Carol's light fruitcake ... - Only One Cake in the World

[Carol]

Sharon:
> > > Carol, your fruitcake recipe sounds wonderful -- nice and light.
I haven't made a fruitcake in years but my Mum always used to soak 
the fruit in real rum overnight ...
> > 
> > SSSusan:
> > Takes OUT the alcohol?  But pourquoi?? That's what makes really
good fruitcake really good! :)
> > 
> > My mom has made fruitcake for years, and it's The Best. I mean,
really -- I've even sent it to friends who are fruitcake afficionados
and they've concurred.  ...
> > 
> > Respectfully, but with strong fruitcake preference bias,
> > Siriusly Snapey Susan
> >
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Well, we seem to have some loves of Fruitcake here, and hopefully
they will forgive what I am about to say. 
> 
> I find fruitcake to be the most hideous of concoctions. But keep in
mind the only fruitcake I've had comes in round tins at Christmas
time. There seems to be a standing Joke that their is really only one
fruitcake in the whole world, and it keeps getting past from person to
person year after year, and never eaten. <snip>
> 
> The cake itself is at the same time both most and dry, and heavy as
a brick. The red and green waxy fruit taste, ...well like wax.
> 
<snip>
> So, to those who love fruitcake, please explain the obsession with
brick heavy waxy bland tasteless cake? Even if the cake itself were
made better, the waxy fruit would still taste waxy. The cake in my
opinion would be improved just by leaving the red and green balls of
wax out of it. <snip>

>

Carol:

The whole point of sharing a fruitcake recipe is to do away with the
delusion that fruitcake is the abomination that comes in a round can
and tastes like waxed paper. And it doesn't have to contain liquor,
either; mine uses apple cider, with rum extract for flavoring. 

Believe me, I wouldn't spend two hours just assembling the ingredients
and another 2 3/4 hours cooking the cakes if they tasted remotely like
the junk you're referring to. Could anyone refer to those heavy,
sticky flavorless concoctions as "nice and light"? (Mine is lighter in
both color and weight than many fruitcakes, but, of course, heavier
than cakes that don't have fruit and nuts in them.)

You can't, of course, leave out the red and green candied cherries,
but you can add other kinds of fruit (candied pineapple, golden
raisins, etc.) In a good cake (which you can't even taste in those
things you're calling fruitcake), the fruit does not taste like wax.
The outside of the cake is crunchy-sweet, the inside moist and lightly
sweet, like a pound cake, only not buttery because you use shortening,
not butter. You also use seven eggs, with the yolks making the batter
rich and the whites making it fluffy.

My nieces used to break the half cake I gave them and their parents at
Christmas into chunks and eat it on the car trip from Phoenix to
Boise. Must have been a bit sticky and crumbly, but they liked it too
much to wait till they got home.

Carol, whose fruitcakes have as much in common with those ghastly
things you're talking about as vanilla pudding has with blood pudding