Christmas

[tenngun]

Any one making fruit cake,plumb pudding,twelfth night cake?

 

[sidelock]

My wife makes them. She allows no men in her kitchen. :haha: Except to mix drinks.

 

[satx78247]

YEP. = I'll make at least 2 of our family's traditional fruitcakes & I'll also make at least one mincemeat cake (for my daughter's house party), too.

Note: Mississippi-style fruitcake is usually sliced into 3-4 (

 

[tenngun]

I had my first slice of mine tonight, made last march irish whisky soak one a month for a ten mo

 

[bender20]

Where does the tradition of the fruit cake come from? My family is hardcore pa Dutch and we always have it. Personally I can't stand the stuff.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Romans...
But Germans had a love for Früchtebrot or Stollen.

https://translate.google.com/trans...kipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%BCchtebrot&prev=search
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen

 

[Black Hand]

If given a choice, Stollen with Marzipan would be my first choice. But a friend has a buddy that makes excellent Fruitcake, so it could be a difficult choice.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

A couple of things. First a fruit-bread, fresh, with dried fruits is pretty tasty. Germanic ones especially. Sometimes it was a boiled pudding eaten on the day it was made (aka "figgy pudding"? ), not a cake, and one would reconstitute the raisins and other fruits using port wine or sweet sherry. Made for a real treat.

What happened was the British Postal System in the 19th century, got efficient enough for folks to be able to ship fruit cake to any part of the British Empire, and it was a world wide empire. (Keep in mind our "Christmas" is a "Victorian Christmas" which in part took stuff from the Germans via Prince Albert introducing them to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria :wink: ) Anyway, to keep the cake moist and not moldy as it went by ship to places like India and Australia, it was drowned in high proof rum instead of port wine/sherry, and then sealed in a tin.

The second bit is that dried fruit, especially something citrus, eaten at Christmas, New Year's Day, and on Easter Morning (most folks today don't know about Easter and fruitcake), was a good idea as it gave the consumer a dose of probably very needed Vitamin C. Especially at Easter following the Lenten fast.

Now they didn't know about Vitamin C until the 20th century, but they did understand cause-and-effect relationships to a point. So drink lime juice in your rum and water if one is a sailor = no scurvy, and eat dried citrus at times during the winter months, = better health (because malnutrition was held at bay). What they missed though was most of the far flung outposts of The British Empire were in high summer, and a dose of citrus wasn't needed as Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere comes in Summertime. :shocked2: AH but the British love their traditions, so they'd bake, drown, tin, and ship fruitcakes in July for delivery in December, and good luck with good health was the sentiment.

And that horrid stuff was the result..... :barf:

LD

 

[tenngun]

It is an acquired taste,in the only one in my immediate family that likes it. My folks lived it and my brothers didn't. Just means there is more for me. I love a hunters pudding also thinking about making a twelve night this year.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I come from a PA Dutch family and my mother always made a dessert type bread with dates and walnuts that was served with cream cheese. The fruit cakes made famous by Claxton GA, were the thing folks joked about and intentionally regifted back to the donor. However, a lady in Florida introduced me to fried fruit cake. A slice of fruit cake, butted and then fried in a skillet until it's starts to brown, flipped over and when browned on both sides eat and enjoy. Huge improvement. Up around Penn State, restaurants do a similar thing with stale sticky buns, called fried stickies.

Never had a real plum pudding until I got out of grad school and worked in a DC Firm. One of the long time clients was a Jamaican lady. Sweet as can be and incredibly classy. Every December she would show up with a large (about 10 pound) plum pudding. It had been saturated in rum over a few months by opening the container and pouring a shot of rum over the pudding once a week for months. One slice of plum pudding would put you over the DUI limit. It was extremely good, but when I got a recipe, simply not worth the hassle.

There is another very old traditional holiday thing in these parts which has almost died out. Potato candy. Tastes like fudge, a bit but not quite like Marzipan. Take a large table spoon of mashed potato and start adding confectioner's sugar a little at a time. It will immediately get very runny and slowly thicken as more doses of powdered sugar are added. Eventually it will get rather stiff like the sugar cookie dough folks roll out to cut Christmas cookies. .. Roll it out on a surface that has powdered sugar sprinkled on it and coat the rolling pin in powdered sugar so the mix doesn't stick. When it is rolled out to about 3/16th thick, spread it with peanut butter and roll it up into a long cylinder and put it in the fridge for a few hours to "set" When it has stiffened up, take it out and cut the cylinder cross wise into discs with pin wheels of peanut butter in them. Arrange on a plate and serve. My Mrs is a Southern girl and the thought of candy made from potatoes is a turn off. I don't eat fudge, but I can eat some potato candy.

 

[coloradoclyde]

:hmm: .....Batter dipped and deep fried fruit cake.... :haha:

 

[Black Hand]

:hmm: .....Batter dipped and deep fried fruit cake.... :haha:

If it works for candy bars, fish, sausages and pizza - why not fruit cake too?

 

[Nativearizonan]

A couple of things. First a fruit-bread, fresh, with dried fruits is pretty tasty. Germanic ones especially. Sometimes it was a boiled pudding eaten on the day it was made (aka "figgy pudding"? ), not a cake, and one would reconstitute the raisins and other fruits using port wine or sweet sherry. Made for a real treat.

What happened was the British Postal System in the 19th century, got efficient enough for folks to be able to ship fruit cake to any part of the British Empire, and it was a world wide empire. (Keep in mind our "Christmas" is a "Victorian Christmas" which in part took stuff from the Germans via Prince Albert introducing them to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria :wink: ) Anyway, to keep the cake moist and not moldy as it went by ship to places like India and Australia, it was drowned in high proof rum instead of port wine/sherry, and then sealed in a tin.

The second bit is that dried fruit, especially something citrus, eaten at Christmas, New Year's Day, and on Easter Morning (most folks today don't know about Easter and fruitcake), was a good idea as it gave the consumer a dose of probably very needed Vitamin C. Especially at Easter following the Lenten fast.

Now they didn't know about Vitamin C until the 20th century, but they did understand cause-and-effect relationships to a point. So drink lime juice in your rum and water if one is a sailor = no scurvy, and eat dried citrus at times during the winter months, = better health (because malnutrition was held at bay). What they missed though was most of the far flung outposts of The British Empire were in high summer, and a dose of citrus wasn't needed as Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere comes in Summertime. :shocked2: AH but the British love their traditions, so they'd bake, drown, tin, and ship fruitcakes in July for delivery in December, and good luck with good health was the sentiment.

And that horrid stuff was the result..... :barf:

LD

I think some of that 19th century fruit cake is still being re-gifted. :barf: :td:

After all, why eat a perfectly good re-gift.