 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 t. baking powder. Sift this mix over the above. Mix with hands.

3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 t. vanilla extract

Pour eggs over other mixture. Bake 1 hr. 30 min. in 300 degree oven. Bake in a loaf pan so only 2" thick. Grease and flour pan first. (Sprinkle with wine). (My aunt's note: Mother doubled and baked in glass baking dishes, 1 loaf pan and 1 square 8 or 9 inch pan-- this is edited, she said 12 inches square but this had to be a typo).

(I have also made this with all pecans-- 3 cups pecans and no Brazil nuts).

which it seems many people have forgotten.

Thank you, that was very helpful, I do appreciate being reminded of my memory lapses. Hopefully my Amazon password will be the last to go, that way I can just order my fruitcakes and not worry about details I can no longer remember.

I really think that preservation is the reason for the candied fruit and alcohol to start with. (Tastes pretty good also!) Refrigeration did not exist except for a cellar. If you could make a cake that would keep, you would have a dessert handy at any time.

I do keep mine in the frig, since I no longer put the alcohol on it.

Lucille it was not a slam at you or anyone but people currently are seldom taught that both sugar and salt are preservatives the way older cookbooks often explained. People then wonder why the shelf life of items without them is so short.

Maifleur my comment was made to poke fun at myself, I am forgetting stuff more than I used to. And you are of course right about the salt/sugar.

Being old/older I have forgotten about lots of stuff or it has changed. One of the sad things about how people cook today is that they believe what is written even it if is garbage. Probably a basis for a new thread but remember when recipes for cookies talked about good for two or more weeks? Not much has changed with the basics, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, flavoring but now the recommendation is only two to three days. Today they would be horrified at the thought of eating the last of the Christmas cookies that had been stored in a closed container the week before Easter or even after if you were lucky.

maifleur, that was NOT a typo - yes, it DOES call for 2 - 2 oz bottles of lemon extract. Believe me, it works!

I was hoping it was lemon juice. While it may work just no.

No fruitcake for me, but I do love the white Christmas Stolen with fruit -- more of a coffee cake. Oh, and Dundee Cake.

Dundee cake IS a fruitcake!!

white Christmas Stolen with fruit

This is exactly what my grandfather's pastry with fruit looked like, and he didn't sprinkle any juice or liquor on it. It was always served sliced so I did not realize it was a bread not a cake. I think this is what I'm going to make.

For a historical note, Fruitcake is the descendent of what were once steamed or boiled "puddings" meaning not our sense of a soft gooey dessert but a sweet course(more or less) Christmas pudding is about the only one left but it serves as it is a lot of dried fruits held together with just enough batter to make it cohere then doused with liquor after cooking. Boiled ( in a cloth) got you a damper moist crumb and steamed in a mold got you drier more cake like and of course eventually people got ovens and baked them. Not all that long ago British celebratory cakes like Wedding, Christmas and even birthday got you fruitcake. I vividly remember our astonishment in England in the 60's when my mother ordered my sister's birthday cake and it was fruitcake.

Today is Stir Up Sunday in England. Traditionally the day that Christmas Puddings are made.

"I vividly remember our astonishment in England in the 60's when my mother ordered my sister's birthday cake and it was fruitcake."

My sister's wedding cake was a traditional English fruitcake. And that was here in the US :-) Groom's cake - if any still follow that now almost forgotten tradition - was always a dark, liquor-soaked fruitcake.

The Dundee cake I remember was a white cake -- lots of almonds. Fortnum's?

Wedding cake 'to go' was fruitcake. Girls were supposed to put in under their pillows to dream of their intendeds. (Something to do with the alcohol fumes? LOL)

My Dundee is a white cake but filled with raisins and currants and some cherries and almonds (and I've never subbed anything else) -- it is a fruitcake for sure.

maifleur, I think it calls for that much lemon extract instead of rum or brandy. I doubt my Southern Baptist cousin realizes that lemon extract has about 83+% alcohol in it! It really is quite delicious - all the alcohol burns off during the baking and the lemon taste is not at all overwhelming - really rather subtle. Of course, I "baste" it after baking with brandy. I'm an Episcopalian and we're not averse to booze!

Do realize that not all Southern Baptists are teetotalers (and they dance too!) that's stereotyping.

Raye there is a difference between what people are told is the teaching of their church and what they actually do. Southern Baptist teaching states no booze or dancing among many other things some of which depend on the individual church. What each does on their own is up to each person even if it violates the teaching of their church. I can even remember when there was no hand holding and men and women needed to keep three feet from each other unless married.

Thanks Mai for proving the point that not "ALL" Southern Baptist don't drink, as you say many churches that are members of the SBC are fine with both dancing & alcohol.

speaking fo fruit cake...... have you tried making your own candied fruit? I made some pineapple and will be doing cherries next.

Love fruitcake! My mother and grandmother made fruitcake cookies every year too. Neither one can any more. Sushi I'll join you on the Alton recipe. It's my favorite!

Sorry Raye my comment was only that some members of a church, any church, do not follow the rules of the church. Your interpretation is for the convenience of the semi-religious.

Back to fruitcake. If anyone is going to make candied fruit although you can make them using several quick methods to do it so that they will not ferment or need to be maintained it takes months to make them correctly. Some of the peels can be candied for fresh use or stored in sugar for a couple of months but things like cherries and pineapple need to be soaked in sugar syrup. Taken out and allowed to dry. Then soaked several times to develop the flavors of the real fruit. It can take months for these. You can hurry drying by putting in a low oven but it will also tend to turn the fruit brown. Things like cherries and pineapple will loose their color during the process although you can use food coloring or perhaps natural dyes like beets for the red.

When candying do not forget to reduce the syrup that you use until hard crack stage then either form into small drops or break up into pieces. Leave some of the pieces larger especially with the stuff used for peels as it is good if someone has a cough or itchy throat. Also good to add to tea either iced or hot.

I know I don't have much say so but I would prefer my thread be about fruitcake and not religion. It is OK to stray and talk about cake and stollen though. And candied fruit. I already got two containers of candied fruit and have raisins and walnuts. I think I will wait a few weeks and make stollen.

Yes, Lucille, I'd like it to be about fruitcake also but it's wrong to let someone stereotype without speaking up. Stereotyping is inaccurate and is typically used to denigrate.

Mai, there are many churches that are members of the SBC that don't restrict members from alcohol and dancing, period. How do I know, because I've been a member of several SBC churches. The bottom line is don't assume that a person that goes to a Southern Baptist or any other church doesn't drink.

The Christians that I know that don't drink only do so because they have been abused by an alcoholic parent/family member. That has nothing to do with religion.

Raye, your first two sentences were sufficient for your point, The rest is not necessary and certainly not about fruitcake. Let it die.

Thanks to all that shared their fruitcake recipes and a older thread on fruitcakes. I saved them all and will be looking forward to making several for next October. Our family is quite large and we get together at my sister house that will accommodate us all. I usually buy three to four fruitcakes a year and that gets quite expensive for me. I will look forward to making them next year. Thanks for posting.

Thanks for the reminder. I see that I am remembering "Groom's Cake" going home for spinsters to tuck beneath their pillows.

I was a spinster in the mid-1960's. I would never have known, but my advanced age was a loophole allowing me to be married in my future MIL's RC church. The priest explained that this was intended to result in more RC babies -- before a woman 'aged out'. I was 23!

Raye, I think I know my first cousin, and I can promise you that she does not drink or allow alcohol in her house. No stereotyping there at all! As far as the beliefs of the church, I think this says it all. http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/1156

Of course, there may be individuals who chose to drink, but that is not the policy of the denomination.

So no booze in my cousin's fruitcake, but since I'm an Episcopalian, I already have the candied fruit soaking in brandy! And the cake will be doused from time to time with the same.

In all my years of going to SBC churches I'd never know anyone that didn't allow alcohol except for the reasons above. I grew up in a heavily Baptist area and only after moving to a different part of the country had I ever heard of "Baptist don't dance or drink" and it's usually said in a very denigrating tone.

My apologies Anglo, that just hit me wrong as I've only heard that as an insult.

alcohol is not needed to have a good fruitcake. I love Marilyn's fruitcake.

Thank you, JoAnn. I don't drink, unless you count maybe one pina colada once a year. My husband doesn't drink even that. I grew up Quaker and then Southern Baptist. As far as I know, none of them drank or danced. Not that I am opposed to what some of them do. I am sure there were some that drank in my little town, which was a Quaker settlement. My husband's uncle had a gas station and the only place in town that sold cigarettes, and they were kept out of sight, under the counter.

The reason I don't drink is not because I was ever abused by a person who drank. My parents didn't drink. I don't like the taste of it. If I have a drink that tastes pretty good....one is never enough and two is too much. I have been told it is because I don't drink enough to enjoy how it makes you feel. It makes me sleepy. Not a particularly good feeling. I used to go to the dances after the rodeo at the VFW, in the next town. I am sure my dad would have frowned on that. I never was a good dancer or had any interest in it particularly. My husband said he just don't like how alcohol tastes. So basically, it is the same reason I don't eat some food. I don't like the taste.

I made all my own candied peel and fruit for years. It was easy to do and the results were excellent. Pineapple was the most time consuming but two or maybe three days at most. I started with fresh pineapple slices. You also got a good quart of pineapple syrup when you were done, excellent addition to sweet and sour sauces or barbeque sauce. I didn't dry in the oven, I sometimes used a dehydrator but that wasn't necessary,

DGS2 came over this afternoon and mixed the fruit/nuts with the batter and got it into the pans. Fruitcakes are baked and now cooling. Thought I had some cheesecloth, but don't - will just douse with brandy tonight and wrap tightly with heavy duty foil until I get some cheese cloth tomorrow.

If you can not find cheese cloth any cloth will do just do not leave in the foil as weird things will happen to the fruitcake and the foil.

Well, went to take the cakes out of their pans late last night (yes, fully cooled). The one in the loaf pan, came out just fine. Then I tried to remove the one in the tube pan - total disaster! About 1/4 of it just fell to pieces.

I had never before made this recipe - I used to make my mother's old dark fruitcake. My mother had made my cousin's fruitcake for me for several years before she died.

I think this recipe needs more batter if one is going to bake it in anything other than loaf pans. It has a TON of fruit and nuts in it. All the "broken" stuff was really delicious, even without having "aged". If I make it again, I'll double the amount of batter.

Live and learn. I have no idea how my mother made it work. She was known for "changing" a recipe and never telling anyone that she did so when giving them her recipe. She took much to the grave with her...

When I got married for the first time in 1966, my mother and I spent the summer baking fruitcake, putting in the little boxes with our names and the wedding date gold stamped on them, and tying 150 little white satin ribbons around them with a nice bow. I still have one tucked away in a drawer somewhere as a souvenir. We didn't go to that much bother for my 2nd marriage, but it's the one that worked...

It may not be pretty and you may have already decided what to do but those broken bits are really nice topped with custard, ice cream, or just by themselves.

maifleur, I simply solved the problem by nibbling away the last two days! It's delicious! The rest is wrapped and will "age" until Christmas.

Gluttony won!