by Laredo » Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:42 pm
They don't call it to-kill-ya for nothing ...
Citron peel and green maraschino cherries are what make most fruitcakes inedible.
Here is a good recipe for a festival cake. It's old and works a lot like a Powerbar.
In a bowl soak a dozen dried apricots, half a dozen dried apples, two handfuls of dried cranberries and two handfuls of golden raisins in a quarter cup of good rum, warmed, for at least an hour (up to overnight).
Get six large carrots; peel and parboil, then mash (as you would potatoes) to a smooth paste, and beat in half a cup of heavy cream. Set aside. Toast a cup of flour in a dry skillet until it is the color of pecans. Grind a cup and a half of old-fashioned oats to flour and toast that similarly. Sift the toasted flours together with a teaspoon each of fresh-ground nutmeg, mace, allspice, and clove, a half-teaspoon ground cardamom and two teaspoons of fresh-ground cinnamon. Cream a stick of room-temperature butter with half a cup of honey; beat in the flours alternately with three eggs beaten with a half-teaspoon of fresh finely minced lemon zest and the juice of one lemon. Fold in the soaked fruit and mashed carrots and a cup of chopped hulled pecans. Spread in a greased floured cake pan and top with rows of pecan halves pressed into the top of the dough. Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out dry. Let cool in pan.
Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream or cool, slice and toast, then serve with the following sauce:
beat a tablespoon of good spiced rum and a half-teaspoon of vanilla extract into a 1-lb box of powdered sugar; once it is incorporated, cream in 8 oz of fat-free cream cheese.
Mopar's what my busted knuckles bleed, working on my 318s...