Beginner's fruit and nut cake
Cakes
One of my goals is to get fruitcake to rank right up with flourless chocolate cake on the list of everyone's favorite desserts. Well, may not that high on the list, but it certainly should crack the Top Ten. I'm one of the few people in the world who actually likes fruitcake. I remember being a young girl and having it all to myself because, in our household of seven, no one else would touch it, even my German dad, who'd eat raw hamburger and onion sandwiches! Decades ago, in an effort to make fruitcake more inviting to the non-believers around me, I started tinkering with Julia Child's recipe. I found that most people objected to the way the combination of bitter-ish fruit and the taste of raw alcohol in commercial cakes. After tweaking the recipe for a few more holidays, I found a combination that my sons and their kids actually like. (It helps a lot to let the kids taste the cool neon-colored cherries as you're preparing the fruit.) I stuck the word "beginner" in the title for two reasons: it's easy enough for a non-baker to be a success, and it makes a good first impression on kids. Fruitcake connoisseurs should feel free to add grated fresh or candied or dried ginger, cloves, nutmeg, mace and/or allspice to the batter, and/or macerate the fruit in a cup of dark rum or bourbon in place of the juice. The cakes can be served as is warm from the oven, but I like them better when the flavors have mellowed somewhat a day or two after baking. I've never had a fruitcake that lasted longer than a month, so I'm not sure how much longer than that these cakes can be stored, but I bet they won't be around long enough to be used as door stops. I keep score and in 2010, I gave out 17 copies of this recipe. Not quite enough to knock flourless chocolate cake off the list, but I'm getting there. . .
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