baking
Okay, I have to say that decent though the cake in my last entry was fresh, it is quite unpleasant four or five days later. Both gluey and cardboardy, as though that's even possible.
Anyway, the epic adventur of fruitcake has moved on. Useful facts: 1.5 times the cake batter for Margaret Fulton's 24 cm rich fruit cake is enough for what turned out to be 2.25kgs of fruit & nuts, wet. I realised afterwards that I never weighed it dry, but the first kilo was what I tweeted about; I then added most of two (tiny, 80g?) packets of dried blueberries (I ate the rest of them; they're as nice dried as they are fresh!) & a packet (200g) of dried apples. There was also about one handful of natural almonds and four handfuls of walnuts, chopped. I fed that mixture something like 2 cups of rum, over the week. It was the end of one bottle, plus about a third of a new bottle. And, now that I think of it, a slosh of brandy before I noticed the new bottle. I had a wee packet of cranberries too, which I added to the mixture just before it got turned into cake. They weren't dried, what do you call tinned fruit that's packed in little plastic packets? Twitpic was cranky at me, but I did take a photo of the mixture before packing it into the tins; I had to use the punch bowl as 2.25kgs of fruit and nuts reconstituted in rum is, in fact, the cubic volume of our largest mixing bowl.
So now I have three mediumsmall cakes and one tiny cake, sprinkled with more rum and wrapped in foil in the back of the cupboard. And I was able to baffle steph about the whole leaving the cake to ripen for a month or so before it gets eaten. And having blogged this, I have a shot at remembering what I did, next time the fruit cake urge comes over me!
Of course, I still have rum left over. Which implies I didn't yet use enough rum.
This entry is crossposted from DW. Comment here or there.
Anyway, the epic adventur of fruitcake has moved on. Useful facts: 1.5 times the cake batter for Margaret Fulton's 24 cm rich fruit cake is enough for what turned out to be 2.25kgs of fruit & nuts, wet. I realised afterwards that I never weighed it dry, but the first kilo was what I tweeted about; I then added most of two (tiny, 80g?) packets of dried blueberries (I ate the rest of them; they're as nice dried as they are fresh!) & a packet (200g) of dried apples. There was also about one handful of natural almonds and four handfuls of walnuts, chopped. I fed that mixture something like 2 cups of rum, over the week. It was the end of one bottle, plus about a third of a new bottle. And, now that I think of it, a slosh of brandy before I noticed the new bottle. I had a wee packet of cranberries too, which I added to the mixture just before it got turned into cake. They weren't dried, what do you call tinned fruit that's packed in little plastic packets? Twitpic was cranky at me, but I did take a photo of the mixture before packing it into the tins; I had to use the punch bowl as 2.25kgs of fruit and nuts reconstituted in rum is, in fact, the cubic volume of our largest mixing bowl.
So now I have three mediumsmall cakes and one tiny cake, sprinkled with more rum and wrapped in foil in the back of the cupboard. And I was able to baffle steph about the whole leaving the cake to ripen for a month or so before it gets eaten. And having blogged this, I have a shot at remembering what I did, next time the fruit cake urge comes over me!
Of course, I still have rum left over. Which implies I didn't yet use enough rum.
This entry is crossposted from DW. Comment here or there.