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Holiday Fruit Cake
1 C shortening. 1 1/4 C sugar. 14 C orange and lemon peel ½ C dried apricots 1/2 C coffee 2 C flour-1 t baking powder 1 t cinnamon 14 C sugar 4 eggs 2 C seeded raisins 1 C currants 3/4 C citron 3/4 C candied cherries 1 C candied pineapple 14 t cloves 14 t mace 14 t allspice Bake in tube pan in a slow oven one hour or more.
A dense, fruit-heavy holiday cake typical of mid-century church cookbooks, printed with the shorthand and the fraction errors that come with it. Read the ingredient list carefully before you start, because several numbers did not survive transcription intact.
- The "14" is a broken fractionEvery instance of "14" in this list is a mangled ¼ (and possibly ½ in one or two places): ¼ cup orange and lemon peel, ¼ teaspoon each cloves, mace and allspice. The sugar is the genuinely ambiguous one — ¼ cup is very little for four eggs and two cups of flour, and 1¼ or 1½ cups is more consistent with fruit cakes of this type. Decide before you cream anything.
- There is no fat in the listNo butter, shortening or oil appears. Some wartime-era and "boiled fruit" cakes genuinely omit it, relying on eggs and soaked fruit for moisture, but many fruit cakes of this style do include butter. If you want the familiar texture, you may need to add some, creamed with the sugar.
- Slow ovenRoughly 300-325°F. Fruit cake wants a long, low bake so the sugars in the candied fruit do not scorch before the centre sets. "One hour or more" is likely on the short side for a full tube pan -- start checking at about 75 minutes and be prepared for considerably longer.
- The coffeeHalf a cup of coffee is the only liquid in the list. It is presumably brewed coffee; using it to plump the chopped dried apricots is one sensible approach, since they are the driest thing in the bowl.
- CitronCandied citron peel, from a thick-rinded citrus grown mainly for the purpose. It is still sold at holiday time but is often the last thing on the shelf; candied lemon peel is the usual substitute, though it is sweeter and less resinous.
- Flour the fruitToss the raisins, currants, cherries, pineapple and peel with a few spoonfuls of the measured flour before folding them in. There is over seven cups of fruit against two cups of flour, and unfloured it tends to sink to the bottom of the tube pan.
- Lining the panGrease the tube pan and line the bottom with parchment. At this fruit ratio the cake sticks in a way a plain butter cake does not, and a two-hour bake gives the sugars plenty of time to weld to the metal.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe specifies only a tube pan; the batter is bulky, so use a large one. Wrapped well, the cake keeps and is often thought to improve over a week or two; some cooks brush it with brandy or rum while it rests.
Community and club cookbooks of this kind were often compiled from members' own recipe cards and printed much as submitted -- which is why the ingredient list here reads as private shorthand rather than instruction. A contributor who had made the cake many times did not need to be told to cream the butter or to grease the pan. Fruit cake suited a holiday section because it could be made weeks ahead: candied peel, citron, currants and raisins were preserved, shelf-stable goods, and the finished cake kept for the season.