Fruit cakes and Farriery

[altivo]

Actually, farriery first. John was here today and did everyone's manicure for us. No problems found, yay! Tess was on her very best behavior, too. I never would have believed that she could be so well behaved and cooperative, but she is now. It seems that our really big mistake was tying her. If I stand and hold her lead, she's a perfect lady. The worst she does is lick and nibble at my shirt pockets. No kicking, no pulling her feet away, no leaning on John. Of course this means she gets done in record time, which even she must appreciate.

A discussion on shadow_stallion's journal got into the topic of fruitcakes. Yes, I know, it's fashionable to hate them, but I happen to really like home made ones. Ultimately I promised to share my mother's and grandmother's recipes, neither of which bears any resemblance to the commercially produced and marketed "sticky bricks" that are so often sold or given as gifts in the US.


Gale’s Dark Fruit Cake

3 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. shortening (butter or margarine)
1 c. dark Karo corn syrup
l/2 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 lb. dark raisins
1 lb. mixed candied fruit
1/2 lb. chopped dates
1/4 lb. chopped nuts

Sift together 2 c. of the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Cream sugar with shortening, beat in milk, syrup, and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients. In separate bowl mix remaining 1 c. flour with fruit and nuts. When fruit is well coated with flour, stir into batter. Spread in greased and floured bread pans, and bake at 275°F. for about two hours or until done.
Cool before slicing, or wrap in cheesecloth soaked in brandy, rum, or fruit juice and store in a cool place for a week or two before serving.

Grace’s White fruit Cake

1 lb. butter [don’t use margarine, it isn’t the same]
2 c. white sugar
10 eggs [!]
1 jar candied fruit pieces
1/2 lb. white raisins
1/2 lb. chopped dates
1/2 lb. chopped nuts
4 c. flour
1/3 c. fruit juice (pineapple or orange is good)

Cream butter with sugar (butter may be reduced to 3/4 lb. if desired, but the flavor isn’t as rich.) Beat in the eggs, one at a time. In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients and toss thoroughly to coat the fruit. Blend into the egg and shortening batter and divide into greased and floured pans. Small bread pans work well. Bake at 275°F. for three hours (or until done.) Cool on rack before slicing.

Comments

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*copies the recipes* Thanks again! Mmm, I think the only thing I probably won't be able to get is the corn syrup, but I think I can probably substitute Grafschafter Goldsaft or so for that - it's a dark sugar syrup made from sugar beets, so it should work as well. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Golden syrup might actually be better than the corn syrup. It's difficult to get golden syrup here. As you no doubt know, the US is subject to deficiencies like that, driven by both attitudes and ignorance.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* I wasn't really aware of that, actually. At least one friend of mine always insists that you can get everything that's sold or used anywhere in the world in the USA as well (food-wise, anyway); I never believed that myself, but it's difficult for me to say what you can and can't get in the USA or whether it's generally easier or more difficult to get uncommon foodstuffs there than it is elsewhere. When I visited Virginia in spring last year, I found that the supermarkets I saw (Target and Ukrop's) were pretty similar to the ones over here (the ones I've been to, anyway), generally speaking; some things are available in more varieties than here (carbonated drinks, for example), whilst others were more limited than what I'm used to (yoghurt, for example).

I suppose that in the end, it's just the same as with any other country - what you can get and how easy it is to do so just differs, and to varying extents for that matter. :) Sometimes, some things are easier to get, and others are more difficult or even impossible to get, but neither selection is going to be a strict superset of the other.

Anyhow... I'll let you know how it'll work out with the beet syrup. ^.^

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I don't really consider Target to be a grocery store. In years past they were not really in the food business but I guess with the advent of Walmart, Target stepped up and modified their business to add groceries as well. Now mind you, they are a nice store and have a rather good selection of things but they are not my first choice for food shopping.

Food product availability is even different state to state. We have two products, hot dogs and sausage, that we have to have shipped in from Tennessee because you simply cannot buy them in Texas.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I should have clarified that and stated that they are two specific brands we cannot buy here.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* Yeah, I shouldn't have included Target there; now that you mention it; I do recall that they only had a relatively small food section.

And sausages aren't available in Texas? o.o That's weird - I always thought that many German people settled in Texas (to the point where Texas German is still an existing variant of German spoken natively by some people, although it'll probably die out soonish), so I would've expected things like sausages to be available there. Or do you just mean a specific kind/brand of sausage that isn't being sold in Texas?

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

A specific brand. I forgot to mention that in my comment.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK then. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The US is large and marketing is regional. Items you can easily get on the east coast may be unavailable on the west coast. The midwest is notorious for a lack of more "exotic" products and a tendency on the part of retailers to stick with "tried and true" brand names and choices.

For instance, when we first moved to our farm nine years ago, the local grocery store never had eggplant, ginger root, artichokes, or coconuts. They carry many brands without stocking the full selection of flavors or varieties in that brand. Just one example was Tennessee Pride brand sausage, which comes in mild, hot, and sage flavors at the very least. They only stocked the mild because some manager believed that local people never ate anything spicy. There were no eggplants because the produce manager didn't like them so he figured no one else did either.

On a larger scale, golden syrup, which is usually made from sugar cane here, is very hard to get. The reason is simple. The US is probably the largest producer of corn (maize) in the world. Corn syrup is one of the major products made from that corn. So corn syrup is half the price of cane syrup, and is the only thing available except in tiny regional pockets where a tradition of using cane sugar and syrup has survived. Even refined sugar, which used to be largely from cane when I was a kid, is now from sugar beets for the most part. This is political. Sugar beets are in fact grown in the US in quantity, and that has something to do with it; but cane is also grown along the Gulf Coast. The problem is that much of the cane sugar in the US was coming from Cuba and other Caribbean islands with administrations in political opposition to the US government. Consequently, it just stopped being imported. The largest consumers of cane sugar were the soft drink industries, and they all switched to corn sweetening. It doesn't taste the same, but two generations later people have forgotten the difference.

The real scary thing about this is that there is now an epidemic increase in diabetes in the US, and some evidence to suggest that overconsumption of corn sugars is a factor. They are chemically different from the more traditional cane and maple sugars, and have a different impact on the liver and pancreas.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Heh. Oddly enough the brand of sausage we have to have shipped in here is Tennessee Pride. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

As you know, I'm not a big meat eater. However, Gary still is. I also have a very specific use for Tennessee Pride "Hot". It goes in my famous turkey stuffing at Thanksgiving and Christmas, along with dried apricots, fresh sage, bread, and butter. We were having to "import" the stuff from Chicago, where it is readily available.

However, about two years ago the local grocery store, which has been in Marengo for something like 70 years, opened new branches in Woodstock and in Huntley. Suddenly their buying and stocking practices changed. Now we can get eggplants and ginger root there, and Tennessee Pride sausage in all three versions. However, some other things they used to stock that we liked have disappeared. You can't win.

I like grocery shopping, especially for fresh produce, and I generally enjoy cooking. Supermarkets, however, are one of my pet peeves. I can't blame them entirely, because they have to stock what they sell the most of, and these days no one cooks and they all live off frozen crap that they stick in the microwave. But really, having to go to three different stores just to buy basic things like flour and mushrooms is just too much.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know how it is to have to hit several grocery stores. Each one will stock some certain item that you cannot get somewhere else or at the store you normally use.

Oddly enough, Kroger here will stock Tn Pride products but they don't carry the rolls of sausage or the sausage gravy. Ah well, we can have the family ship it to us from TN or I did happen up thier website.

http://www.tnpride.net/

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Agreed... Sometimes it sucks- well often times, in my opinion- that majority rules to the point you have to substitue/skip various cooking ingredients because the local bag n'save would rather offer three aisles of microwaveable meatslabs, carbo-wedges & syrup drinks then give you a decent selection of spices or a variety of pineapple juice.

I also agree about both Target & Walmart not being grocery stores- furniture & clothing stores with food/pharmacy attached would be closer to the true. Does anybody else notice how immense, yet poor quality Walmart's yogurt sections are? I went to one yesterday and it almost occupied an entire wall all by itself!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I avoid Walmart as much as equinely possible. If I do have to go into one for something, I avoid the "food" section as I would avoid a rat-infested dungeon. Big box stores carrying "food" is an oxymoron, and especially so in the case of Walmart. All you have to do is watch who the clientele of a typical Walmart store are. These are not people who care about nutrition or safety or quality. They are tired, depressed, harried people who are barely surviving and are looking for the shortest route to the exit in most cases. A store that stocks what will sell to that clientele has nothing much that I will want to buy, alas. (It may not have much that those customers should buy either, but I have no way of improving that situation. They have mostly been trapped into their situation by the "American values" that have been foisted upon them since birth.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Ouch... yes, some of their food items downright frighten me. I can't enter the bakery area in particular.

...for the record...

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I suppose it represents how my dietary situation is changing, my exposure to such a place. I've gone from eating out of vending machines to fast fod to Walamrt & I'm starting to look to places of higher nutritional fortification. I had an old friend of mine ask me if i still drank- as he put it- "ridiculously drink" a massive amount of soda, assuming I still did. Truthfully, I told him I had one today & it was the first time in a week... and before that, about a month (and before that, ne time shortly after I arrive in Cocoa). I do try, it's just my financial situation is my only true limiter, and as of yet, I've been able to only tweak it slightly... *smirks* I should be happier about my rapid progress, but the situation can get a bit depressing.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* Yeah, I recall hearing about HFCS being used in carbonated drinks in the USA - in fact, I heard some US furs who attended EF complain about the coke that's being sold here, claiming that they could feel sugar crystals gritting between their teeth. *s* I don't quite believe THAT, and I didn't really notice a difference in taste when I drank coke in the USA - but then, I wasn't really looking for one, and the coke I drank was mostly the black cherry/vanilla variety, anyway (for some reason, while cherry coke and vanilla coke are also sold in Germany, you can't get the combined version - oh well).

Weird about the grocery store, BTW. You'd think that a good store manager tries to get a feeling for what people might like and tries to stock different foodstuffs, flavours, varieties and brands to see what sells and what doesn't sell instead of just using his own personal taste as a guideline, but oh well. c.c

(I'm sorry if I'm a bit incoherent right now, too, BTW - I am feeling somewhat strange at the moment, too, although I hope it'll go over if I just sit down and get some rest for a while.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's true that people cling to that to which they have become accustomed. Younger folks here have never tasted anything but HFCS in soft drinks, and find the flavor of cane or beet sugar 'strange'. Which means they can in fact tell the difference, just as I can. I dislike the HFCS so much that I will choose the 'diet' soda over the regular now. It is particularly noticeable in Coca Cola, which suffered disastrously in my opinion from the switch away from cane sugar back in the 1970s. You can still get Coke made with cane sugar here, but it takes serious searching. They produce the cane sugar version to meet Jewish Kosher requirements at Passover, so if you have access to stores in an area with a large Jewish population you can sometimes get it. Evidently HFCS, though Kosher for most of the year, doesn't meet the stringent requirements of Passover. Probably because it's a grain product, I suppose.

I can tell the cane sugar version from the corn syrup version in an instant. I grew up with the cane sugar recipe. It has more bite or edge to it, and a very different aftertaste. It also smells different. The corn syrup version is milder, sweeter, and feels sticky. They used to tell us that Coca Cola would remove rust from metal parts and could dissolve raw meat. It was easy to believe that back in 1960, but nowadays it seems incredible to think.

Hope you feel better soon. ;D

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Thanks. ^^ *hugs*

Mmm, kosher cola? That's cool - I never saw anything like that here (in fact, I rarely if ever see certified kosher food at all - although on the other hand, the certification is usually very easy to miss unless you're specifically looking for it). :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've actually only seen it a couple of times myself. As I said, it takes some hunting.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see I neglected to include the handwritten note on my copy for the "white" fruit cake. It doesn't really take three hours to bake unless you put it all in one huge bundt or ring pan. In the loaf pans normally used for bread, it will be done much sooner. Best to watch carefully and test by pushing a toothpick into the middle of one. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If batter clings to it, leave it in the oven longer.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for the tip - I'll update my notes accordingly.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, I need to get my christmas cake organised.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I now have an image of you lining up cakes in a row and teaching them to march in orderly fashion.

Actually, Gary's grandmother used to put hers in a row on the kitchen table and feed them brandy twice a week. We always joked that she should have bar stools for them.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*blinks* 10 eggs? o.O Wow, that sounds rich and I bet you can just hear your arteries hardening when you eat it. :P

Thanks for sharing Tivo. Makes me want to dig out the recipes I have but I think mine are mainly for candy and homemade alcohol. ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well I certainly didn't recommend that anyone eat the whole cake at one sitting. Ten eggs in what amounts to probably three pounds of cake isn't that big a deal. A typical slice of this cake is maybe 3 x 4 x 1/2 inch. That might contain all of, oh, a quarter of an egg at most. ;p Anyway, I don't think eggs are that bad if you aren't sedentary and do use up the energy in your food. Some recent research has suggested that butter was never as bad as we thought it was either, and hydrogenated vegetable oils (margarine, Crisco) may in fact do more arterial damage than butter ever did.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*smirks* Methinks thou take comments a trife too seriously at times. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I do have a tendency to "defend" fruit cake because I'm getting really tired of hearing people run it down. I grew up enjoying it at the holidays. It was something we all looked forward to, and making it was a big family production. Gary's family was similar about that, even though they are Polish and it is definitely not part of a Polish tradition. His grandmother made superb fruitcakes that were loaded with brandy. She used to give us a whole five pound cake every Christmas and we'd hoard it and each have one slice a week practically until Easter. She did that every year right up almost until she died, well into her 90s. By then she was almost completely blind, and we used to go specifically to help her make the cakes and the Polish sausages, hand-stuffed for Christmas, and the very best pierogi you've ever tasted, as well as the paczki for Shrove Tuesday when that came around. I've learned to duplicate her pierogi pretty well, and she succeeded in teaching me how to make her pickled beets. The paczki I'm a failure at. ;p

[typographer.livejournal.com]

That's nothing... they've also rethought lard, and it's looking as if lard is better for you than butter, which as you point out may be better than a lot of the margarines, et al.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've heard that, but, eeeww. I don't much care for the things I've tried that were made with lard. I can see how, in terms of chemical composition, it might be closer to our own natural lipids than even butter, but I think I'd rather just swear off fat. ;p

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Glad your horses got clipped and trimmed with no blood
(theirs or the farriers or yours) involved.

I have had a couple of good fruitcakes in my day, but
I still go bah at the thought of most of them.

I'll examine your recipe for tastyness.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Try either one out for size. They aren't hard to make once you find the ingredients. "Mixed dried fruit" is the bright colored diced up candied fruit peels mostly, and you can often get it in pound size containers around the holidays. It has citron, lemon, orange and grapefruit peels candied and diced.

The trick to a good fruitcake is making it at least a couple of weeks ahead of time and then aging it with the brandy or rum. If you can't use the alcohol for whatever reason, then do as my mother did and soak the wrapping cloth in pineapple juice. The resulting cake is firm, heavy, and quite moist though not drippy. If you use fruit juice for the aging process, keep the cakes refrigerated. If you use brandy, that isn't necessary.

We used to wrap them in cheesecloth or white cotton dish towels, then pour a shot or two of the selected liquid onto the cloth. After that you either wrap the whole thing in foil to hold in the moisture, or put it into a tin with a tight cover.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

I also find myself frequently defending fruit cake, but then, in the course of doing so I often disparage the typical supermarket candied fruit.

If you substitute a couple cups of pickled watermellon for the jar of candied fruit in your white cake, it's very similar to the fruit cake recipe I've been known to make...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I actually like citron (the "yucky" green bits that most people find so repulsive) so the supermarket candied fruit suits me just fine. While I like pickled watermelon rind too, it sounds much to wet and soupy to use in a fruit cake. I've not heard that suggestion before. Watermelons are closely related to citron though, when you come right down to it.

[bonnie-tiler.livejournal.com]

Recepies snatched faster than even our dog....! And he's fast....
Thanks! will use them, It's time to start thinking about gingerbread biscuits, 13 dec is st.Lucia's day in Sweden you need them by then, along with saffron buns and glögg....

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hee. Yes, and I haven't forgotten my intention to try your gingerbread.

I do know about St. Lucia's day, though mostly no one but the folks of Swedish descent observe it here.

I've never tried glögg but I've heard both good and bad about it. When we bought our old house in Chicago, the previous owners were of Swedish lineage. Later we met someone who had been a teenager when he lived on the same street. Hearing whose house we had, the first thing he asked was whether the paint on the kitchen ceiling was still peeling off from when Herman used to make glögg...

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I like fruitcake around Christmas time....although I can look in a mirror and enjoy fruitcake all year round :D

*reads the ingredients and gains 5kgs immediately* What the??

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh look, a round kitty. I wonder if he'll bounc?

One slice of fruitcake isn't going to hurt. The trouble is, if you make one of these, especially the second one, you have more than one slice sitting around. And these days, when everyone seems to "hate" fruitcake, what are you going to do? Eat it all? That's why I haven't made one in years now, though I used to do it every year about this time.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

If I bounce? I don't have to listen to this...*waddles to the door but can't fit through* I like the ones more like christmas pudding :)