I’m not a baker.  Cooking is easy – most things roast in the oven at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit, vegetables like to be served al dente, and there’s no such thing as “too much cheese.”  Baking, though, that’s tricky.  It’s like compiling a program, almost.  You design the main system, work up the subroutines, and run it to see what errors you made.  The difference, besides one leads to a delicious baked good and the other doesn’t, is that you have the chance to go back and edit a program if it doesn’t work the way you wanted.  If you screw up a baked good, you have to scrap the whole thing and start from scratch.

Worse, there’s plenty of places to go wrong.  Don’t add enough leavening?  Your product won’t rise.  Stirred too much?  Your angel food cake has developed gluten and will be way too tough.  Forgot to add salt?  Your bread will taste flat and lifeless.  (I did that once.  It was a great way to learn how important such a simple ingredient like salt is to pretty much every food on the planet.)  So, in general, I try to stay away from making baked goods, leaving the professionals to do their job.

So, here I am, staring down the next recipe in Alton’s book, and it’s one of my least favorite items: fruitcake.  I’ve had a few bites of the stuff over the years, and my impression is about what most people would say about fruitcake: “fake,” “inedible,” “commercial,” and “bakery sausage” come to my mind.  “Fake” because I have no idea what those green round fruits are supposed to be (I refuse to believe they’re cherries); “inedible” because they have an unpleasant chewy texture; “cmmercial” because they come wrapped like Twinkies; “bakery sausage” because it looks like someone rounded up all the bits from other better desserts and shoved them in this thing.  That said, my father loves fruitcake.  He can’t wait for the holiday season, so he can tear into some of the storebought fruitcakes.  The man has a serious sweet tooth, and so I have my in for the dish – I want him to try a real fruitcake for once in his life.

Fortunately, the recipe is pretty simple.  Take a bunch of dried fruit (golden raisins, currants, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, and apricots), the zest of an orange and a lemon, and some minced candied ginger, and let them macerate overnight in some good rum.  That lets the flavors of the fruit hydrate with the alcohol, and lets all their flavors marry.  The next day, grind up some cloves, some allspice and some cinnamon and combine the macerated fruit with the spice in a saucepan.  Add some sugar, butter, apple cider and ground ginger and bring it all to a boil.  Back off on the heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes to develop the flavors.  Let cool, and get to work on the nuts.

Alton advocated shelling your own nuts for this, and looking at the price per pound, I have to agree with him.  Sure, shelled nuts saves labor, but you pay for that labor.  I also bought his tool of choice for nutcracking – a simple C-clamp that cost me about $5 at Home Depot.  I lost some of the nuts, but got more than enough for the recipe, even after snacking on a few.

Once that’s all done, add some flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder to a sifter and sift directly into the pot containing the protobatter.  Stir until it comes together, then add the eggs, one at a time.  Then fold in the pecans and spoon into a nonstick loaf pan and bake for about an hour.

Now, as I’ve said, I’m not a baker, so I spent the hour hoping everything would turn out right.  Alton advocated putting a roasting pan filled with water beneath the pan nn the lowest rack.  This will create a humid environment inside the oven, and prevent the top from cracking.  I don’t know if that worked or not, because I had a different issue – the pan I used was just a bit too small, so it rose and flowed over the sides.  Fortunately, the pan prevented the batter from dropping onto the heating element and burning, so it ended up having a secondary and unintended function.  I also had issues with the center – it didn’t quite want to set.  I ended up pulling the cake after an extra fifteen minutes, and had to shrug my shoulders when the center fell some.

Once removed from the oven, the fruitcake gets a good spritzing of brandy.  This also guards against cracking, but also begins to cure the cake, and was a necessary step back when fruitcakes were made as provisions for the lean winter months.  The alcohol acted as a preservative, and kept the food fresh all winter long.  Of course, we don’t have that issue any longer, but it does add a good flavor component.  I made my fruitcake about two weeks ago, and it gets spritzed with brandy every few days, just to keep it moist.  I plan on serving it on Christmas morning to my family – and hopefully, my father will enjoy it.

Next time…we go off script.

Recipes: Free-Range Fruitcake