Fruitcake

photo by NorthwestGal

- Ready In:
- 2hrs 45mins
- Ingredients:
- 16
- Yields:
-
8 mini cakes
ingredients
- 2 cups butter
- 8 eggs
- 5 cups flour
- 1⁄2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1⁄2 teaspoon mace
- 1⁄2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 1⁄2 lbs light raisins
- 4 lbs mixed candied fruit (cherries, pineapple, etc)
- 4 cups pecans
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1⁄2 cup honey
- 1⁄2 cup brandy, plus extra for basting
directions
- Combine fruit, raisins and pecans in a bowl.
- Stir in 1 cup flour.
- Cream butter, sugar, spices and eggs until light.
- Combine remaining flour, salt and baking powder.
- Combine honey, vanilla, almond extract and brandy; blend well.
- Alternately add flour mixture and honey mixture to the butter mixture, beating well after each addition.
- Stir in fruit-nut mixture.
- Spoon into pans-batter should be too stiff to pour.
- Bake at 250º for two hours, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- While still hot, spoon 2 tablespoons of brandy over each cake.
- When cool, cover with foil; let stand in cool place for at least two weeks; every 3 days pour one tablespoon brandy over each.
Questions & Replies

Got a question?
Share it with the community!
Reviews
-
My mother, who has a life-long hated of fruitcake, begs me to make this for her. I use chopped crystallized ginger in with the mixed fruit, replacing usually about a quarter of the fruit. I add significantly more spices, including cloves and allspice. Rather than honey, I use molasses. As you can imagine from my substitutions, this is almost a gingerbread- fruit cake hybrid… delicious.
-
Definitely a 5-star fruitcake. I made 2 adjustments though. I added only half of the mix fruit and half of the pecans (the 4 lbs and 4 cups respectively just seemed too much, so I reduced both by half). Even so, I ended up with quite a large bundt and had more batter, so I made a smaller 5x8 loaf. We sampled the smaller loaf immediately, and it was fabulous (I'm saving the bundt to "feed" additional brandy until Christmas). I really like my standard fruitcake recipe, but I think this one is much better, and I will make this every Christmas from now on. Thank you for sharing your recipe, CCLady.
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
CCLady
San Diego, California