Used to like light.

I much prefer gum drop cake.  :)

My church was using them as a fundraiser one year.  We had so much stock they eventually became "Easter Cakes".  It was awful!

 

 

Mmm... fruitcake! Light or dark - either is fine by me. 

I will eat most, but prefer light without nuts and minimal raisens.

Love fruit cake ... wth lots of fruit and nuts, but my kids wont eat it!

Stollen does it for me

I love real, genuine, natural fruitcake.

The kind you can't buy in the stores.

I start with all natural, dried fruit: raisins, currants, apricots, dates, Montmorency cherries. Since this fruit contains no artificial colours, it's all black blobs. (Not the pretty red greens and yellows of artificially coloured fruit.)

I mix up a cake batter of real butter, sugar, fresh eggs, vanilla, flour, and a huge splash of Crown Royal whiskey. Bake at a low temperature for about 2 hours. Take out of oven and stand over cake to breathe in the marvellous smell of browned, baked butter. Pour another generous splask of whiskey over hot cake.

Refrigerate cake, and then pour over a bit of whiskey every few days. The idea is to infuse the cake with whiskey, so the dried fruit plumps up with it. About a week after baking, you have a delicious, moist, melt-in-your-mouth cake full of flavour and spirit.

And it's not beautiful - all nature dried fruit is just black blobs, so it looks very plain.

But the quality is far superior to anything you can buy in a store.

I don't think I've ever had store bought fruitcake.

It is not good, Chemgal, imo.

I believe it.  I've seen it in stores, and it doesn't look too appealling!

 

Mmmm... stollen!

 

i think that in most civilized countries it is legal to use a store bought fruitcake in self defense no matter the circumstances *waggles eyebrows*

I love really good rich fruit cake.

I didn't make one this year, but, when I do it has :  figs, dates, golden & dark raisins, currants, varios types of nuts, which is soaked for 3 days in booze.prior to baking.....and is held together with a bit of batter which has molasses in it.   After baking it is again treated to good brandy being placed on it.....and then it is wrapped and left to mellow for a month or two...or a year or two. 

 

It is beautifully dark and moist and yummy......and weighs a ton

 

I'm sad that I discovered it as an adult...so much non-Stollen time gone forever...

 

When my sweetie & I buy it, the lucky loaf gets very much love and is very lucky if it lasts more than 24 hours...

Pinga sounds yummy

No fruitcake for me this year . . . but that's okay - I don't mind it, but it isn't my favorite.  I prefer the light fruitcake.

 

I can vividly remember a Christmas when I was young (maybe 7 or 8), and I think my mom had something wrong with her elbow.  Our next door neighbour came over to help my mom stir the batter.  My mom had mixed it up in her turkey roaster.  I remember standing in the middle of our kitchen with the roaster on a stool and our neighbour stirring, and then giving us (my sis and I) each a turn, and as we stirrred it we were to make a wish.  I can't remember what I wished for, but I remember wishing :).  My mom made very good fruitcake.

 

 

 

I was lucky - even though my family is not German, it was a Christmas morning breakfast tradition in my household when I was growing up (and it is one that I will continue to keep in perpetuity). Cut a nice thick slice of it, slather it with butter and you've got yourself an excellent breakfast (especially if you add the mandarin orange from your stocking as a side dish).

No fruitcake this year. We don't make it and no one else in the family brought it to Christmas dinner. It is not a big loss. My mother used to make wonderful Christmas cake (Beloved's comment about mixing it in the turkey roaster sounds familiar, though I think Mom used some other large pot) and I have never found another one that I like as much.

 

Mendalla

 

I LOVE FRUITCAKE!  That fact is important enough to be shouted.  My health was such that I couldn't make any this year - but a friend gave me some.  

 

I missed making it as it has been part of my preparations for Christmas since I left home.  You don't need to know how long ago that was!

I love fruit cake! Light with almond paste and then royal icing is my favourite, but I also like dark and uniced and homemade and storebought.

And I have never made it.

My grandmother used to, same recipe she used for our wedding cakes!

I have the recipe and one year I will attempt it.

No thanks to fruitcake for me. I have never developed a taste for it. We had panatella this Christmas, as a snack during the day- which is more like stollen, but Italian not German. It was store bought, though. The star shaped kind. Not as good as homemade or bakery fresh, but still pretty good! Actually it was a gift to my parents- it may have been fresh. It was not dry at all! Yummy.

Come to think of it, there was fruitcake out with other goodies, Christmas eve, at the other house we were at, but I didn't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if the leftovers go back in the freezer until next year! I don't think there are many fans in my family, except maybe one. Well, maybe someone else ate it all this time. There 15 were people there, a bigger group than usual, and I didn't notice if anyone ate it this time. Some people really like it (hard to believe, but this thread is proof that fruitcake lovers actually exist ;) ). I like mince tarts, but not the fruit pieces in fruit cake. Don't know why. I can taste the red dye in the red pieces. That's part of it.

Good dark fruitcake doesn't have anything with red dye in it.

The ones I usually see, must be lighter ones, do. Usually store bought. Can't recall if I have ever noticed light or dark varieties. If someone offered me a piece of home baked, I'd try it. Don't know for sure if I have ever had homemade. I think it's always store bought in my family, although other things are homemade. My mom always puts out the same kind, darkish, with red and green candied fruit bits and white icing. Marzipan icing, I think, not sure. She doesn't bake it, but buys it from the same place. Most years nobody seems to care for it except her (and that's ok, she's allowed to enjoy it), it's the last thing left, but it looks nice on the platter. ;) I have had homemade plum pudding. That's kind of like extra moist fruitcake. I don't mind it. My favourite Christmas desserts are mince pie and tarts, buttertarts, shortbread (mom's and grandma's, same recipe, I can't get it right, so fluffy), and these awesome chocolate mint Nanaimo bars my mom makes. I don't bake much, I must admit. I buy from Whole Foods bakery. I ate too many sweets and rich foods of many varieties this year. For a few weeks running, there were goodies, cookies, chocolate, almond rocca (another weakness), nuts, everywhere I went, it seemed like- so I wasn't in anyway suffering without fruitcake! All my pants are angry with me. :)

Oop! Happy New Year! My husband's working. I'm here alone and the neighbourhood just erupted in cheers! I'll go out on the balcony and whooohoo!

I just made a video of the happy sounds to share but I can't paste it here :(

That was cool though! I shouted happy new year and several people somewhere out there, shouted it back! K, that was my new years eve party. And hubby called. All I needed. I'm done partying. :)

 

You have to post it on Youtube (or other video hosting service) and embed it, I think.

 

Mendalla

 

The one on the right is the type I like, no frosting, no nuts.  I have bought it before too (Grandmas Traditional Fruitcake).  It's almost as good as my Grandma's (which my sister now makes).

 

I've never done it, and I'll probably just leave it up to my sister unless she asks me to step in.  In that case, buying just might be easier!  lol

 

Yeah, the one on the left looks familiar, except without frosting. There are little red and green bits in it too!

And I have had the lighter one too, somewhere. Usually the dark one.

Kimmio, it's a different style than what others were talking about though.  I've had homemade cake of that style too.  It's pretty good, but my favourite is the light one like the picture.

Good photo, chemgal! Thanks. That clears things up!

Okay. Don't remember if I've had it. It wouldn't likely be the first thing to tempt me. :)

chemgal, actually my dark christmas cake is unlike the one on the left.  Unsure if i can find an image of it, will try.

Yeah. Thanks. I figured that out. Don't really want to post it on you tube. It's crappy video, but the cheering is good!

Yeah, like I said, there's 2 very different styles.  The picture shows one style, in both light and dark.  I've only had homemade cake of the other style.

My mother's was a dark one when you could actually see the cake in between the nuts and fruit (that cake was loaded). She actually had to make two types. Her brother was allergic to nuts so she made a small batch without nuts for him and a larger batch with nuts for everyone else.

 

Mendalla