Ummm, no thank you!
This is a common response to the offer of fruitcake. In America we think of fruitcake at Christmas time. In Canada it is often called Christmas Cake. Wikipedia tells us some of this history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitcake. In the Bahamas all the nuts and candied fruits are soaked in rum even before added to the cake. ”. Fruitcake has been the butt of jokes for many years.
I confess I like fruit cake, the thick candied citron and nut laden confection. I like it in small amounts. It does not have the texture of what we Americans call “cake. The fruitcake my Mom made had no spirits in it, she being a tee-totaler. But supposedly a fruit cake containing alcohol can last forever!
I don’t make or buy fruitcake. No one would eat it and I do not want one that lasts a lifetime. Years ago a friend of mine gave me a recipe for fruit laden banana bread.
She asked me to make this for a party she was hosting at her home. It contains oranges, maraschino cherries and chocolate chips among others. I have never added the figs which are in the original recipe. I use sliced almonds instead of slivered because I like the texture better. This is more of a fruit bread instead of fruit cake.
This is my version:
½ cup butter, 1 cup granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teas vanilla, 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, pinch salt, 1 cup mashed bananas (3 bananas), 1 can (11 oz.) mandarin orange segments, drained; 1 package (6 oz) chocolate pieces, 1 cup shredded coconut, ½ cup sliced almonds, ½ cup chopped maraschino cherries.
Drain, dry a bit, and chop the cherries. Drain the mandarin orange segments. Mash the bananas. Sift or whisk the dry ingredients together. Then it goes together pretty much the regular way: cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, add bananas alternating with the flour mixture. Then stir in the fruit, nuts, chocolate chips and coconut.
Bake in two 8×4 inch loaf pans at 350 F for 1 to 1 ¼ hours.
I baked this batch in mini loaf pans and it made 4 nice sized mini loaves. These took 40 minutes to bake. If desired one could drizzle with a glaze or dust with powdered sugar.
I choose to go with the Never Fail Fudge adding my own touches:
Several oranges were consumed over the course of a few weeks. I dutifully scraped the white pith from the peels. I find a spoon is the best tool as a paring knife will cut through the peel instead of just scraping and of course it will also cut the finger tips if not careful.
The improvement that the blogger made in adding the “pudding” to the beaten butter could be done to the Chocolate Velvet and would have made it less pudding like and creamier. So it should be possible to make this buttercream with water and cornstarch if need be. The frosting I made today is with soy milk for the lactose intolerant of my family members.
In preparation to make the “old fashioned” cake from the Betty Crocker booklet, I need to make my own cake flour. Every once and a while I will buy this stuff, but rarely, and I do not have any on hand at the moment. This is easy to do. Replace two tablespoons of each cup of flour with cornstarch. Sift thoroughly. This particular cake recipe makes it easy. Just replace the ¼ cup with cornstarch and use two cups of regular all-purpose flour. Pretty handy dandy, I’d say.
This is my driving foot so I am housebound and dependent on others to get out of the house. I am very blessed to have the world’s best hubby to watch over and take care of me. However I am not used to relying on others and this is an ongoing life lesson for me.
Place back in fridge and wait for dinner time. I will cook these in my 10 inch cast iron skillet. The rest of dinner will be baked sweet potatoes, and green beans.
mykitchenmythoughts 