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Extra Moist Fruit Cake
1 1/2 cups margarine creamed with 3 cups dark brown sugar. Add 1 lb. each of raisins and currants, 3/4 lb. thinly sliced citron. Mix and sift 4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon each soda, baking powder and cloves, 1 tablespoon cinnamon. Add it to the creamed mixture alternately with 1/2 cup sour milk mixed with 1/2 cup molasses and 1/4 cup sour cherry juice. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites and yolks of 7 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, the whites stiff and the yolks till lemon-colored. Line a square pan with greased paper, pour in the batter, and bake 2 hours in slow oven (325 degrees). Test with toothpick. When cool, wrap in towels and put the cake away in a tin box till you want to use it.
A large, dark, molasses-heavy fruit cake of the mid-century American type, leavened partly by soda reacting with sour milk and molasses. The batter is enormous, and the pan is the one thing the original leaves vague.
- Pan size is not givenFour cups of flour, seven eggs and nearly three pounds of fruit make a very large quantity of batter, far more than a standard 8- or 9-inch square pan holds. A 10-inch square pan at least 3 inches deep, or two 9-inch squares, is the practical reading; the original does not specify, so judge by filling any pan no more than two-thirds full.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured whole milk, which is acidic and reacts with the soda. Buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in; failing that, add 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar to 1/2 cup whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks or diced tubs around the holidays and increasingly hard to find outside them. Candied orange and lemon peel substitute acceptably, though citron is milder and less perfumed.
- Sour cherry juiceThe liquid from a can or jar of sour (Morello or Montmorency) pie cherries, not sweet cherry cocktail juice. Any tart fruit juice serves the same purpose here, which is acid for the soda and a little colour.
- Slow ovenThe original helpfully gives the number: 325F. Keep to it. A hotter oven sets and browns the crust long before a cake this dense is cooked through.
- Two hours is a starting point, not a finish lineIn a single deep 10-inch pan this cake often needs 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Test with a skewer at two hours and then every 20 minutes; if the top colours too fast, lay a sheet of foil loosely over it.
- Flour the fruitToss the raisins, currants and citron with a few spoonfuls of the measured flour before they go in. Otherwise nearly three pounds of fruit sinks through this batter and settles in a solid layer at the base.
- Beaten whites, folded lastFold the yolks in first, then the whites, and stop as soon as no streaks remain. The soda and baking powder are already at work in an acidic batter, so get it into the pan promptly.
- Wrapping and keepingWrap only when completely cold, or the towels trap steam and the surface turns sticky. In a tin in a cool place the cake keeps for weeks and improves for the first two or three; there is no alcohol here to preserve it indefinitely, so check it rather than forgetting it until next Christmas.
- YieldAbout 6 to 7 pounds of finished cake, cut in thin slices; 24 to 30 servings.