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I suppose you’re thinking that with a name like
Kitchen Witch I would have been busy boiling up something in my cauldron in
honor of the recent All Hallows’ Eve. Unfortunately, this witch has
been in no mood for tricks. Instead, with a much longer holiday season just
weeks away, I’ve been hard at work on a potion of another kind. This
year I skipped my beloved caramel apples and candy corn for a new project:
the fruitcake. Go on, laugh all you like. I know I’m setting
myself up for ridicule and mockery. How can “fruitcake” and
“good” be used in the same sentence, you ask, chortling.
I’m right there with you; I’ve never had a good fruitcake,
either. I believe that the problem lies with the preponderance of candied
fruit that, when combined with booze, takes on a sci-fi-worthy neon glow
that scares the bejesus out of the toughest witch in town. So I’m taking the candied, glacéed fruit
out of the picture (did you ever really like those green maraschino
cherries to begin with?) and giving the fruitcake a second chance. With the
holiday season nigh, now is the time to marinate the fruit, the first step
to making a properly seasoned (read: boozy) fruitcake. With help from my
friend LaurelAnn Morley, who runs a small beachside restaurant in Barbados,
I now have a jar of fruit that’ll be bathing in booze for at least
two more weeks, when I’ll make the cake, which needs a few weeks of
alone time in a tin (with booze, of course) before its uncandied holiday
debut. Part two of this witchy endeavor, which includes a
recipe for the fruitcake batter, will be featured here soon.
Kim O’Donnel serves up 30 of her favorite
recipes expressly for the upcoming holiday season in her new book, A Mighty Appetite for the Holidays: Kitchen Tricks for the
Feasting Season. For online orders, go to
www.kimodonnel.com.
Fruitcake, PART One
Adapted from Caribbean
Recipes Old & New, by LaurelAnn Morley
Fruit The following is enough fruit for a cake made in a
deep 10-inch cake pan.
About 3 1/2 cups of dried fruit, including: 1 cup of raisins 1 cup of currants 1/2 cup of dried cherries (unless you insist on equal
amounts of the candied stuff) 1 cup of your dried fruit favorites — figs,
golden
raisins (a.k.a. sultanas),
apricots, prunes, and cran berries are all tasty
choices 1/2 cup of citrus peel from any combination of oranges, grapefruits, and lemons About 4 cups of boozy spirits, a combination of any of the following: amber rum,
brandy, cognac, grap pa, and fortified wine such
as sweet sherry, port, or Madeira
In a wide-mouthed jar with an airtight seal, combine
all ingredients and stir. Allow the mixture to steep for a few days; you
may notice that the fruit has absorbed much of the alcohol. Spoon the mixture into the bowl of a food processor
and use the pulse function to chop the fruit so that it isn’t
puréed. You want the fruit to be slightly chunky. Return the fruit and residual liquid to the airtight
jar. Keep the jar in a cool, dark place, allowing the contents to steep for
at least two weeks and as long as a month. Every few days, shake the jar or
turn it upside down to move the fruit around.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2007.
