T Stands for Tuesday & Christmas Fruitcake Baking

        Another week is upon us, which also brings us to T Stands for Tuesday. Link in my sidebar will take you to our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Only posting requirement is to share a drink related photo. 

        As you may have realized by now I have not been linking to the T forum but still visiting, do to worries about the security of the link up gadget-a friend and I had issues during a week's time at different link up blogs-but I thought I would post this week just so you know-if interested-where I am blogging now.

    Yes as you have noticed I am back to posting on my Hummingbird Blog. In the end I did not care for the format on the newer version of the Blogger blogs, so I just deleted it over the weekend. It was more cumbersome to edit, or for the reader to visit an older post, and I didn't care for the look of it either.

      We have had some pretty days, a little rain and lots of wind and whitecaps on the lake a couple days.  On the nice days we have had help for the dock update-which involves allot of hard labor. On those days I make a meal to share with our workers. The weather looks good again this coming week so hoping more progress can be made.

   I have shared the site nuts.com before, it's my go to place for very high quality nuts, dried fruits, nut milks, and lots more along with quality glazed fruits for fruitcake baking.  I know many in the States especially don't make this much anymore, many don't like it either. It is loaded with carbs and sugars but if  made from scratch using a good recipe-it's really really good, and for us it's a holiday treat. I have been baking this cake since I was in my early 20s on my own, and we made fruitcake when I was a kid helping Mom in the kitchen.

   I have not baked this in a couple years, now that we are more settled into our lake home I went to nuts.com and ordered what I needed. The quality is so much better, and the two local grocery stores near me now don't even have the fruits available. I usually try to bake these cakes late October and before mid November, so they will have at least a month to age a bit. Baked and aged properly I have had them still good 3 years later. I hide it so Hubs doesn't overdo the sugars. 😀

  The recipe I use in an English Dark Fruitcake-just enough cake to hold it together.

  This is the book my Mom had,  when I left on my own I purchased a copy Most of these recipes are 1700's and 1800's

All Photos will enlarge-just click on them

  

This is the fruits and raisins with 1/2 cup of brandy that will sit and soak for 24 hours 

Aren't these golden raisins beautiful-large and plump

The following morning I add in the nuts, mix up the cake batter, mix with the fruits and nuts

     This is one of my handmade pottery bowls that I love to use in the kitchen

We found these perfect pans at a garage sale many years ago

 

  Cakes turned out of the pans (parchment paper on the bottom of pans) Once cooled I flip them over-let rest overnite, then cut each cake into 4 pieces, wrap in cheesecloth that was soaked in brandy-store in airtight container

   This recipe is a 3 day process from start to finish.  I just got another bowl of fruits ready for tomorrow that  I will bake up a gluten free version. And then I will bake up one more batch with the regular flour  Enough cakes for sharing, and for a couple years. I used to give a whole batch to Larry's father-he loved my fruitcake-better than store bought he would say.

   I am up to the hand sewing of the binding on the second gift quilt-I am working to get this finished and in the mail before week's end.

  A pretty sunrise a couple mornings ago

  When I am at the Wal Mart food shopping I usually take a look at their markdown area. There was just one of these boxes of teas-it was just for me-I love the brand, and this was decaf green tea and lemon-perfect

Happy T and new week everyone! Oh and if interested I just posted my homemade kahlua recipe in my next post here