Dark Christmas Cake - Fruit Cake 🎄 'Love It Or Hate It!'

This Dark Christmas Fruit Cake is a fruitcake lovers dream! So this stir it up Sunday, this is the Christmas Fruit Cake Recipe you should be making!

Ingredients:
375 mL (1½ cups) candied pineapple
375 mL (1½ cups) candied cherries
500 mL (2 cups) currants
500 mL (2 cups) candied peel
375 mL (1½ cups) seedless raisins
250 mL (1 cup) brandy, rum, or bourbon

500 mL (2 cups) all-purpose flour
10 mL (2 tsp) baking powder
2 mL (½ tsp) baking soda
2 mL (½ tsp) salt
1 mL (¼ tsp) ground allspice
1 mL (¼ tsp) ground cloves
5 mL (1 tsp) ground cinnamon
2 mL (½ tsp) ground nutmeg
180g (175 mL / ¾ cup) butter, softened
170g (175 mL / ¾ cup) packed brown sugar
30 mL (2 Tbsp) molasses
60 mL (¼ cup) strawberry, or raspberry jam
5 eggs
200g (375 mL / 1½ cups) chopped walnut halves (pecans)

Method:
Chop up the pineapple and cherries.
In large bowl combine; pineapple, cherries, currants, raisins, mixed peel, and brandy; cover and leave on the counter for at least 24 hours, or up to a week; stirring occasionally.
Preheat oven to 150ºC (300°F).
Line base a 13" x 9" (3.5 L) metal cake pan with parchment paper.
In small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
In a really big bowl bowl; cream together butter and sugar.
When butter / sugar is light and fluffy beat in molasses and jam.
Then beat in eggs, 1 at a time.
Stir in flour mixture just until incorporated.
Add fruit mixture and walnuts; stir to combine.
Transfer to the prepared pan, smoothing top.
Bake cake for 1:45 to 2 hours, until cake tester inserted in centre comes out clean but a little sticky.
You may need to lay a piece of tinfoil over top during baking if it browns too much.
Let cool in pan on rack.
Soak a double-thickness of cheesecloth in more brandy; wrap the cake in the cheesecloth and then wrap in plastic wrap..
Refrigerate for as long as you can before eating.
This will keep in the fridge / freezer almost indefinitely if wrapped carefully.

**Tips:
Switch up the dried and candied fruit for anything you'd like to have in the cake - there is no 'right or wrong' way.
Switch up the alcohol of your choice for any that you prefer - or use apple / grape juice if you wish.
Fancy molasses gives a lighter flavour, but sometimes we'll use cooking or blackstrap. Sorghum or honey would also work.

Music by Dyalla Swain

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[frozenoem]

Absolutely love fruitcake - the curse of heritage Scottish, English and French. It doesn’t remain around for too long in this house.

[dianemac]

I just love it and I remember my English Mum saying you have to have a piece at Christmas for luck and I am old and live alone but I always try to get some ... usually Paxtons? I think it is memories of this cake.

[dianemac]

I grew up with Christmas Cake every year. My Mum (also english) said we had to eat a piece for happiness . I loved it and now I am old and alone also so I buy Paxtons dark.
I guess alot of us Canadians have that tradition. Thanks for this it brought back lots of memories for me.

[aineulla]

I think a lot of people just won't admit that they like fruitcake. For whatever reason it has become almost a fad to not like it. I love it and the one you made looks delicious!

[kcolombo]

Fond memories. My Dad was a deliveryman for Wonder Bread /Hostess Cake back in the late 50s. Every holiday time Hostess made available their Fruit cakes in the fancy tins.
Some were individually wrapped for the snack cake stands you'd find in the stores. Some were shaped as load bars and of course the tins. The tins made for a fine button holder or in my case, I learned how to play the drums on them!

[ornleifs]

I absolutely love fruitcake and I will try this recipe. Fruitcake with good Tea is my idea of heaven.

[xtusvincit]

I made an English Christmas pudding last year for the first time. When I finally got to try it, it was a revelation. It fruitcake but so rich an pungent and boozy. Once I adjusted my expectations, I loved it.

[juelettefadness]

I never liked fruitcake as a child, but now I love it. Wish my Mother was still here to show me how she made hers. I know she always used dates and grape juice instead of alcohol. Love your channel!

[craignewman]

Love a good fruitcake. Fond memories of my Mom assembling ingredients and making around Thanksgiving time so they would be well aged by Christmas time.

[cathpeterson]

dark fruitcake is my favourite soaked in bourbon or rum yummers

[krisblouch]

Just made fruitcake last night. If you aren't frying a slice of that in a pan with butter to have with coffee... you're missing out. Also, I think people associate fruitcake with the really low quality ones you can get in the store. I also think that the candied fruits really turn people off, as many of those are also very low quality. I make mine with only dried fruits soaked in bourbon. This year was cherry, cranberry, blueberry, peaches, and figs. I think folks find mine more accessible because of that.

[cindymichaud]

I love fruitcake. Dark fruitcake, light fruitcake, good fruitcake, even bad fruitcake. Doesn't matter. If it's got most of the components, I'm in, for fruitcake!

[RachelleHinrichs]

I love fruitcake. My mom makes them every year. Only about half our family eats them. It is one of the best breakfasts to have a slice of fruitcake! I usually wrap in plastic and then in foil, and my son always jokes that it is the fake burrito trying to trick him in the fridge. The best is if a few get lost in the fridge from last year, and you find them in about July. Makes me so happy!

[ruthh]

As a kid I knew I’d graduated to adulthood when I actually *liked* fruitcake. I make my grandmother’s recipe every year. No alcohol since my family was raised as tea-totalers. Love that stuff.

[seven_reeds]

According to my older sister, our Mom would soak her fruit cake with wine. This was before I was born I suppose. I helped her make the cakes from an early age and have no recollection of any alcohol being used. I have her hand written recipe and it does not call for soaking.

I adore dark, dense, rich fruit cake with a slice of "hard" cheese.

My "bad" fruit cake memory is that one Christmas my aunt (Mom's sister) learned that I like fruit cake. She decided to gift me with her cake... not dark, not dense and no fruit to be found :)

[jenthulhu]

Me and my grandpa were the only ones who liked fruitcake when I was a kid. And every year he was given several from his workplace. He shared them with me, which was kinda special. I still love it and some years I make it myself, but the rest of my family prefers my Stollen which I always prepare to eat on Christmas morning.

[purplecola]

I'm watching this in May 2020. It's hot here in Ohio - about 78 degrees F, and very humid. This video makes me wish it were Christmas! I've never had a homemade fruitcake, but oh gosh I love fruitcake!! My favorite comes from a mall order catalog called Figi's, but I'm giving this recipe a try this year! 💙

[mtamaraelliott]

I love fruit cake, and have kept and eaten a cake that was over a year old, it just got better and better.

[laurac.b.devlin]

Looks delicious. My moms was similar and i like that you mince the fruit smaller, she did too. You can separate the eggs and whip up the whites and fold them in after the yolks are in the batter, it helps fluff up the cake. Hers were always in a loaf pan lined with buttered brown paper and baked in a low oven. It's been years since I made it but I still love it.

[anneirenej]

I love fruit cake. Homemade ... especially my moms and my mother in laws. Both delicious both with different fruit mixes.