Home › Bread and Bread Making › Chocolate Fruit Cake
Chocolate Fruit Cake
1/3 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup breakfast cocoa Yolks 3 eggs 1/2 cup cold water 1 1/4 cups bread flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup candied cherries 1/3 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces 1 1/2 tablespoons brandy 1/3 cup walnut meats, cut in pieces Whites 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla Cover fruit with brandy and let stand several hours. Mix ingredients in order given, and bake in deep cake pan fifty minutes. Cover with White Mountain Cream, and as soon as frosting is set, spread as thinly as possible with melted chocolate.
A small, well-spiced chocolate cake with brandied fruit, finished with boiled frosting and a chocolate glaze. The original gives no oven temperature and assumes you know the standard cake method, so both need filling in.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven heat and no pan size. A moderate oven, about 350F, suits a fifty-minute bake; in a deep 8-inch round or square pan test with a skewer from about 45 minutes.
- Breakfast cocoaThis is unsweetened natural cocoa, not Dutch-process and not a sweetened drink mix. Dutch cocoa can be substituted, though it gives a darker colour and a milder, less fruity flavour.
- "Mix ingredients in order given"The order is the method: cream the butter and sugar, work in the cocoa, beat in the yolks, then add the water alternately with the flour sifted with baking powder, cinnamon and salt. The brandied fruit and nuts are folded in, and the stiffly beaten whites and vanilla go last, folded gently.
- Soaking the fruitA tablespoon and a half of brandy over two-thirds of a cup of cherries and raisins is a light steeping, not a soak to saturation. Several hours is the minimum; overnight is better, and toss the fruit occasionally so all of it takes some liquid.
- Bread flourPeriod recipes distinguished bread flour from the softer pastry flour. All-purpose is a serviceable modern choice here and gives a tender crumb; if you use modern bread flour, mix only until the batter comes together.
- Flour the fruitWith just 1 1/4 cups of flour the batter is slack, and cherries and raisins will sink. Toss the drained fruit and nuts in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in.
- White Mountain CreamA boiled frosting: a hot sugar syrup, taken to about the thread-to-soft-ball stage (roughly 230-240F), beaten into stiff egg whites. The cooked syrup is what lets the frosting set firm enough to take the chocolate. Note that the whites themselves are only partly cooked by the hot syrup.
- The chocolate glazeMelt plain unsweetened or semisweet chocolate over hot, not boiling, water and let it cool slightly before spreading. Poured on too hot it will melt the frosting beneath; spread thinly, it sets to a thin shell that cracks pleasantly when cut.
- YieldBaked in a deep 8-inch pan this should give roughly 8 to 10 servings. Expect it to keep a couple of days under a cover, with the chocolate shell dulling after the first day.
Chocolate cakes lightened with beaten whites and studded with brandied fruit belong to the American "fancy cake" tradition of the turn of the twentieth century, when canned baking powder and packaged cocoa were both widely sold. Breakfast cocoa was a defined commercial grade of the period, a cocoa with a relatively high fat content sold for drinking. White Mountain Cream, the boiled frosting called for here, appears under that name in Boston cooking-school cookery of the era, where a syrup taken to a measured stage gave a more predictable result than an uncooked frosting. The thin coat of melted chocolate over set frosting is a confectioner's finish carried over into home baking.