Cream until light and fluffy:1 lb shortening -
Beat in, little by little:1
lb brown sugar -
Stir in: 1
cup molasses, 12 egg yolks, well beaten -
Sift together
- 3 cups all purpose flour, 4 tsp cinnamon, 4 tsp allspice, 1.5 tsp mace,
2 tsp nutmeg and Add to first mixture [note: I tend to be heavy handed with
measuring the spices, using heaping meaures. Also, I don't usually have
mace around and use fresh ground nutmeg for both]
Mix: 1/3 cup
flour, ** 3 lbs seeded raisins, cut in pieces, 2 lbs sultana raisins, 1.5
candied citron, sliced thin and cut in strips, 1 lb currants, 1/4 cup chopped
preserved lemon rind, 1/2 cup chopped preserved orange rind
Add to the batter
Add: 1 cup
brandy, 4 oz chocolate melted
Fold in: 12
egg whites, beaten stiff
Just before putting the batter in the pans,
add: 1/4 tsp
baking soda, dissolved in 1 TB hot water
Fill the pans and cover the tops closely with aluminum
foil. Set the oven at 250F. On the oven bottom place several shallow pans
filled with hot water to a depth of one inch. Set the pans of fruitcake
on the shelf above. Bake 3 hours, remove the pans of water and remove the
foil from the cakes. Bake 1.5 hours to dry out the cakes.
There's a note on the original recipe "If
your oven is too small to bake four large loaves at once, add half the soda
to half the batter and bake two. Then add the remaining soda to the remaining
batter and bake the remaining two loaves.
It's best to line your pans with parchment paper,
and to turn on the oven partway through the mixing process so that you can
start baking immediately.
This is a large process. The good news is that
it makes a LOT of fruitcake and fruitcake, by nature keeps very well.
Every year when I make the fruitcake I get two
chuckles. The first when I fold in the large pan of beaten egg whites into
the large mass of fruit ** The next when I add the soda and water to this
HUGE amount of fruit and batter. To mix all this stuff I use the bottom
of my rectangular turkey roasting pan AND my 16" X 5" stainless
mixing bowl AND a few other bowls along the way.
** HOW MUCH FRUIT DID YOU USE???
In the past I have put in between 114 and 152 oz
of different fruits in the cakes. This year, on Nov 14 1999 I added 178
oz:
3 lbs raisins
30 oz golden raisins
20 oz currants
4 lbs "fruitcake mix"
1 lb lemon and orange peel and citron
HOW MUCH FRUITCAKE DID THIS MAKE???
7 large loaf pans and 4 small loaf
pans
And you EAT ALL THIS?
Yes! | 
