I had a work friend from Jamaica. He'd bring home the bottle of Jamaican rum and would give it to me. I would soak my dried fruit in in and in a bottle of Passover wine. Then I would make a West Indian Black cake, a rich, spicy fruit cake and give him one and keep the rest for myself. He loved it because he got the cake but didn't have to go to all the trouble to make it. When I go walking dogs all day in the winter, I take fruit cake as a snack to keep up my energy in the cold.
Little known fact, there has ever only been a dozen fruitcakes made. Two were eaten by Scott before he died and the I remaining 10 have been passed around and re-gifted since 1912. Some say a carelessly discarded fruitcake was responsible for the titanic sinking, the fruitcake survived...
First, why does everyone rag on fruitcake? It's fruit, it's cake, what more do you want? Second, you failed to mention Mandel Bread - a Jewish delicacy based on almonds (mandels) and which I've had in both chocolate and (my preference) stuffed with fruit and nuts. Delicious.
Okay, always sitting over there in the corner in the decorative canister every year -- Fruit Cake. (It knows all your secrets) Just sitting there, 'cuz let's be real, you've got so many other desserts, who cares about fruitcake.😂😂🤭
Huh, Robert F Scott arrived at the south pole 2nd 80 years prior to my birth on the day. Interesting. Also interesting 10 years to the day prior to the birth of Betty White. Too bad him nor his crew survived to learn of Betty White.
Everyone dumps on Guy Fieri, but he has created several shows that not only celebrate not famous, everyday people but have a decidedly more positive and light hearted spin on competition and cooking than the other shows on the same network when he started.
He's done admirable work providing support for family restauranteurs that have fallen on hard times during COVID, too. $22M+ raised. e.g. abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/guy-fieri-launches-relief-fund-restaurant-industry-workers/story?id=69916230
You've obviously never tried boiled mutton. Mmmmmm so tasty. (Ok, I lied. boiled mutton tastes like someone boiled an old wool blanket with moldy turnips and rotten cabbage)
Many lower class English houses didn't have an oven, but they did have a "copper" boiler - i.e. a water heater, that could be used to boil puddings. Read "A Christmas Carol." The Cratchits had to send their tiny goose to the bakers to be roasted with everyone else in Camdentown's Christmas dinner, but Mrs. Cratchit cooked the plum pudding at home in the copper in the kitchen.
Fruit cake does not deserve the bad rep. Properly made and lightly aged (make them at the end of the summer and drench them with brandy before sealing) they can be delightful. But made with plastic dyed glucose candied fruits and white flour? Forget it.Those are doorstops. Take equal quantities of dried fruits (these from the health food store, not the supermarket) and (excepting the currents) cut them into smaller bits. Add coarsely chopped nuts to taste (please no peanuts!) and mix this with about half the volume of GROUND ALMONDS or ALMOND FLOUR, add enough honey or maple syrup to moisten the mass and pack into a loaf pan or a bundt mold which is very well buttered. Bake at about 250 F until it starts to pull from the sides of the pan. This is going to take a while. Some folks will use parchment paper to line the pans. Once cooled, it can be iced with plain butter creame frosting (no vanilla, lemon if you must) or hard sauce. OR drenched with brandy and wrapped and stored for a few months. At the Victorian Weddings, this was the GROOM's Cake. Stronger and more manly, I suppose, than the sugary white confection which the Bride's Cake has become.
I was told when I was young that there was only one fruitcake that was ever made. Of course, no one actually eats it, it is a fruitcake after all, so they just regift it to a new family every year. Ahhh, traditions. Merry Christmas!
my great grandma used to bake fruitcakes for all her grandsons (who were off abroad in the armed services), and one for her husband which had A LOT of alcohol in it. She once accidentally sent THAT one to my dad in Germany... It smelled so strongly that he got called down to the post room so they could find out what the hell he'd been sent!
I would like to know what did Europeans eat before the invasion of the American Continent... Like what was the real traditional food/snacks/etc before corn, potatoes, tomatoes...
i so so sooo love Fruit Cakem i as well make cookies & muffins from the Candid Fruit, i'm not an Alcohol cake person, but i do love the Black Strap Molasses & Sorghum syrup, 1 bitter & 1 sweet but both so good in the cake
Oo, we'll probably have to wait a year for this one so it's seasonal again, but I'm definitely adding it to the list (tbh, I wish we had thought of it this year-thanks for the suggestion!)
I had no idea fruitcake was a real thing until recently. All my life, it's been my dad's go-to "fake swear" when he's mad at me but not mad enough to get too harsh, i.e. "You are such a fruitcake!" "don't be a fruitcake"
DID YOU KNOW?: Some superstitions state that if you're unmarried, putting a slice of fruitcake under your pillow will help you dream about who you're supposed to marry!
I wonder if having the fruitcake at the wedding is a /family/ tradition for the royals now. Its easy to forget that they're real people, but I can see that discussion happening.
Fruitcakes were traditional as wedding cakes (and still are in some places) because the cake had to keep. People would be sent a piece of the cake as a wedding favor and the couple would keep a slice to eat on their first anniversary. You can't do that with a sponge cake. Also, sponge cakes weren't as common in the past as were fruit cakes.
@@tessat338 Correct. I am more interested in whether this was offered during the recent Royal Weddings more as a family tradition, or more as a cultural norm for British people.
I love, love, love fruitcake. Until I was in my 40s I generally had what was available in the grocery store. But one weekend I was traveling from Dallas to visit my parents in Arkansas. There was a bakery on the frontage road of I30 which advertised their fruitcakes. I decided to stop and glad I did. Their fruitcakes were absolutely amazing. All were fruit and nut dense with only a small amount of batter to hold the fruits and nuts together. They had at least 20 different types of fruitcakes (traditional dark, white. and many that were named for their primary fruits, such as pineapple, apricot, etc. I loved stopping and buying fruitcakes when I was through there. Sadly, they went out of business in the 2008 great recession. At least I learned some tips for baking (and buying) fruitcakes.
Bless Americans and the challenge of pronouncing British place names. My favourite is the American attempt at "Worcestershire Sauce". It cracks me up every time.
I have had fruitcake preciously once. It was made with rum, and it was good. To be fair, most baked goods gifted at Christmas get thrown out. Maybe fruitcake being the first to achieve this status is actually a point in its favor. I'm sure that Prohibition contributed to its fall in popularity in the U.S. along with its meme-ification.
4:10 But it does contain "plums". In centuries past in England, "plum" referred to just... dried fruit in general. Like how "apple" originally meant "fruit". So those raisins and currants _are_ the "plums" in Plum Pudding. (thanks to Tasting History with Max Miller for teaching us that tidbit just recently!)
I can believe that homemade fruitcake is good. I’ll admit it baffles me that every ingredient that goes into it of itself (except rum-I don’t drink), I gleefully ingest,
My understanding is that fruitcakes or plum puddings are suppose to be soaked in some alcoholic beverage prior to serving. I'm not sure what the original traditional alcohol was but spiced rum sounds like it would work very well. Of course, if it originally had low sugar content a sweet mead may have been the preference.
Great video! Interesting content with a clean script, well shot, and nice sounding audio. Justin even removed the glasses so no distracting ring light reflections.
European ones are delicious! Just made my first stollen this year, it's an insult to call the commercial American fruitcake a fruitcake when these beauties also are! lol The French brioche could also be a type if you add fruits to it. In Europe, people don't use as much fake dyes in their foods like they do here, so that might also be why they are better.
It depends on the batter and fruit used. I once had a piece of a very tasty one. Some of the fruits used in commercial ones just don't taste good. (My mother detested citron, a common addition.) If you have a good tasting batter and use dried fruit you actually like, then you will enjoy fruitcake. No need to test yourself on a mass produced U.S. one!
Hey I love your show! First time watch long time lover of food! I would love to now the History of the Holiday turkey 🦃 and why we eat it at Thanksgiving and Christmas!
Thanks! I know we touch on that a bit in this piece www.mentalfloss.com/article/20218/why-we-eat-what-we-eat-thanksgiving, but I could definitely see a future episode on celebration meals, in general.
I love these episodes. Also, I love what appears to be the Firefly series on the shelf in the background. Mad props, brah my entire house is full of Firefly crap.
You have a very interesting presentation however you keep interrupting yourself. That is driving me batty. Perhaps you are nervous as to the reason you kept interrupting yourself. Hopefully you can get over that bad habit.
