Family Recipe: Fruit Cake

Every year for as long as I can remember, my Grandma Ettling has made fruit cake and given it as Christmas gifts. She makes it a couple months before Christmas, and then soaks it in brandy for two months.

A couple years ago for Christmas, Grandma and her sisters compiled binders of family recipes and photos in cookbooks and gave them to kids and grandkids. This was one of those recipes that I was hoping would be in the cookbook, but wasn't. 

I don't think I've ever eaten store bought fruit cake, but if that's the only fruit cake you've ever eaten and you didn't like it, you need to try this fruit cake.

For as long as I can remember, this tin has sat on top of Grandma's refrigerator. 

Little did I know it holds a majority of the fruit for the fruitcake.

The ingredients:
2 - 8 oz boxes of Dates
about a pound of Currants
about 3 cups of Pecan halves
3 lb Red Cherries
1.5 lb Green Cherries
1.5 lb Pineapple
12 oz regular Raisins
8 oz golden Raisins
about 48 oz Fruit Cake fruit mix
Brandy

The batter:
2 sticks of butter, partially melted, or at room temperature
18 eggs, at room temperature
8 c flour, added 3 c at a time
1-1/2 c sugar
1-1/2 c orange juice
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

First off, we prepared the pans. Grandma uses disposable aluminum loaf pans and lines them with paper grocery bags. Then she sprays them with Pam.

After the cake batter was mixed, all the fixings went in:

 Then Uncle Joe mixed everything up.

 The batter was ladled into the pans, and baked at 300 for an hour. Then Grandma rotated some of the pans around and baked for another 30 minutes, checking every 10 minutes to rotate and remove pans that were finished baking.
This mix made 6 big pans and four small pans.

Then came the brandy. Grandma wraps the fruit cake in cheesecloth and saran wrap after pouring a couple shots over them. In a week, she unwraps them and adds more brandy. Then they hang out in the fruit cellar until Christmas.

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