Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote & Sook

After compiling Sook’s recipes, Marie Rudisill, compiled a fruitcake cookbook, Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote & Sook. Clearly, the publisher wanted you to remember her connection to her cousin and while this does have Sook’s recipe, it has a wide assortment of other fruitcakes.

In her book Rudisill states:

Fruitcake, to Southerners, is a birthright.

While I would argue that the fruit makes a fruitcake, Rudisill says it is the flour. OF course, there is only ONE flour for Southern baking, White Lily. After 125 years in the South, White Lily was bought by Smuckers and the milling was moved out of the South. The moving of White Lily was tantamount to firing on Fort Sumter or burning Atlanta. It was a cruel blow. White Lily has never been the same! I still have a lone bag of White Lily milled in Knoxville, Tennessee and I cannot bear to open use it as it would constitute the end of an era. (And after two years, it a bit stale. Still, I’m not using it.)

One of the oldest Southern fruitcakes is the 1866 Fruitcake, most commonly known as the Lee Fruitcake.

Marie Rudisill discovered a copy of this recipe folded up inside a copy of A Life of General Robert E. Lee by John Estes Cook. It was in the dresser drawer of Bud Faulk who was an ardent Civil War collector. There was also a rattlesnake skin. It seems Bud had rattlesnake that lived for years in his dresser and when he died, so did the rattlesnake. Rudisill swears that every time she visited Bud’s cemetery, she would fine a rattlesnake coiled on his grave.

Lee Fruitcake

1/2 cup candied lemon peel
1/2 cup sliced candied orange peel
1 1/2 cups finely cut citron
1 1/2 cups candied pineapple
1 cup candied cherries
1 1/4 cup dark seeded raisins
1 1/4 cup white raisins
1 cup chopped California walnuts
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup sifted enriched flour
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups enriched flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon all spice
1teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cloves
3/4 cup grape juice

Combine the peels, fruits, nuts; sprinkle with 1/4 cup of flour and mix well.
Thoroughly cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Sift together 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, salt and spices; add alternately with grape juice. Pour the batter over the floured mixture of peel, fruit and nuts. Pour into a large tube pan until 3/4 full. Do not flatten batter. Bake in a very slow oven at 250F for about 5 hours. Remove from pan and pack in air tight tin with a double layer of cheesecloth soaked in bourbon.
Bake at least three months before Christmas. Do not let the cake dry out and keep lacing it with bourbon.

Notice it says you need to bake it three months in advance, so you have an out on this one. Truth is, you can bake it and eat it right away, but soaking for 12 weeks in bourbon can’t be all bad.

White Fruitcake

We began our cookbook week with one of the most famous fruitcake recipes so, it is only fitting we close with one, Eudora Welty's White Fruitcake. The first real printing of Welty's recipe was not so much a cookbook as a piece of ephemera, as we say in the book biz. In 1980, a limited edition Christmas card was send out from Albondocani Press and Ampersand Books and Welty.

The origins of the recipe come from The Jackson Cookbook, a collection of local recipes featuring an introduction by Welty. The cookbook contained a white fruitcake recipe by Mrs. Mosal, submitted by her daughter. Welty said,

"I make Mrs. Mosal's White Fruitcake every Christmas, having got it from my mother, who got it from Mrs. Mosal, and I often think to make a friend's fine recipe is to celebrate her once more."

Welty was never really much of cook owing to her mother's somewhat lacking recipes. She never included directions and when Welty questioned her method, her mother replied,

"any cook worth her salt would know, given a list of ingredients, what to do with them."

The recipe is included in several books including Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott.



You will find that what Mrs. Welty lacked in directions, Miss Eudora greatly makes up for in this recipe.

White Fruitcake

1 1/2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
4 cups flour, sifted before measuring
flour for fruit and nuts
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 pound pecan meats (halves, preferably)
1 pound crystallized cherries, half green, half red
1 pound crystallized pineapple, clear
some citron or lemon peel if desired
1 cup bourbon
1 tsp. vanilla
nutmeg if desired

Make the cake several weeks ahead of Christmas of you can.
The recipe makes three-medium-sized cakes or one large and one small. Prepare the pans -- the sort with a chimney or tube -- by greasing them well with Crisco and then lining them carefully with three layers of waxed paper, all greased as well.
Prepare the fruit and nuts ahead. Cut the pineapple in thin slivers and the cherries in half. Break up the pecan meats, reserving a handful or so shapely halves to decorate the tops of the cakes. Put in separate bowls, dusting the fruit and nuts lightly in sifting of flour, to keep the from clustering together in the batter.
In a very large wide mixing bowl ( a salad bowl or even a dishpan will serve) cream the butter very light, then beat in the sugar until all is smooth and creamy. Sift in the flour, with the baking powder and salt added, a little at a time, alternating with the unbeaten egg yolks added one at a time. When all this is creamy, add the floured fruits and nuts, gradually, scattering the lightly into the batter, stirring all the while, and add the bourbon in alteration little by little. Lastly, whip the eggwhites into peaks and fold in.
St the oven ow, about 250. Pour the batter into the cake-pans, remembering that they will rise. Decorate the tops with nuts. Bake for three hours or more, until they spring back to the touch and a straw inserted at the center comes out clean and dry. (if the top browns too soon, lay a sheet of foil lightly over.) When done, the cake should be a warm golden color.
When they've cooled enough yo handle, run a spatula around the sides of each cake, cover the pan with a big plate , turn the pan over and slip the cake out. Cover the cake with another plate and turn rightside up. When cool, the cake can be wrapped in cloth or foil and stored in a tightly fitted tin box.
From time to time before Christmas you may improve it with a little more bourbon, dribbled over the top to be absorbed ans so ripen the cake before cutting. This cake will keep for a good white, in or out of the refrigerator.

Enjoy.

Favorite Fruitcakes

One of the best fruitcake books out there is Moira Hodgson’s Favorite Fruitcakes. Hodgson is a Brit and they have a much greater appreciation of fruitcakes. Favorite Fruitcakes collects a variety of “famous” fruitcake recipes or perhaps they are just “famous” cooks. Anyway, this is great compendium of fruitcake facts and zippy recipes.

This recipe is from Craig Claiborne. It was his mother’s favorite recipe. Claiborne took her mixed fruit and nuts and weighed them out replacing the candied fruit with candied ginger and the mixed nuts with black walnuts.

Craig Caliborne’s Walnut and Ginger Fruitcake.

½ pound candied ginger in 1/4" cubes (about 1 cup)
1 ½ cups golden raisins
3 ¾ cups walnuts, preferably black walnuts, broken in pieces
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Salt to taste
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, cut in 1-inch cubes
2 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/3 cup Madeira or sweet sherry


1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Lightly butter a 10-inch, 12-cup Bundt pan. Sprinkle with flour; shake pan to coat inside. Shake out excess.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine ginger, raisins and walnuts.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Sift this mixture over ginger and nut mixture.
4. Put the butter in the bowl of an electric mixture. Start beating while gradually adding the sugar. Cream the mixture well and gradually beat in egg yolks. Beat in Madeira.
5. Pour and scrape this mixture over nuts and blend the ingredients thoroughly. This is best done by hand.
6. Beat the egg whites until stiff and thoroughly fold in, until they do not show.
7. Pour batter into the prepared pan, and smooth over the top with a spatula. Set pan on a baking sheet and place in oven. Bake about 2 1/4 hours, or until cake is puffed above pan and nicely browned on top or until internal temperature is 200 degrees on a thermometer.
8. Remove cake from pan shortly after baking. Tapping the bottom of the pan with a heavy knife will help. Store cake for at least 10 days. If desired, add occasional touch more of Madeira or sherry (or Cognac or rum, if desired). Keep closely covered, wrapped in cheesecloth or foil, and refrigerated until ready to use.

Check out Lucindaville’s Fruitcake post for sources for great fruit and nuts.

Sook's Cookbook

Yes Virginia, it’s “Fruitcake Season.” I know what you are thinking but stop. Fruitcakes are wonderful. Unfortunately, in the United States we suffer from the mistaken notion that the “fruit” in fruitcake is some sort of afterthought when it should be the main ingredient. (Hey, that’s why they call it “fruit” cake.)

In the coming days I will be pointing you to various resources for your cakes, but to start us off, I am giving you the most famous fruitcake ever made. It was first made by Truman Capote’s cousin, Sook. As a child, Truman would follow is cousin down to the river bank to that palace of sin operated by the Indian, Mr. Haha Jones. There they would purchase the bourbon whisky needed to make the cake.


As an adult, Truman Capote recounted this ritual in what may be his most famous work, A Christmas Memory. Years later, Capote's aunt, Marie Rudisill, gathered the recipes into Sook's Cookbook.

Here is Sook’s cake so you can make your own memories.

Sook’s Famous “Christmas Memory” Fruitcake

2 1/2 pound Brazil nuts
2 1/2 pound white and dark raisins; mixed
1/2 pound candied cherries
1/2 pound candied pineapple
1 pound citron
1/2 pound blanched almonds
1/2 pound pecan halves
1/2 pound black walnuts
1/2 pound dried figs
1 scant tablespoon nutmeg
1 scant tablespoon cloves
2 tablespoons grated bitter chocolate
8-ounce grape jelly
8–ounce glass jar grape juice
8-ounce glass bourbon whiskey
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 scant tablespoon allspice


Batter

2 cups pure butter
2 cups sugar
12 eggs
4 cups flour


Cut the fruits and nuts into small pieces and use enough of the flour to dredge them, making a thin coat over all. Cream the butter and sugar adding one egg at a time, beating well. Add the flour. Add the dredged fruits and nuts, spices, seasoning, and flavorings. Mix thoroughly by hand. Line your cake tin with wax paper and grease well, then flour. The pan should be large enough to hold a twelve-pound cake.
Pour the mixture into the pan and put it in a steamer over cold water. Close the steamer and bring the water to a rolling boil. After the water boils, lower the heat and steam the cake on top of the stove for about four-and-one-half hours. Preheat the oven to around 250 degrees, and bake for one hour.

Now, one can simply drive to a liquor and buy your cake bourbon, but if you happen to know a friendly bootlegger, pay him a visit. It's a much better story.

Christmas Memories With Recipes

Her is an oldie but goodie in the Christmas recipe genre.   Christmas Memories with Recipes was published in 1988.  It includes most of the big name food faces of the 70' and 80's.  This is very interesting as you look at all the foodie faces of today and wonder who will we still be talking about in 2050!

This is a wonderful collection featuring a young Martha Kostyra Stewart and Jaques Pepin to the august Maida Heatter and Craig Claiborne.  The stoically British Jane Grigson to the wildly Italian Edward Giobbi with a bit of Lee Bailey's Southern charm thrown in.

Basically, each person tells stories of their favorite Christmas memories and includes in the recipes that made it great.  For Edna Lewis, Christmas began in September when she was sent out to collect nuts for fruitcake.  IT was the children's job to gather the nuts, crack them and extract the meats from the shells.  Every sunny day in September, her mother set out to make the fruitcakes.  Through October and November they were doctored with spirits until they saturated for giving.    Here is her recipe.

Edna Lewis' Fruitcake 

1 cup diced glazed candied orange peel
1 cup diced glazed candied lemon peel
2 cups diced citron
1 cup currants
2 cups seedless raisins, chopped
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup brandy
3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground mace
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
2 cups brown sugar
5 eggs, separated
1/2 cup sorghum molasses

Mix all the fruit in a large bowl and pour in the wine and brandy. Stir gently and set aside to marinate for a few hours.

Butter a 10-inch tube pan or two 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans and line it (or them) with clean parchment paper. Butter the paper.

Sift the flour with the spices twice. Add the baking powder and salt and sift again.

Put the butter into a large mixing bowl and cream until satiny. Add sugar and, using an electric mixer, cream until light and fluffy. Beat the egg yolks slightly and then add them to the bowl. Mix the batter well before you start to add the flour-spice mixture. Stir the batter as you add the flour, a little at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the flour is thoroughly incorporated, add the molasses and stir. Finally, stir in the fruit and any soaking liquid in the bowl.

Put the egg whites in a grease-free bowl and beat with a clean beater until they hold stiff peaks. Fold them into the batter thoroughly and then spoon the batter into the prepared pan ( or pans ). Cover loosely with a clean cloth and let the batter sit overnight in a cool place to mellow.

On the next day, heat the oven to 250 degrees. Place the fruitcake on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 3-1/2 to 4 hours. After 1-1/2 hours, cover the pan with a piece of brown paper (do not use foil) or set the pan in a paper bag and return it to the oven.

When the cake has baked for 3-1/2 hours, remove it from the oven and listen closely for any quiet, bubbling noises. If you "hear" the cake, it needs more baking. Or test the cake with a toothpick or cake tester. If the toothpick or tester comes out of the center of the cake clean, the cake is ready to take from the oven. Put it on a wire rack to cool, still in the pan.

When the cake is completely cool, turn it out of the pan (pans), leaving the brown-paper lining on the cake. Wrap the cake with parchment, then aluminum foil, and pack the cake in a tin. Homemade fruitcakes need air, so punch a few holes in the lid of the tin or set the cover loosely on the tin.

Set the tin in a cool, undisturbed place, and every two or three weeks before Christmas, open the foil and sprinkle the cake with a liqueur glassful of brandy, wine, or whiskey. The liquor will keep the cake most and flavorful and help preserve it as well.

On Christmas morning her father would wake the children and set off Roman candles.  I am sure that today there are local ordinances that would prevent fireworks on Christmas, but fruitcake is still acceptable.

Favorite Torte and Cake Recipes

Favorite Torte and Cake Recipes is a lovely homage to 1950's baking, where every woman can, "know the joy of making a perfect cake."

Published in 1951, Favorite Torte and Cake Recipes was published the same year that ConAgra, then the Nebraska Consolidated Mills, bought the rights to Duncan Heinz cake mixes as a way to use more flour. Pillsbury was making a few mixes in the late 40's, but it was the Duncan Heinz brand that pushed boxed cake mix into the American kitchen. Duncan Heinz, a popular food writer at the time, received a penny a box for the use of his name.

Rose Oller Harbaugh knew what readers wanted, having spent years as the manager of the book department at Marshall Field's. Mary Adams was an immagrant who came with her family from Hungary. The cookbook was informatuive, packed with recipes and easy instructions. It featured nifty fifties drawings to accompany the recipes.

Since it is that holiday season and since we love some fruitcake, we were fascinated with this recipe. It is a Hungarian spin on fruitcake.

Hungarian Fruit Layer Cake

3 cups flour

1/4 pound butter

6 tablespoons sugar

1 1/3 cups grated walnuts

2 eggs

1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

Sift the flower in a bowl. Cut in the butter thoroughly.

Add sugar, lemon rind, and nuts, and mix well.

Beat eggs until lemon-colored and add to the above mixture.

Mix well and shape into a ball.

Roll dough on floured board with light strokes.

Roll pastry into circular shape about 15 inches in diameter.

Place in buttered torte pan, trimming edges like pie.

Prick dough with fork and bake for few minutes and 375F oven to make firm.

Then fill shell first with Apple Filling, then with Poppyseed Filling, and last with Walnut Torte Filling.

Decorate with strips of remaining pastry.

Brush with egg and sprinkle with nuts.

Bake in 325F oven 1 hour.

A very different take on the traditional fruitcake from a very traditional 50's classic.

Martha Stewart's Christmas

Being famous is creepy.

You tell a story to a camera who relays it to millions of people. Those people then know a story about your life. Come to think of it, it is even kind of weird blogging. I realized as I wrote this that there are people who read my blog who know more about me than some of my friends (unless, of course, they read my blog.) Anyway, here is my point. If you packed a 12-pound fruitcake into a giant metal tin and threatened to beat me with it unless I told you the names of my childhood neighbors, I would end up dead. Granted, I did move a lot as a child, but I digress...

I love Martha Stewart, but not in the wait in line 5 hours to have a book signed way. I have never met her. Still, I know the name of her neighbors in Nutley, New Jersey. Neighbors who died before I was even born! Mr. and Mrs. Maus were German immigrants who had, at one time in their loves, been bakers. They had a large kitchen in their basement just for baking and Little Martha loved to go over and help them bake. (I have no doubt she was a big a pain-in-the-ass then as she is now!) Years later, Martha inherited a large yellowware mixing bowl that she treasures. In fact, she has stated that if anything ever happened to the bowl she would just stop baking. (Note to ANYONE: Do not touch the bowl. If she asks you to wash it, or move it, or stir in it, feign a heart attack.)

So now, I know more about Martha Stewart's childhood neighbors than I do about mine. In addition to the bowl, Martha got a really fine fruitcake recipe. She has used it in several of her cookbooks and gives full credit to Mrs. Maus as the creator. You can make two cakes out of the recipe or about six small cakes.

Mrs. Maus' Fruitcake

1 pound (4 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
12 eggs
6 pounds candied fruits and fresh nuts (choose from the following: citron,
lemon peel, orange peel, cherries, apricots, walnuts, pecans)
1/2 cup molasses
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons allspice

For The Glaze

1 cup apricot jam
1/3 cup brandy

For The Garnish

Whole dried apricots
Pecan halves

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Butter two 9-inch cake pans or 2 loaf pans. Line with waxed paper, butter again, and flour.

2. Cream butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add the eggs one at a time, beating batter until
fluffy. Stir in the fruits, nuts, and molasses, blending well. Sift the flour with the allspice and stir into the batter cup by cup until well mixed. Spoon into the prepared cake pans. Set pans in a shallow pan with 1 1/2 to 2 inches hot water. Bake for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, until done. Test with toothpick. Cool in pans on a cake rack.

3. Remove from pans, pull off waxed paper, and glaze with strained apricot jam heated with brandy. Decorate with dried apricots and nut halves and glaze again. Let glaze harden before wrapping in cellophane. Keep in cool place. To serve, slice very thinly.

Hey, if it is good enough for Martha and Mrs. Maus, you should give it a try.

Italian Cooking In The Grand Tradition

My friend, Jim, had me over to cook with him a few weeks ago. He is quite the Renaissance man, a woodworker, furniture maker, restorer, artist, musician, singer and darn good cook.


He has a behemoth of a stove that came from an old hotel that once graced Shirley.



He is working to restore it to its original form, but in the meantime, it cooks like a dream. As we were talking about food, he told me one of his favorite cookbooks was Italian Cooking In The Grand Tradition by Jo Bettoja and Anna Maria Cornetto. The authors had been successful models on the runways of Paris, but I guess they just got hungry, so they opened a cooking school. He told me to take a look at his dogeared copy and I was hooked. As I am always in search of fruitcake recipes, this grand old Italian Christmas cake caught my eye.

Crostata di Ricotta
Christmas Cheesecake

For the pasta frolla (pie pastry)
2 1/2 cups flour
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, at cool room temperature, cut into pieces
3 large egg yolks
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon

For the filling:
1 pound ricotta cheese
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup citron, cut into slivers
3/4 cup coarsely chopped almonds
1/2 cup dark raisins, soaked in a good-quality rum to cover

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch flan tin with removable sides.
2. Put the pastry ingredients into the large bowl of an electric mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix the pastry just until it masses around the paddle, 2 or 3 minutes. If using a food processor, take the butter directly from the refrigerator. Put all ingredients into work bowl and process just until mixed.
3. Cut off 1/3 of the pastry and set aside. Lightly flour a marble or wooden surface and roll out the large piece of dough into a circle slightly larger than the flan tin; drape it over the rolling pin and unfold onto the tin. Pressing lightly with the fingers, fit the pastry into the tin. Cut off the excess of the pastry and add to the pastry you set aside. Set the tin aside.
4. Prepare the filling. Put the ricotta through a food mill and add the sugar, mixing with a wooden spoon. Add the remaining ingredients, including the rum in which the raisins have soaked, then pour the ricotta filling into the prepared shell.
5. Roll out the reserved pastry on a lightly floured wooden board and cut it into strips 1 inch wide. Lattice the strips on top of the pie. Bake for 40 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out. Serve warm or tepid.

See, I promised you not all those horrible fruitcakes are the same. Go ahead, tell everyone at the table there is fruitcake for dessert. When you bring this to the table watch how their little crestfallen faces light up. You will be the hit of Christmas.

Elizabeth David's Christmas

I love Elizabeth David, but I can’t name a single one of her childhood neighbors. During her lifetime, she never completed a proposed Christmas book of recipes. Years after her death, he long time editor, Jill Norman, pulled out her notes for the project, and arranged it into book form.

The fruitcake in Elizabeth David’s Christmas collection was a surprise to me. It is an old Southern scripture cake. The origins of these cakes go back to the mid-1800’s. They were popular among women as a way to pass on not only baking, but a robust lesson on the Bible. In order to make the cake, one must first read the Bible verses to find the ingredients. No one knows the true origin of this cake, but I love to think of Elizabeth David mixing one up.

A Christmas Recipe for an Old Testament Cake

4-1/2 cups of 1 Kings IV 22
1 ½ lb of Judges V 25
2 cups of Jeremiah VI 20
2 cups of 1 Sam. XXX 12
2 cups of Numbers XVII 8
2 cups of Nahum III, 12
2 teaspoons of 1 Sam. XIV 25
Season to taste with 2 Chron. IX 9
Six Jeremiah XVII 11
1 1/2 cups Judges IV 19
2 teaspoons of Amos IV 5
A pinch of Leviticus II 13

Directions Proverbs XXIII 14

Bake 1 to 2 hours


SOLUTION: Operative words in each verse:

Fine flour
Butter
Sweet cane
Raisins
Almonds
Ripe figs
Honey
Spice
Eggs
Milk
Leaven
Salt

Beat

I did so want to make you grab your Old Testament and find the key, but Elizabeth was such a sport. Now get thee to the kitchen.