Easy Fruit Cake
Gift Giving Tip of the Day
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One magazine picked up at the checkout stand is $5.
I am not a crazy fan of fruit cake but give me a slice of a great fruit cake and I LOVE fruit cake.
Fruit cakes get a bad rap due to the many of many that have been made in the past that are not very good. I admit that I hate citron and any fruit cake with citron is a fruit cake I hate. I much prefer a baked fruit cake if I have my choice.
This fruit cake is one Colby remembers her grandmother making so it has more of a nostalgia about it than being a perfect fruit cake. We make it every year because it ties her to a past and a people who no longer exist on this earth.
Ice box fruit cakes come in many form with many ingredients. The basis of them all is the gramham crackers and sweetened condensed milk. For fruit we buy candied lemon, pineapple, red and green cherries – anything but citron. And nuts – pecans are best for fruit cake. Lots and lots of Georgia pecans. Some people use marshmallows but I don’t like those kinds of fruit cakes.
Take one box of honey graham crackers and process them in the food processor to make crumbs. You can put them in a ziplock bag and crush them but they won’t be as fine. You can even buy graham cracker crumbs.
1 box crushed graham crackers and add the fruit and nuts to the dry crumbs first. Mixing everything well. Then and only then add 1 1/2 to 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk. Get your hands in here and work it like you would any thick dough.
Line your container or the graham cracker box with wax coated paper so you can form and store your cake in the fridge. I use a Christmas tin. I line one with only paper and one with cheese cloth and paper. The cheese cloth is for when I spoon brandy over the one cake. The cloth keeps it moist.
Press in your cake mixture.
Decorate the top. We prefer the cherries and the pecans but you can do anything you want or you don’t have to decorate it at all. These are candied maraschino cherries. Yumm!
Fold over the cheese cloth and sprinkle with brandy if you want.
Fold over the paper and press it all down to embed the nuts and cherries on top.
Place the sealed tins in the fridge for several days before cutting. It gives the flavors time to marry.
This is not my favorite fruit cake but it is a good fruit cake. Only add what you like. If Gracie made this cake it would only have candied cherries and pecans and she would add the marshmallows.
Bullets for Monday
Update:
I did it. NaNoWriMo is finished. I am so not happy with any of the 51,079 words in my word doc. What a waste. Someday I just might churn out something readable.
- I am trying very hard to finish NaNoWriMo.
- Not liking it in the crunch.
- I have ideas and storylines and plots but they just aren’t coming out on paper right now.
- I am working on Christmas biscotti. It is $8.50 a batch (plus shipping), which is about 12 pieces and at least one pound. It is hand dipped in chocolate or left plain for your pleasure.
Varieties are:
Chocolate Chip
Mint Chocolate Chip
Chocolate Orange
Cranberry Orange
Cherry Almond
Lemon
Give a shout via email if you are interested. - Susan McMinn from Chickens in the Road is asking for some help. Please go vote for her to get this job she has put herself out for.
- Starting tomorrow I hope to hope to do a daily post on the Christmas trees we have put up. We have 7 so far. Also 21 outdoor wreaths, 7 indoor wreath and a giant wreath on the barn (which looks amazingly small once it is hanging on the barn.
- Thanksgiving was lovely. Turkey was fabulous. Family was awesome.
- I have finished my Christmas shopping. I was actually finished a couple weeks ago. What few things I did buy I could not make. Most of my gifts are handmade.
- Christmas cards are finished except for the stamps.
- Some years I just cannot get in the mood to go all out for the season and other years I am overly excited and can’t contain my excitement and joy.
- I am beginning to worry that my ear may not be healing closed.
- This frightens me to no end.
- The fear of having surgery to fix it is quite debilitating if I let it get to me.
- It is Tupperware season. My site is up and running. Please help me be a success. If no one buys I will be a failure. That frightens me to no end right this moment. I think I may be having a minor panic attack over it.
- My coffee is getting cold
- Our chimney cleaning has been postponed several times due to rain. We have never gone this late into the year without a fire in the big fireplace.
- The little wood stove does a bang up job of warming up things but if the weather turned much colder it wouldn’t help in this part of the house.
- I wonder if I could turn out a piece of fiction worth getting published? I seem to be in a Harlequin Romance mode when I am able to write. I love vampire fiction but I think the market is saturated and I would drown in a sea of wanna be’s.
- You all are seeing my doubting weak side. I am going to stop now.
Brining and Roasting Your Turkey for Thanksgiving
Yesterday (or today) is the perfect time to start getting your turkey ready for Thanksgiving.
I brine our turkeys to ensure they are tender and juicey. Store bought turkey are injected with a sodium solution to insure they are tender and juicy but brining them in the sugar mix will add to the depth of the flavor.
I read something some where once that said brining was a technique that only serious foodies and trained chefs would know about when it comes to poultry because brining recipes were rarely covered in most common cookbooks. What?? I think someone thinks way too much of themselves to think ‘lowly home cooks and house wives’ are out of the loop when it comes to the pre-preparations of items like a holiday turkey.
Since we raise our own turkeys I often start my brine 3 days ahead of time and keep them packed down with ice for up to 72 hours before roasting.
I use one pound of raw sugar and one pound of sea salt or kosher salt melted together in a half gallon of hot water.
The raw sugar retains the natural molasses and imparts a rich flavor to the bird.
Line the bottom of a cooler with ice and add the cooled brine.
Nest the turkey into the ice and make sure you pack the cavity with ice. WE want the bird to stay as near to freezing without actually freezing as possible.
Cover the turkey with ice. Add enough fresh cold water to bring the brine up and make sort of a slushy ice water mixture. Not too much water as the ice will melt too fast.
Close the lid and leave the turkey to sit in the ice brine. 24 – 48 hours is perfect. Check the ice level periodically and add more ice as needed up to your designated time to start cooking.
If you want a picture perfect turkey for your table let me give you a few tips.
Go out today and buy a yard or two of cheese cloth, a pound of butter and a bottle of good white wine – I use a pinot grigio.
Pat the turkey dry.
Fill the inner cavity with a mix of quartered onions, celery, carrots, garlic cloves and a lemon wedge or two. I truss up the legs and flip the wings back to prevent the tips from burning or cooking too fast.
Using butcher twine tie the legs together otherwise they will poke straight up when cooking and the skin will split and the meat will pull away from the knuckles. You’ll end up with a less than attractive centerpiece.
Rub the turkey with butter, salt, pepper and garlic powder.
Melt the butter and whisk it together with about 2 – 3 cups of white wine. Cut the cheese clothe so that you have four thicknesses of it that when placed over the turkey it completely covered the bird.
Soak the cheese cloth in the butter and wine then drape it over the bird making sure you fold and tuck it in around the shape of the turkey like a shroud.
Slide the turkey pan into a 350 degree preheated oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes you are going to baste the turkey with your wine and butter sauce. Once the juices begin to flow from the turkey you can begin to baste with the pan juices that have mixed with the previous butter and wine in the pan.
The cheese cloth will cook and darken as your cooking time progresses. Not to worry. Just keep basting until your turkey is about 30 minutes away from the predicted end of cooking time.
At this point the turkey is pretty much cooked through. Now we are browning the skin perfectly.
Remember to keep basting every 15 min. Basting, basting, basting when you take off the cheese cloth. Until the turkey is the perfect golden brown.
In case you don’t know a turkey should be roasted 15 minutes per pound of bird. A 25 pound turkey is predictably six hours and 15 minutes of cook time. So about 5 hours and 45 minutes into the cooking you will remove the cheese cloth, baste the turkey and allow the skin to being to brown and crisp up. The turkey is done when a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest portion without touching the bone reads 165 degrees.
This method gives you that perfect deep golden brown that you see in print ads for holiday tables.
Have a wonderful holiday everyone. Be safe and enjoy your time with your family. Drink it all in and soak it up like a sponge.
Happy Thanksgiving!
**The turkey in the last photo was from last year and weighed in at 70lbs dressed. Here is a photo of Steven so you can judge the true enormity of that bird we raised.
My Tupperware site is hosting great savings. There are some awesome deals going on for this week. Orders of $99 get free shipping. Also the rectangular cake taker which doubles as a cup cake taker is on sale for half price. I love it! If you have ever taken cup cakes to school you can appreciate this convenience of this item. You could actually order 2 for the price of one. Sale ends Friday. The first 10 people to order $25 of tupperware through my tupperware site and I’ll send you 2 bars of homemade soap and a jar of my lotion bar for free.
