Fruitcake time!....

I wrote in my personal journal last night that it was fruitcake time...then thought, "well maybe every Tuesday night is fruitcake time, given the people involved, I should rephrase that."  So, the fruitcakes, made fruitcake last night.

We started with the collection of dried and alcholic fruit.  I don't know what all the fruits are; I know there are: strawberries, cranberries (both dried and alcoholic), candied orange peal, pears, peaches, prunes, cherries, asian pears and I have no idea what all else.  I know there was another bottle of alcoholic fruit that contained orange peals.  This is not a small bowl. I think it's probably at least 24 inches across.  We don't skimp on the fruit- the batter should just fill in the small holes between the fruit pieces.

I made the first batch so it could be dairy free.  I used my non-dairy shortening and sour cream and it turned out just fine, even though I really think the Tofutee sour cream is gross with a side of ick.  I figured it would all cook up just fine. It surprised me, but the batter was tasty too.   Marian and Trudi made up two more batches with the dairy ingredients and we divvied up the fruit.
We use loaf pans, glass tupperware dishes and canning jars to cook the cakes.  You can see that it's very chunky with fruit piece.
I had to peak to get a picture of the baking fruitcakes.  The loaf pans are my non-dairy version and the glass ramakins are Trudi's.  The rest were Marian's with a combination of Trudi's donated batter (she didn't need a full batch for herself).



I wish you could smell this picture, the loaves smelled AMAZING!  I snuck a small piece of the crust and it tastes great!  I think it could be eaten as a quick bread right now and thoroughly enjoyed but we will gently spritz them with rum (Or rather I will use Rum; I don't know what the alcohol of choice will be for Trudi or Marian) every other day until Christmas.

It's a far cry from the brick hard doorstop variety that people usually associate with Fruit cake.