Home › Griddle Cakes › Dark Fruit Cake
Dark Fruit Cake
2 cupfuls butter, 2 cupfuls sugar, 12 eggs, 4 cupfuls flour, 1 teaspoonful baking-powder, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 1 pound currants, 1 pound sliced citron, 3 pounds seeded raisins, 1 pound chopped figs, 1/2 cupful any kind of wine, 2 tablespoonfuls strained lemon juice, 2 teaspoonfuls cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoonful each cloves and mace, 3/4 teaspoonful each allspice and nutmeg. Sift together flour, salt, baking-powder, and spices. Dredge fruit thoroughly. Cream butter and sugar, add beaten yolks and lemon juice. Alternate flour and wine, add whipped whites, and beat for ten minutes. Stir in prepared fruit. Line loaf pans with 4 thicknesses paper; pour in batter. Bake in slow oven from three to five hours, covering pans with paper until two-thirds baked.
A full-sized Christmas fruit cake: roughly nine pounds of fruit against four cupfuls of flour, so the batter is little more than mortar holding the fruit together. Everything hinges on very low, very slow heat and generous pan insulation.
- Oven temperatureA "slow oven" in books of this era generally means somewhere around 250-300F; the lower end of that range suits a cake this dense and this long in the oven. The paper cover called for over the pans keeps the top from setting and scorching before the middle is cooked.
- Three to five hours is realThe range is not vagueness. A shallow loaf may be done at three hours, a deep one will want five. Test with a skewer in the center and look for a clean withdrawal and a cake that has stopped sizzling audibly at the edges.
- Pan liningFour thicknesses of paper means plain unwaxed paper or, today, parchment, buttered, with the outer layers acting as insulation. Cut collars that stand an inch above the rim so the paper cover can rest on them rather than on the batter.
- Dredging the fruitToss the currants, citron, figs and raisins in a few spoonfuls of the sifted flour mixture, taken from the measured amount, before folding them in. Undredged fruit sinks and sticks to the pan.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been taken out; muscat raisins of this period were sold both seeded and unseeded, and the work often fell to the cook. Modern seedless raisins need no work. Three pounds is roughly eight to nine cups.
- CitronCandied citron peel is still sold at holiday time, though mixed candied peel is now the more common supermarket offering. A pound sliced thin is a great deal of it; candied orange peel can stand in for part of it if the resinous flavor is not wanted.
- The ten-minute beatingBy hand this was a genuine labor. A stand mixer will incorporate air far faster, so the full ten minutes is not needed with modern equipment.
- WineThe recipe asks only for "any kind of wine"; sherry, Madeira or port were common choices in cakes of this type. It is added alternately with the flour and contributes moisture and keeping quality.
- Yield and keepingExpect about nine to ten pounds of finished cake, enough for two large loaves or three medium ones. Wrapped in wine-dampened cloth and stored airtight in a cool place, it improves for weeks and will keep for months.