Stir Up Sunday: Am I the only one feeding Christmas cake?

Stir Up Sunday* is in a couple of days. That's the traditional day to make Christmas puddng and cake, but I made my cake a couple of weeks ago and am feeding it weekly with copious amounts of Armagnac.

And such is the temptation to have a piece early I then had to make another one for early consumption.


Wikipaedia says

Stir-up Sunday is an informal term in Anglican churches for the last Sunday before the season of Advent.

The term comes from the opening words of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and later (a translation of the Roman Missal's collect "Excita, quæsumus"):

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded;

Americans tend to scoff at fruitcakes of any kind. There are plenty of very bad examples of dried out boring fruitcakes from commercial sources.

In America, one good example of the fruitcake or "keeping cake" is the Black Cake, which is associated with Jamaica. Americans learned about it in New England when the servants often came from Jamaica (around the time of the witchcraft trials). These are rich fruitcakes that are soaked with liquor at intervals like a plum pudding.

When our son got married in July, Louise made a "grooms cake" which has a similar recipe. We've been keeping a big chunk of it in the bottom of our fridge, but not "stirring it up" with alcohol. That might not be a bad idea. Last time we tried it it was still delicious.

We're Episcopalian, which = Anglican, and there are a lot of Jamaicans in our church. Probably we will hear the same text this weekend. Interesting.

We don't make any Christmas cake, but I look forward to the arrival of my mother-in-law's stollen in the mail!

[Jenise]

I have never made a fruitcake.

But I love it!

We are very spoiled in my house: An English friend's mother sends us a homemade pudding every year. Better than anything we ever bought in a shop.

If you have never had a really good fruitcake it might be impossible to imagine what the flavor is like.
Imagine the juiciest raisins and lots of other good flavors mixed with rum or brandy. It is a luxury, and it costs a helluva lot more than another kind of cake -- Louise probably spent $75 at "Nuts Unlimited" plus the alcohol. Jamaicans use black cake for everything, even their wedding cakes are black.

We first came across it in a couple of odd contexts. Well, we had known about plum pudding for a long time, and would occasionally have that at Christmas. But for black cake -- I read a lovely piece by Laurie Colwin, who was one of my favorite writers, especially when she had a column in Gourmet (in the glory years of Gourmet). Laurie Colwin died quite young and I miss her. So there is the Laurie Colwin recipe, and also a recipe by Emily Dickinson of all people...

http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=556

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/L ... Black-Cake

Americans tend to scoff at fruitcakes of any kind. There are plenty of very bad examples of dried out boring fruitcakes from commercial sources. .

I'm surprised.

Also puzzled that there are commercial offerings if they are not liked. Must say that I was brought up on home made cakes and only tried commercial ones much later when work and family commitments intervened.

In past my other half made them but I thought I'd have a go and I'm surprised how easy it is.

I marinaded the dried fruits overnight in ample Armagnac which was all soaked up and then 'feed' the cake with Armagnac every week until Christmas.

I have never made a fruitcake.

But I love it!

I'll never forget the "uncake" my wife made one year early in our marriage. She used her grandmother's recipe, which specified the ingredients, but not the quantities. The result was a bunch of glacéed and dried fruit and candied ginger loosely held together with a tiny bit of cake. I loved it, but haven't been able to convince her to make it again .

Peter, Americans do not understand the concept of fruitcake, and they buy them by mail from places that also sell tubes of tasteless commercial cheese food and terrible sausages. The resulting "bricks" of black stuff that are hard to cut and harder to chew are a joke here. And the sad thing is that most Americans think that crap is the epitome of fruitcake.

Ted, your "uncake" probably tasted very close to what a real home-made fruitcake tastes like. I don't think there was a lot of flour in Louise's grooms cake recipe but it adhered nicely, probably due to a long time in the oven. Click on the links I provided above for good functional recipes that your wife MIGHT be willing to try. (How does she feel about Emily Dickinson?)

Made right here in Kentucky, and the Queen of England buys several each year. Or so I am told. This is made by the Trappist Monks in a small abbey in Bardstown Kentucky. They support themselves by making these and several different very delicious cheeses. Anyway, here is a link to them. http://www.gethsemanifarms.org/fruitcake.aspx

[Jenise]

Okay, I'm now feeling bad about never having made a fruitcake, so I checked online for recipes and fell in love with something called Texas Brazil Nut Fruitcake, or some such. Now the trouble will be actually finding that many brazil nuts.

Okay, I'm now feeling bad about never having made a fruitcake, so I checked online for recipes and fell in love with something called Texas Brazil Nut Fruitcake, or some such. Now the trouble will be actually finding that many brazil nuts.

http://www.nutsonline.com/search?q=brazil+nuts

Texas Brazil Nut Fruitcake, .

SEVEN pounds of fruit and nuts? - And whole brazil nuts in the cake?

I'll be interested to see how that comes out.

(but an important ingredient is missing - no brandy!)

These days I don't make Christmas cake or Christmas pudding. Sadly. I used to like doing this. But when you change husbands and change family circles and your friends are all worried about their cholesterol (and you ought to be yourself, too) then you change what you cook.

We do have a Christmas tradition in the making, though. Last year the Francophile made a batch of "home-made Bailey's" with vast amounts of Scotch whisky and good quality dark Swiss chocolate. The young folk are starting to ring up asking if Dad is making it again, and if he is, can he make an extra bottle for their friends/neighbours/inlaws who had some at their place last year and loved it. I loved it too, so I'm all for it.