Fruity about fruitcake

Remember I mentioned something about fruitcakes back in October? This picture was taken then, after I'd procured all the ingredients for my Jamaican black cake, which I'd read about in Laurie Colwin's memoirs (can't remember which volume, but it's the last essay).

I ended up using a modified recipe posted by some kind soul at King Arthur's Baking Circle. (If you can't tell, that's where I purchased most of the candied fruit -- except for the cherries, they don't add additional food coloring.) On the far right is the five-gallon glass apothecary jar I used for the rum and Kosher wine marinade.

I ran all the fruits through my food processor to chop them up into tiny bits -- currants, lemon peel, orange peel, citron, prunes, cherries, and raisins. Quite a bit of fruit! Then the fruit got thrown in with the 750 mls of wine and two 375 ml bottles of dark rum. The concoction sat on a shelf in my office for several months. Whenever I was feeling down, I'd stick my head in there and breathe deep. Mmmmm. Heavenly!

Baking day. Oh, what a project. First off, the recipe makes an INSANE amount of batter, enough to make 15 or 16 mini loaves in my case. The KitchenAid was useless in this case -- everything had to be mixed by hand in the largest bowl I had, which happened to be a Mason Cash bowl which takes up an awful lot of room but saves my ass when it needs saving, and even then the batter was up to rim. And very difficult to stir, what with the 12 cups of flour, fresh bread crumbs, brown sugar, and more. (Shall I post the recipe or is fruitcake something you're not interested in?)

But oy, how tasty. I frosted them with a sickly sweet almond fondant and promptly ate half a cake on an empty stomach. I actually got a bit heady, as the fruits really soaked up that alcohol quite nicely.

I'll post a picture of the finished product later.