Fruitcake *without* alcohol

My mother was strictly against alcohol consumption. She made fruitcakes every year. She put apple slices in the tin with the fruitcake. She would check them occasionally and change the apple slices as needed. I don't recall that they ever got moldy. As I recall, she always had the cakes made before Thanksgiving for consumption on Christmas.. You could also soak some cheesecloth or a towel in orange juice and wrap the cake in that. You might also try using some of the flavored syrups sold for coffee. You just need something that will humidify the container that contains the cake. Of course, you need to store the cakes in cool, dark place.

If the cake is made with the right ingredients, ie :- butter instead of margarine etc, sugar instead of a substitute, all items being right and the cake is baked for the correct amount of time, and not overbaked and allowed to dry out, and the liner to the pan is left intact on the cake, and it is stored in a cool dry place it should be just fine, after all it only has about 6 weeks max. In the old days cakes were stored in a wooden box or a drawer in the sideboard, the wood allows it to breath.

PS, I do like to enclose my cake in a foil cover when it comes hot from the oven, and then allowed to cool, remove foil before storing.

PPS if your fruit is nice and fresh you really don't need to macerate. And continue like gg grandma says. :-)

If your fruit is nice & fresh you have funny ideas about fruitcake, having been traditionally made with dried fruits.

My thoughts exactly.

Thank you!

I knew it could be done (after all, gg-gramma was a tee-totalling Methodist) but "everyone knows" that fruitcake is soaked/spritzed with brandy/bourbon/whisk(e)y, and I couldn't find anything with information otherwise.

And I was slightly incorrect...gg-gramma's recipe says 'bake in slow oven until done', not 325.

thanks!

jenn

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

Meaning that the fruit be new stock that has not been around a long time and really dried up. Meaning currants, sultanas and raisins that are nice and shiny not all hard as a bullet and really miserable.

Be sure and read the ingredient list on your extracts. They often have alcohol contents of 40% or so.

However, one has to look at the total volume of ingredients. US Federal law considers anything with an alcohol content of under 0.5% to be non-alcoholic. Even ordinary fruit juices can naturally ferment to this level while sitting out, unbeknownst to the consumer.

Of course, if you are baking these for a recovering alcoholic, the mental knowledge of alcohol presence can be as or more important than actual presence of alcohol or lack thereof.

I know that, but it doesn't taste like it. I actually used oils, so that's not a problem anyway.

No, it's just for extended family consumption, and both DH and MIL

*hate* the taste of alcohol. So, no spritzing the fruitcake with booze. Extracts in the cake (vanilla, citrus) are fine. Macerating in booze is not acceptable. (MIL won't know what's in it, but she'll gripe about how 'this tastes bad')

jenn