The New JustMichelle

Cooking.com is no more. And it had all these great recipes. Including this fruitcake recipe that people ask me to make again.

YEAH, FRUITCAKE. Apparently when you don’t use candied cherries and cement in your fruitcake, people like it!

So, I’m totally reprinting it here, copyright be darned. The Recipe is by James McNair’s Cakes. James McNair’s Cakes is a book. By James McNair.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon:  LINK TO IT  I mean, it’s out of print.  If you find it for sale somewhere, let me know.  I WANT IT.

Note:  This is a different James McNair than the James McNair that shows up when you just google James McNair.  

Winter Fruitcake

From James McNair’s Cakes, filter through my pirate accent filter of which I just made up and is not a real thing.

• Be getting 4 cups of dried fruit from yer local purveyor of dried fruits.  Be mixin’ it up with apricots, cherries, citron, date or tasty pineapple!
• Grab a couple cups of sunny raisins
• And some dried currents or dem cranberries, yar 2 cups
• Ye best be gettin’ some crystallized ginger, all chopped up like, around 1/2 cup
• To stave the scurvy, get a good juicy orange and a couple lemons to get 1/2 cup orange juice, and 1/4 cup lemon juice, and a couple tablespoons of zest from each  ZESTY!
• Find ye a vaniller bean tree and soak a beak in alcohol for a bit, or just scavenge some extract from a store, you just need a teaspoon, really
• Do the same with almonds, also a teaspoon
• You’ll be needing a good bottle of rum, drink all but one cup (that’s for the cake)
• Grind up some flour, about 2-1/2 cups
• Send yer first mate to the store for baking powder, about 2 teaspoons
• Swipe the baking soda from yer fridge, but only 1/2 teaspoon
• Evaporate your favorite sea water until ye have 1 teaspoon of salt
• Instead of sinkin’ that spice ship, steal its contents, you’ll need:
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• Land yer ship and make friends with the local milk maid, getting 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature, before ye break ‘er heart and sail away
• Visit the plantations and pick up:
  • 1 1/2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar, and 
  • 1/2 cup light molasses
• Row your boat to shore in the dim of thir night and escape with 5 eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
• Collect a fee of nuts from your crew, or just buy 4 cups coarsely chopped mixed nuts such as hazelnuts (filberts), pecans and walnuts
• You’ll be needing more rum, for the voyage.

YARRRR!  Fruitcake be keeping the scurvy at bay, ye scurvy dog!

Using yer cutlass, chop up them dried fruits.  In yer bowl, combine all the dried fruit, juices, that cup of rum and ZEST!  Cover and hide it from yer crew for a couple days.  Rock the ship regularly or stir thar bowl.  You can cut off the hands of fruit thieves, but don’t be getting the blood in the fruit bowl.  That be gross.

Find ye another bowl and sift yer dry ingredients, thar flour, thar baking powder and soda, thar spices.  Put it some wheres safe.

In a tird bowl, cream yer butter until fluffy.  Add yer sugar and cream some more.  Beat in yer eggs and molasses.  Keep mixing until it be smooth and yummy.  Fold in that fruit mixture, rum and all (surry, can’t drink it)

Grab yer dry ingredients and slowly add them, folding them in until they be no longer dry.

Spread yer butter on two loaf pans and line er flour them good.  Fill thar pans with even amounts of batter.   Bake in a low oven.  Or a regular height oven.  At 275°  Fer two hours, or until ye can skewer them with yer wooden leg and have it come out clean.

Fruitcake will keep on long voyages, ifn ye poke holes in thar tops and drizzle warm rum over dem.  Be wrapping them tight in plastic wrap for up to a couple weeks.  Ifn ye need them fer an ocean voyage, soak cheesecloth in rum and wrap ’em in that before tightly packing in plastic and seal ‘er up.  Be adding some more rum every few months.

Make thar fruitcake in advance, more time in rum makes more tasty cakes.