Preparation:
Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, mixing well. Cut up
cherries. pineapple and pecans. Using the 2 cups flour called for
in the recipe, coat cherries, pineapple and pecans lightly with
flour. (I throw them in a zip-lock bag about 3/4 cup at a time and
shake them really good.) Make sure you use a portion of the
flour called for. Adding extra flour makes the cake dry. Coating
the fruit and nuts allows it to mix throughout the cake evenly. Sift
together dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture. Add
cherries, pineapple, pecans, vanilla and lemon to batter. (It
should have the appearance of just enought batter to coat
everything really well. It's really just enough cake to hold
everything together.) Mix well and bake in a greased tube pan
for 2 1/2 hours at 250 degrees F until just lightly browned.
Allow to cool. Remove from pan.
I try to make several of these in late Sep or early Oct. I wrap
them, sometimes in plastic wrap, sometimes in cheese cloth and
store them in an air tight container. After about 2 weeks, I
check the cakes to make sure they are mellowing and becoming
moister. Sometimes I have been known to add some type of
alcoholic beverage (rum, brandy, cognac whatevers extra
around here)
Even people who don't like *regular fruitcake* tend to like this.
I don't like the kind with raisins and candied peel in it, but this is
really good. If you want to really be decadent and blow a week's
worth of cholesterol, make some Southern boiled egg custard
and mix the custard and pieces of cake together in a bowl. Truly
Southern Christmas at i |
