Dried Fruit Fruitcake

"This is one very moist fruitcake, &, in my humble opinion, a huge cut above the usual fruitcake with candied fruit! And, when you can get raves from friends & relatives who don't ordinarily like fruitcake, well, that's definitely a plus! I usually use apricot brandy, but not always. For the dates, I like to use a cup of 'Fancy Medjool' dates & a cup of regular pitted dates, which I believe are 'Deglet Noor' dates. If the cake will probably be eaten during its first 'presentation,' you might want to unmold it onto a 14" serving plate & let it cool completely. Then, just before serving it, sprinkle the top lightly with powdered sugar, and--with pieces of larger dried fruits such as whole dates, apricot halves, apple slices, pear & peach halves, etc--fill the center of the cake & also place some on the edge of the serving plate all around the cake. Preparation & cooking time does not include the time it takes for the fruit mixture to cool."
 
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photo by 2Bleu photo by 2Bleu
photo by 2Bleu
Ready In:
2hrs 40mins
Ingredients:
17
Serves:
24
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ingredients

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directions

  • In a large saucepan, combine first 9 ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, then reduce to low & cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat & cool to room temperature.
  • Preheat oven to 275 degrees F, then grease & flour a 12-cup Bundt pan.
  • In a large bowl, combine the next 6 ingredients which are dry, then stir in the lightly beaten eggs, the almond extract, and the cooled fruit mixture, & combine well.
  • Spoon batter into the prepared Bundt pan & bake for at least 2 hours & 20 minutes. Toothpick in the center should come out clean.
  • Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, then unmold onto a serving plate & cool completely.

Questions & Replies

  1. Can you use salted butter?
     
  2. My question is about storage. I know you wrap and store for a month if you pour brandy etc. over the fruitcakes, but, since I choose not to use alcohol , how do you store it. Does it have to be refrigerated or frozen? Can it just be wrapped and kept in the root cellar. I have limited refrigerator space. It does taste good.
     
  3. Can you age this fruit cake?
     
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Reviews

  1. We scaled this down to serve 6 and used our jumbo muffin pan to create individual cakes that were fully baked in 70 minutes. This has a lot of ingredients, but we simplefied it by using 2 cups of Sunmaid brand fruit bits plus 1/4 cup dried apricots for the dried fruits and used pecans for the nuts. The flavor is wonderfully intense, and the cake is very, very moist. We enjoyed making this recipe and will definitley be making them for Christmas gift baskets in the coming years. :)
     
  2. Intense and dense! Dense and intense! I feel like Dr. Seuess with a review like that! I made this cake for our holiday of Tu B'Shvat and it was just the right sort of cake for this holiday. I had to play around a bit with the proportions of fruit, since I didn't have any dried cherries, so I just added in some more craisins and took the liberty of adding figs. Sushiman is allergic to almond so I used pecans instead. The house smelled amazing during the over 2 1/2 hour it took for this cake to bake. I served it for dessert on Friday night with some fig pistachio ice cream on top and some fresh fruit salad on the side. Thanks for posting!
     
  3. Love the cake but it didn't look like your photo. Turned out dark, not nice and golden. Not a negative necessarily, just like a light cake. Am making again for sister - her husband doesn't eat nuts of any kind so left them out and added equivalent amount of Hershey's Cinnamon Chips (skipped the cinnamon in mix). Should be good but just felt wrong on so many levels to skip nuts! What can you do about the food heathen in the crowd?!?!?
     
  4. FAR SUPERIOR to any store-bought fruitcake, and NO CITRON (gross!). This is our annual go-to recipe. It's always a hit with my mother and grandmother. I replace the almonds with chopped pecans and decrease the dates a bit to make room for more apricots -- my favorite! YUM!
     
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Tweaks

  1. Pecans, lemon zest, cinnamon chips (not all at the same time)
     
  2. FAR SUPERIOR to any store-bought fruitcake, and NO CITRON (gross!). This is our annual go-to recipe. It's always a hit with my mother and grandmother. I replace the almonds with chopped pecans and decrease the dates a bit to make room for more apricots -- my favorite! YUM!
     

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