Mom's fruitcakes

Three good friends of mine enjoyed some of my mom's annual fruitcake from home in 1967 in the barracks. They are (left to right) Glenn Thomas, Doug Allen and Bill Marcacelli. Glenn worked in administration, Doug was an emergency room tech, and Bill was a ward medic. I don't know who took this Polaroid image.

My mother never once set foot in a liquor store in her life.

That meant that early each November my father was assigned to go to the ABC store to pick up a bottle of sherry and a pint of apple brandy.

My mother was getting ready to make the holiday fruitcakes.

The ones my mom made were not the dry, tasteless kind that are passed on from friend to friend each Christmas, or worse yet, usable as doorstops. The whole family looked forward to these fruitcakes -- one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas.

When I was in the Air Force, my mom sent me a fruitcake each year. My barracks mates couldn't get enough of them.

I found her recipe. It was in her copy of the 1942 Good Housekeeping cookbook, but she had made changes over the years. The recipe is annotated in her hand in both margins.

Here's the recipe she settled on after much experimentation.

1 lb. dark raisins
3 lbs. mixed candied fruit (my mother usually used green and red cherries, citron, orange peel and pineapple, with emphasis on the cherries)
1 lb. black walnuts
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
5 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sherry
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cut up fruits and nuts coarsely, mix thoroughly with 1 cup of the flour, and set aside. In another bowl, work butter with a spoon until fluffy and creamy. Gradually add sugar while continuing to work with a spoon until light. Add eggs, one at a time, beating vigorously after each addition.

Sift remaining 2 cups flour with salt and baking powder and add to butter mixture alternately in thirds with the sherry and vanilla extract. Fold in the floured fruits and nuts. Pour into a ring fruitcake pan that has been greased and lined with heavy wax paper. Bake in a slow oven at 300 degrees for 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 hours or until done. Makes one 6-lb. fruitcake.

Okay, that was the recipe. But the process didn't end there. My mother would double the recipe and make two fruitcakes. She used fruitcake tins that she'd had for God knows how long. She'd line the tins with aluminum foil and place a finished fruitcake in each. She'd put half an apple in each center hole. Then she'd soak cheesecloth in the apple brandy, cover the top of each fruitcake with a section of the damp cloth, and seal the tins. Each week, she'd check to see if the apples were still okay. If they were showing signs of mold, she replace them with fresh apple halves. And she'd dampen the cheesecloth with more apple brandy. By Thanksgiving, when she'd slice the first of the two cakes, they were incredibly good -- dense, moist, nutty, fruity and redolent of all of that apple brandy.

I haven't had a decent slice of fruitcake since she stopped making her own in her late 80s.