Fruit Cake

[TheZot]

Well, fruitcake is supposed to be stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, soaked in alcohol, with just enough 'cake' to hold the thing together. It's a form of long-term seasonal food storage, the same way jam is. Nuts tend to go rancid relatively quickly (or sprout!), and many fruits are awfully dodgy for more than a month or two. Fruitcake lives up to its reputation and does, in fact, last for a very long time -- that was its point. Palatability was an entirely separate matter, and cooking definitely isn't something that comes instinctively to too many people.

 

Jokes about fruitcake are probably nearly as old as it is, but when you're looking for something to eat in mid-February and it's a few hundred years before the invention of canning, refrigeration, or cold-nitrogen storage, well, y'take what you can get and hope for the best. Even dried most fruits get fuzzy, the ones like apples that do last are mealy, and even unshelled nuts have a tendency to go a bit off in the damp. (None of this means you've gotta like it of course, since we conveniently do have canning, refrigeration, cold storage, and ships more than fast enough to haul fresh produce from the other side of the world...)

[colinian]

...maybe my adult taste buds will like it...

I think "adult taste buds" should be renamed "lots fewer taste buds then when you were a kid".

 

Colin

[Hylas]

lots fewer taste buds then when you were a kid

 

Yeah For example, my parents like to eat an omelette mixed with umm... i dunno how you call them there 'ampalaya' or bitter gourd. it's so BITTER! As in.. EEW. They probably can't taste anything anymore!

[Jack Frost]

I tried my first one at my in-law's and... lol I didn't like it too much. I knew what was coming and... I should've not tried it.

[CarlHoliday]

I'm kind of picky about fruit cake. Maraschino cherries (red and green), raisins, and walnuts or pecans are my favorite ingredients. Soaked with Bourbon or Brandy is better than soaked with Rum, if I can get that kind, and if it is properly soaked.

 

Personally, I prefer a soaked fruit cake to one with the liquor as an ingredient in the cake. Proper soaking takes time, something that we don't seem to have too much of these days.

 

My mother used to make fruit cake, and for many years went through the soaking process, too. When she started working (When I was nine or ten or so and deemed responsible enough to be a latchkey kid.) the fruit cake became liquor free.

 

Now that she's gone, I suppose if I want what I want, I'll have to do it myself or find a fruit cake that meets my requirements. I usually freeze my cake and enjoy it through the year one small slice at a time.

[NaperVic]

Yeah For example, my parents like to eat an omelette mixed with umm... i dunno how you call them there 'ampalaya' or bitter gourd. it's so BITTER! As in.. EEW. They probably can't taste anything anymore!

 

 

 

Ampalaya is bitter melon, and I don't think we have anything equivalent here in the US. And yes, it's gross , my parents used to try to sneak it into all kinds of dishes.

 

If one were to put them in fruit cake, no one would eat them :wacko: .

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampalaya

[Jack Frost]

Ampalaya is bitter melon, and I don't think we have anything equivalent here in the US. And yes, it's gross , my parents used to try to sneak it into all kinds of dishes.

 

If one were to put them in fruit cake, no one would eat them :wacko: .

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampalaya

I had one of those as a soup in Vietnamese cuisine.

 

MOST HORRIBLE THING EVER!!!

 

It tasted like a veggie soaked in bleach. :wacko:

[Hylas]

[BeaStKid]

Damn!! Give 'em a topic and they'll go on!!!

 

lol

 

Can't believe this went on for two pages!!

[colinian]

Ampalaya is bitter melon, and I don't think we have anything equivalent here in the US. And yes, it's gross , my parents used to try to sneak it into all kinds of dishes.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampalaya

Bitter melon is available in the local supermarkets near my home (Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) and local Asian markets (99 Ranch Market, Le Asia Market), and in Berkeley where I go to college (Monterey Market, Berkeley Bowl), and at the farmers markets. Doug's mom (Chinese) cooks dishes with bitter melon and I like them a lot. It's really not very bitter, and in the right dish is really good if there are other ingredients like beef or pork with black mushrooms and a gravy that includes something like hoisin or oyster sauce. Yum! By itself it's... well... probably an acquired taste. I don't like it that much!

 

Colin

[S.L. Lewis]

I like fruitcake, the one from the Monastery Bakery of the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. Most of the others I've tried range from fair through aren't very good to downright toxic.

 

Colin

 

Oh, I've had them before. Though, since I'm from the west of the U.S. we have to take into account the high points or the low points of Arizona. I'm like 90 ft below sea level, so when we make fruit cake we have to add just a bit more liquid. My grandmother used to add the good quality rum. Yummy.

[Tiger]

I have never tried fruitcake. I'm fruity enough already. Also, everyone says it's disgusting, so I figure that I'm not missing anything.

[FrenchCanadian]

I have never tried fruitcake. I'm fruity enough already. Also, everyone says it's disgusting, so I figure that I'm not missing anything.

 

Well I know, and everyone who knows me enough will just know, that there's no way that I'd ever eat a desert with fruits on/in it

[Benji]

Well I know, and everyone who knows me enough will just know, that there's no way that I'd ever eat a desert with fruits on/in it

 

 

............The only one that I've ever enjoyed, she had the fruit soaking in vodka for over a year and made the cake the day that I tried it. I had at least two or three pieces I think...........