Its weird how most American food has been fiddled with preservatives to extend shelf live as well as using banned processes - and yet here is a natural made food that gets matured for better flavour and Americans cant stand it because the cherries on top look flaurescent lol yet they love the fluorescent drinks like mount dew and Fanta
Not to mention every other colour (color for my colonial cousins) of radioactive joy that is in American food. Please remember that red food colouring in its natural form (Cochineal) is derived from a beetle from Mexico squashed live to extract the juices.😮❤
I think it's things we aren't familiar with. I used to often eat raw meat before I moved to UK where people were shocked and convinced me that doing the same in UK would result in severe illness or death! I suppose that is true after what I have witnessed in supermarkets but I'm sure reputable butchers can produce meat safe enough to eat raw. I never ate raw meat in large quantities, it was mostly a sample taste before cooking. Beef and lamb, plus some wild meats but never chicken, pork, etc.
@@alexrafe2590for the record, plaster of Paris is calcium sulphate, and potassium bromide is/was used as a sedative, anticonvulsant and antiepileptic. You're thinking of potassium bromate, which is a completely different thing, although I'd still rather not be consuming it. Thankfully it's banned as a food additive in the UK and EU.
My grandmother had a back kitchen, as well as an ordinary kitchen - she lived in the country - and on shelves were about six fruitcakes in rotation. She would make a fruitcake for the Christmas cake every year, but it was for several years time. She would then ‘feed’ each cake throughout the year with Brandy in order to help it mature, and the taste was absolutely phenomenal because fruitcakes improve enormously with age if they’re wrapped up carefully. The whole family loved her Christmas fruit cake.
Make the cake in September & then feed it every week to 2 weeks with brandy. I’ve never put radioactive fruits in it!! Also in the U.K. we do not have as many box mixes for cakes as you do in the US Also it has to be marzipan & a good layer of royal icing
That bivouac coloured fruit is not British. Dundee cake is a rich fruit cake topped with almonds. Bara brith is a fruit loaf, less fruit, loaf shaped served as buttered slices.
I use the Delia Smith recipe for traditional UK Christmas cake. I make the cake in September/October then ‘feed’ it with brandy every week until mid December when I put the marzipan on it. A few days before Christmas I put the Royal Icing on it. I nearly always have a slice of my Christmas cake with a large slice of cheese. Apparently it’s a northern UK thing to have cheese with it.
@christhorpejunction8982 My daughter doesn't like fruit in cakes, so she just eats the marzipan and icing! I have to leave some aside for her when I put it on the cake.
I am from Southern England. A work colleague of mine lived and worked in York for a few years before moving back to be with the guy she later married. When she was in York she went to a colleague's family on Christmas Day. When she was handed her piece of Christmas Cake, she was very surprised to be asked whether she wanted a piece of cheese with it.
@@trickygoose2 I grew up in Illinois and it wasn't crazy to have a slice of cheddar cheese with a piece of apple pie. But many Americans think that's bizarre as well!
Australians who still make fruit cake is like the English and Irish ones Delicious with Irish whiskey I had one for my wedding in 1978.2 tiers with icing .The guests took a piece home.The shops don't make for weddings anymore Americanised A lot of mud cake, which I don't like.i like a milk chocolate cake.
Yes, the American fruitcakes I showed in this video are rubbish! But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out.
I make Christmas fruit cake every year. I make it by the 2nd week of November. No preservatives just brandy fed to eat once a week. I also use brandy soaked fruit it makes the cake moist.
Thank you and Merry Christmas. I'm a Brit and a big part of my childhood was the making of the family Christmas cake, mixed by hand with a wooden spoon, it's hard work so everyone gets a turn at creaming the butter and sugar together, has to have real butter, good eggs, demerara sugar, plain flour and lots of dried fruit, spice and orange zest, if you prefer to eat it in a short period use a mix of rum and tea overnight to soak the fruit and plump it up before making the cake. Add nuts if you enjoy them, I personally add ground almonds. (and yes, it's very good with a nice piece of cheese). Perhaps the European traditions of various types of fruit cakes come from earlier history when fresh fruit was almost impossible to get or keep for most of the year, making the use of the exotic dried fruits etc. something for special occasions. When food spoilage and ingredient availability were both big problems items that would keep for a decent period in the store cupboard were needed. From memory Dundee cake has a decoration of whole almonds and a jam/marmalade glaze I think rather than the marzipan and royal icing of the Christmas cake, and sometimes marmalade in the batter instead of orange/lemon zest)
Yes, I agree... before we had freezers and shipped food from the Southern hemisphere year round, it was nice to have dried fruit in the winter and use it in cakes! I would love to have a fruitcake with any kind of nuts, and I think a Dundee cake with almonds is something I need to try! Cheers! Dara
I made a fruitcake following an authentic British recipe. And it was delicious. I bought the mixed spice on Amazon. American fruitcake recipes differ from British ones.
In Britain we tend to weigh the ingredients whereas in USA people tend to measure volumes. Weight gives a more consistent result, especially for things like flour that can vary in density.
I lived in the US for three years and the first Christmas (3 months in) I went out to buy the ingredients to make a Christmas cake and had a homesick meltdown in the store (a Krogers actually) because I couldn't find sultanas or currants. 😢It broke me that day. I did later find out that I needed golden raisins and just omitted the currants! AND all the Americans who tried it loved it - said it was nothing like any fruitcake they'd ever tried before.
I bought an Aldi or Lidl Christmas cake, and it wasn't bad, but a commercial cake could never touch a homemade cake made with love. My ex missus was a bit of a cook and her Christmas cake was made in September and then drip fed various alcohols, both spirits and fortified wine. More solid than a malt loaf, it should still be sodden and keep for well over 12 months. Some of the cakes featured were an anaemic colour and were more the colour of a barmbrack (An Irish fruit loaf sweeter than bread but not a cake) Barmbrack may be toasted like a teacake. The Yorkshire custom of cake or fruit loaf with cheese must be tried. Not as weird sounding as the Spanish red wine and coke it does, in a similar way, just work. For the unknowing, Lancashire cheese is very similar to Wensleydale and might be more available. Crumbly Lancashire also makes the world's best cheese on toast. All the above to be consumed with lashings of hot tea. Is it significant for the barmbrack that the Irish drink more tea than the British. Merry Christmas to ye all.
Truth is british/ irish and german/Austrian fruit cake is the best, all the others have weird ingredients like glow in the dark coloured sugar coated fruit
@@jericho_bees I lived on "The Dark Side" of the Pennines for quite a few years. It is an odd thing. While loving cod, one occasionally desires skin on haddock. With a preference for Burry Black Puddings, there is the occasional desire for a Yorkshire one. Yet Lancashire and Wensleydale cheese are both perfect in their own way. Nothing matches crumbly Lancashire grilled onto toast, though. The only option, I'm for using butter first, some have without.
I love fruitcake. My wedding cake in 1980 was a three tier heart shaped cake with royal icing. The top tier was kept (as per tradition for the christening of my eldest child. It lasted for several years. Now I get to eat a whole Christmas cake as my kids don't like fruitcake, it's a high point of the Christmas period for me (the boozier the better .🥳
@@theolder_man5768 Mainly I was referring to the Christmas cake although I do drink over the holiday as well, starting in the morning with crumpets for breakfast and continuing throughout the day. 🥳
Oh I love Christmas cake, but I make my own. Made in August/September, injected with rum or brandy until December, marzipan, then thick royal icing. I think fondant tastes like play dough 😂.
@@MagentaOtterTravels . I had an aunt who made hers in the summer. She stored it in a tin and very couple of weeks, she would pour a glass of brandy over it.
@@MagentaOtterTravelsMy mother always made several Christmas cakes each year, beginning in July or August, and ‘feeding’ with brandy every week for several months until they were iced & decorated (using ‘Royal Icing’, the difference from ordinary ‘icing’ or ‘frosting’ as Americans call it I think, is that it contains both egg white & glycerine, and it becomes very hard - and is completely delicious 😋) in late November or early December - some were for our family’s own use, others were given as gifts and at least one was stored until the following Autumn, to consume before the current year’s cakes had time to mature. Once my mother stopped making Christmas cakes as she became quite old & arthritis affected her hands, I made a couple of similar cakes each year using her proven recipe - they were very good too, although I never mastered the elaborate icing, my icing was nice too, but not so detailed. However my brother for several years made excellent Christmas cakes with very complex icing - he actually went to evening classes to learn how to do professional icing. Finally, mentioning Collins Street Bakery reminded me that 30 or 40 years ago, when I lived in various parts of the Middle East that American Express used to include flyers for this company’s Deluxe Fruit cakes in summer/autumn statements to order as Christmas gifts which could be sent anywhere in the world - for several years I ordered them as gifts for family & friends back in the UK and various other parts of the world. By all accounts they were very good cakes, delivered in decorative tins, but the inclusion of pecan nuts in particular , as well as the red & green glacé cherries & other fruits, made them really good, but the pecan nuts were certainly different from most UK-made fruit cakes, certainly in those days. One dried fruit that I never seem to see now (no doubt still available from specialist suppliers) is candied Angelica - it always adds a subtle but distinctive flavour in my view. I love fruit cakes in general, whether iced or not, but rarely eat them now, because they’re just too rich & crammed with calories - occasionally if I’m invited to a wedding or a christening I’ll take a sliver of the wedding cake (one or more tiers is traditionally kept for christenings of any children that may result) and really enjoy it as a special treat.
I usually make my own Christmas cake any time from the end of September to the end of October and “feed” it with brandy until I put marzipan on the top on Christmas Eve Living in the north of England we also eat it with cheese (proper cheese not that neon stuff you get in the US but a cheese like Wensleydale or blue Stilton) Also those are glacé cherries on the top which have natural dyes added to make them red green or yellow and how you can claim they are fluorescent when you have stuff like Mountain Dew and skittles beats me Dundee cake is a lighter (both in colour and texture) fruit cake that has almonds placed on top before it’s baked most recipes do include marmalade
I was born in 1952, and I like fruitcake. I remember my Aunt made them every September, put them in the bottom drawer of her bureau, and kept soaking them with brandy until Christmas. They were great on those cold Connecticut evenings.
That's so funny! I am picturing a cake being fed brandy... all hidden in the bottom drawer of a bureau. That makes me smile! Thanks for your comment. Cheers! Dara
I'm english, my grandmother used to make the best fruitcake. She would mature it for a few months with extra rum and fill it with pecan nuts, walnuts, glace cherries, crystalised ginger root, and a little bit of coconut. Topped with a layer of marzipan and white icing, of course.
I do like this channel. It’s always well presented, interesting, honest and engaging. Most of all though it’s unassumingly smart and treats its viewers with respect. What you see is what you get with no agenda.
You mentioned All Spice, but did not elaborate. Allspice is a spice made from the dried berries of a plant known as Pimenta dioica, which is a member of the myrtle family.… while it reminds of several other spices it’s actually just a single spice. The flavor of allspice brings to mind cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and pepper. It is available at my local grocery store in Texas.
I'm British and I've lived in the US for many years, and fruitcakes on either side of the pond are completely different cakes. I love English fruitcake, it's dark with fruit like raisins, spicy with nutmeg and ginger, and of course it's often topped with marzipan and royal icing. The flavor is very slightly bitter in addition to sweet, enhanced with brandy, and/or sherry and the texture is firm. I've had it as a birthday cake, my wedding cake, and at every Christmas dinner. American fruitcake tends to be lighter in color and filled with cherries, pineapple and other neon-bright candied fruits. It's quite often more fruit than cake, and it's also far too sweet.
That is a very good summary! I agree with your assessment and thank you for sharing your opinion! I always love hearing from people who have lived in both the US and UK. ;-) Cheers! Dara
IMy parents and I used to make 4 or 5 Christmas Cakes each year, one for ourselves and the rest for the neighbours, the local vets ( as a thank you to the staff for the care to our dogs) ,relatives and local school Christmas prize raffle. We used Delia Smith's Creole Christmas Cake recipe. You could get tipsy from the fumes from 4 types of spirts as you poached the alcholic fruit and nut mixture on tbe hob, ah the lovely memories as sadly both parents are no longer here.
Bless your family... that sounds like a great tradition! Sorry that your folks are gone... so are mine. Christmas is a bittersweet time as we miss our loved ones who are gone. What my mum used to make was marizpan fruit, since my father was German. One of these days I'll do a video to show how we made it. It's very artistic and interesting.
I'm English and had a fruit cake at my wedding, weddings nowadays are tending to have sponge cake. I have made christmas cake, and have added Rum or Amaretto in the mix, when cooled tapped in foil in an air tight container, then fed it once a week for 4 weeks
Fruitcake and wedding cake are the same. As some have said, the top tier of the wedding cake is traditionally kept for the first christening. My dad was a baker and made wedding cakes in our local area. I do remember a woman bringing back the top tier to be re-iced 8 YEARS after the wedding. My dad used a hammer and chisel to get the old icing off but the cake was perfect underneath it. He re-iced it and it looked as good as new and was enjoyed at the christening!
My mother used to make such a nice Christmas cake - complete with marzipan and Royal icing . It was so good that some years she had to make a second one ( once we were no longer small children and liked it with coffee in the forenoon) . There used to be a tradition of keeping the top tier of your wedding cake ( there were often three or four tiers) to use as a christening cake for your first born - so maybe a couple of years later ! Later siblings would get a fresh cake baked with ornaments on it like a stork.
I made my own wedding cake, a year before the date, I 'fed' the layers with brandy, and then three weeks before the wedding I got the local baker and pastry chef to ice and decorate to my design, because by that time I had far too much to do to fit in cake icing too. It was worth it though, and I still love fruit cake, but home made ones are much better than store bought, always!
I am a dual national and I LOVE fruit cake. I grew up in England (live in the US now)and I always buy fruit cake when I go home. I have yet to find a fruit cake in the US that is worth the calories. I have tried expensive and less expensive cakes. In the USA I can only get a yummy fruit cake by baking my own. I married in England and we had a wedding fruit cake with marzipan. The US fruit cake has an unusual taste and I don't know what causes that taste.
I don't imagine the high fructose corn syrup is doing it any favours. I just get mine online from the UK (British Corner Shop). They'll ship 30Kg for only 20 quid.
@@MagentaOtterTravelsDepends on the bread, but the US the industrial milling system effectively renders most store bought flour empty of nutrition. It’s best to grind your own if you can. Ask me how I know… BTW, I imagine a lot of European Flour is similar…
Yes. Fruit cakes are pretty popular here. My mum used to bake Dundee cake frequently when I was growing up and also baked (and still does bake) Christmas cake (she's 82 now). I might be biased but it's the best I've ever tasted. She bakes the cake weeks in advance then "feeds" it with brandy. After that she covers it in Marzipan and finally ices it with Royal Icing. When we got married we had our wedding cake made the same way but in 3 tiers. We kept one of the tiers which we used as the christening cake at the christening of our first child - 6 YEARS later and it was still good. (We did re-ice it though). Great video 👍
I love reading comments like yours! Many people have said similar things. That their mum or Nan made the best fruitcake ever. And that they saved the top-tier of their wedding cake for their first child's christening. To an American, the idea of eating a cake six years later is totally incomprehensible! Lol. But I've heard many people say it, so It's definitely "a thing"! 😉 Thanks for watching! Dara
I was born in Sri Lanka, now resident in the UK for 63 years. Because of British and Portuguese influence in Sri Lanka, fruit cake is a really big thing there, especially the Sri Lankan variety of Christmas cake. British Christmas cake is nice, but when you are able to make it from homegrown Sri Lankan ingredients (both fruit and spices, one of which is cardamom, not coriander or mace), it tastes SOOOOO much better, like eating cake made in heaven 😄 The difference is it's only aged a month, and doesn't have a burnt taste to it
Sounds delicious! My dear friend from grad school is from Sri Lanka and is back living in Colombo. It's always interesting to discuss food and cooking traditions with her!
I was born and raised in Canada - a British Commonwealth country. Although I am not of British descent my mother made fruitcake every year. It was a dark fruitcake full of fruit and absolutely delicious! She made it a few weeks before Christmas so the flavours can develop. So yummy.
I am not English, (Hungaria) but grew up in Toronto Canada, in the 60's, a very WASP town then. All my English friends would treat me to their home made fruitcake, I persuaded my busy with her career mother to try to make this fabulous Christmas cake for us. She did, and when I treated my friends, their mothers asked for my Hungarian mom's recipe. I am now 77 years young, and I am still continuing this fabulous English tradition for my famiy.
Fruitcake is definitely more an adults cake as it's for a sophisticated palate so, if the tradition & 'proper' recipes haven't been followed through the generations it's no wonder it's died off Dara. I bake my own cake because I can't stand the candied fruit (orange peel & glacé cherries yuk) I steep raisins, currants and sultanas in whisky, brandy or sherry for 4 or 5 days in a covered bowl & make up for the missing candy peel with chopped nuts & flaked almonds , I have also put drained maraschino cherries into the mix too as I love the marzipan flavour & they add moisture . As to decorating the cake with the (white) fondant paste...another yuk ! First comes marzipan made to the original recipe as in the Bero book of recipes (this recipe book has been used in my family since it was 1st published 100 years ago by Bell-Royal of Newcastle and is now on it's 41st edition) . After the marzipan you apply Royal icing , made, again as per the Bero recipe , we have always added a few drops of glycerine so the icing stays soft ...absolutely delicious and always made with love ❤️ Our doctor used to always drop in to my grandparent's home for his Christmas cake , 1 bottle of ginger wine and 1 of rhubarb wine 🍷 😋 A tradition that went on for 50 years 😅
Boppy makes Be-Ro recipes on his channel all the time! That's how I know about that cookbook ;-) It's so amazing hearing everyone's family traditions!! I do think of fruitcake as being an adult cake... especially because of all the booze that is poured onto it for months (if not years!).
My mum would make Christmas fruit cake in October. We would always lick the mixing bowl after she'd filled the 20 or 30 cm rectangular backing paper-lined tin with the mix. The paper rose 4 or 5 inches above the tin to prevent burning. After a long, slow. cooking time, it was allowed to cool, before piercing with a knitting needle and feeding it with brandy or port for two months, sealed in a paper-lined tin. Just before Christmas it was wrapped in home-made marzipan and royal Icing. It was wonderful, although a little boozy for kids.
I think our fruit cake is totally different to yours especially a home made version. A Christmas cake holds many memories for me, my mother making it month# before Christmas storing it in a tin in a spare room that was cool and watching her feed the cake with brandy a few times a week. Then covering it in marzipan and royal icing and decorating it with cake ornaments we reused every year, Deers, Christmas tree and Father Christmas. Also her making a Yule log and my job placing the Robin on top. Although she never made her own Christmas pudding which I’ve never understood why because it the easiest of them all to make. Also her trifle was legendary in our family. As you will probably know most Christmas food in the UK is filled with alcohol.
I am British and I used to be a cake decorator. Fruit cakes were traditionally made for a wedding cake and for Christmas. When I made them I preferred to bake them only about 2-3weeks before the occasion. The cake was made with lots and lots of different dried fruits. I used to add sultanas, raisins, currants, cherries, apricots, prunes, dates, figs, pineapple and whatever I could get. It has coffee in it, vanilla, brandy, mixed spice etc and plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, brown sugar, eggs. These ingredients were all mixed together then cooked for several hours or overnight and as soon as it was cooked I added more brandy while it was hot when it came out the oven. I didn’t add any more after this. The cake was wrapped in grease proof paper and tin foil for as long as it needed. Usually 2-3 weeks before being decorated. It was then coated in marzipan then either royal icing or sugarpaste. The marzipan is there to stop the cake discolouring the icing. Once the cake is covered after coming out the over there is a weight put on it so that it flattens the top. I absolutely love fruit cake and my fruit cake tastes the best, even if I say so myself. I used to get lots of compliments on the flavour and how moist the cake was. I didn’t put nuts in it. If anyone didn’t like something in the cake I changed it for them with something else. Most Christmas cakes from the shops have only sultanas, raisins and cherries
Oh I love hearing from bakers and chefs! Thanks for leaving a comment! Your fruitcakes sound amazing... so many types of delicious dried fruit! I still can't wrap my head around baking a cake for HOURS... but I know that's how it's done! Interesting to learn that the marzipan is a buffer to keep the royal icing pure white. Makes sense! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Happy New Year! XX Dara
I preferred cold Christmas pudding to cake!! Although my mum used to make her own ,it was a family thing making next years pudding in November I was encouraged to help & everyone took a tern to mix it with a wooden spoon & made a Wish & little me was allowed to scrape out the remains in the bowl with the spoon!! Loved it, always dark rum in(with a bottle of Stout or Porter mixed in with the eggs) It's the alcohol & Brown sugar & black Treacle aka: molasses that preserves the pudding usually a year Brandy is warmed poured over it & set alight, Fruit cakes are not ignited & for good Barabrith soak the fruit overnight in cold Tea!! & eat it sliced either buttered or if you feel decadent Clotted Cream?? Have a Merry Christmas & Good Fortune & Health throughout the year to come !!
OK, dumb question ... all these puddings/cakes sound like they have a lot of alcohol in them. How does that work with feeding young children? Just curious!
@@MagentaOtterTravels We used to have silver coins hidden in the pudding, It was the incentive to acquire the taste. I never did as I didn't like the custard or brandy butter that was served with it. I moved to Australia and someone served Christmas pudding with a slosh of Marsala and ice cream. That was my Eureka moment for the pudding. My children acquired the taste from my sister's Christmas Pudding ice cream recipe. One shop pudding, cooked and cooled and the same amount of Clotted Cream Ice cream, same mount of whipped Cointreau Double Cream all stirred up together then frozen in a lined bombe shaped bowl. Thaw slightly before turning out on to a plate and decorating with a sprig of holly. If no Cointreau cream, used double cream and slosh in a little booze of your taste. I fancy Baileys would be good. Not too much or the freezing can be disrupted.
We made our Christmas (fruit) cake last June. I made candied orange & lemon peel (quite fun) and the whole thing, loaded with alcohol, matured slowly. Excellent.
Hi Dara, The thing about UK fruit wedding cakes (basically the same a Christmas cake) is that traditionally with a 3 tier cake, the top tier is retained, for the Christening of the 1st child, so needs to last (maybe). Its very difficult to make a good fruit cake, without feeding with alcohol, I assume prohibition will have had a bad effect, similar to that felt in US Cider (hard) industry. I might use Strong Beer/Stout to sock the fruit prior to making, then feed the cake with whisky/whiskey or brandy, for me it would need to be a 'warming' style of drink, so not Vodka or Gin. On spices, 'All Spice' sometimes called Chinese All Spice, can be got from Asian stores here, wondering if you have Asian grocery stores in Texas?
Apparently the US equivalent to British mixed spice is Pumpkin Pie Spice ;-) I've read some incredible stories in the comments about people saving the top tier of their wedding cake for many years till their first baby is christened!
@@MagentaOtterTravels Apparently Chinese Allspice is called Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, or pimento in the US, it has a similar taste and effect to Mixed spice or 5 spice which are often given in UK recipes.
When I was a kid in the UK in the 70’s my mum would always buy a Dundee cake at Christmas. It is well known by the way it is topped with candied cherries and dried fruit plus walnuts and Brazil nuts. These are arranged over the entire top of the cake and are glazed so the colours give it an almost bejewelled look which looks very pretty on your Christmas table. It is a very delicious fruit cake not dissimilar to the ones you describe in your video. It’s the decorative topping that classes it as a Dundee cake.
OMG all the fruitcakes you showed in US stores looked nothing like fruitcake I've eaten in the UK. They all seem to have weird toppings or strange additions. Sorry! I love UK fruitcake with a strong cheese slice like Wensleydale.
I really want to try fruitcake with cheese!!! Yes, the American fruitcakes I showed in this video are rubbish! But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out.
@@MagentaOtterTravels think it's a northern or Yorkshire thing to eat a strong mature cheese (mature cheddar or wensleydale works great) with fruitcake. The cheese cuts the richness of the fruitcake.
@@jamesbaker429 True. My nan as a kid used to have fruitcake wrapped in paper stored in an air tight cake tin in the food cupboard. She'd go mad if you left it out or forgot to wrap it back up and place it back in the tin!
When I visit the States at Christmas I always bring fruit cake and plum pudding with me. The airport security always comment on the aroma of the cake and puddings. Americans I know that are of recent English decent and Irish Americans do like fruit cake and plum pudding. The English Americans would make both a light and dark coloured Christmas cake, the Irish Americans tended to mostly make a dark coloured cake made with black treacle as opposed to golden syrup. All the spices and ingredients were available in Epicurean markets and Irish import shops. The ingredients are dear, but the flavour is superb. Happy Christmas!
Two points. 1) Neon dyed fruit is an American thing.....none of those things in our cakes, thank heavens! 2) Wensleydale Cheese is essential with your fruit cake, mmmmm! As the saying in Yorkshire goes, "Cake without the Cheese is like a Kiss without the Squeeze." You have to have Wensleydale Cheese with your fruitcake. Make your Xmas cake in mid-October it will be nice and mature/boozy by December. I love other countries Xmas traditions but I'm so glad to be British, ours are best!
OK, serious question... since I don't drink alcohol, and I AM going to Yorkshire this summer, do you think I could get fruitcake there and try it with Wensleydale? But I would need nonalcoholic fruitcake.
@@MagentaOtterTravels The alcohol evaporates so no worries there. Yorkshire fruitcake especially Yorkshire Christmas cake does not have icing and marzipan. They are left plain or decorated with sliced almonds. The Wensleydale cheese is a good balance to the sweet richness of the fruitcake. An alternative cheese is white stilton which is a "dry and slightly bitter cheese". The cheese you should never have with fruitcake is Lancashire cheese. 🤣🤣
Hi Dara, I am a born and bred Londoner, in my seventies, who loves fruitcake. You mentioned somewhere, either in the vlog, or the comments about using mace. Mace is the outer husk of the nutmeg and unsurprisingly, tastes like nutmeg, only milder, it is also lighter in colour. Dundee, was always known for jam, journalism and jute. The jam part comes from James Keiller, who, in the mid to late 16th., century owned a family run business making jam. As luck would have it, a Spanish, trading vessel carrying a cargo of Seville oranges, was stuck in Dundee, due to stormy weather. James Keiller, was able to buy the oranges at a good price, as their shelf life, was coming to an end. His mother came up with a recipe and Keiller's Dundee Marmalade, was born and was made in their factories, ensuring the Keiller, families ongoing wealth. The journalism part, comes from D. C. Thomson, a Scottish media company, formed in 1905, when David Couper Thomson, took over and expanded an already existing printing company. Your husband, may well remember reading The Beano and The Dandy, as I did as a child. These titles, as well as others over the years, ensured the Thomson family, never had to worry about money again. The third J, stood for jute and Dundee, became the largest processor of Jute, in the world. Taking the raw materials, mainly from India and processing them into various forms of fabrics and twine. Dundee, did rather well from these three J's. Best wishes and keep up the good work.
Thanks for all that interesting information! Because I lived in Dundee Illinois from age 8 to 18, I enjoyed learning so much about the Dundee in Scotland! I'm a huge fan of jam, but still haven't managed to learn to love marmalade yet! Thanks for your support. We are currently in Sussex and Kent, exploring the wonderful castles around here! Cheers XX Dara
Born and raised, and still living in the U.S. I love fruitcake and plum (Christmas) pudding! However, I make mine from scratch. I never use the fluorescent fruit. Natural fruits all the way - including maraschino cherries from Italy. I can't tolerate what they call "maraschino" cherries from the U.S. Once you have had the "real" maraschino cherries from Italy you can never go back to those produced in the U.S.
We had fruitcake for our wedding in 1987 as was completely usual at the time. My mother in law made it and a friend iced it- a layer of marzipan followed by hard royal icing. People who couldn’t attend were sent a piece in the post- they used to sell little cardboard boxes specifically for this purpose. The smallest top tier of the cake was saved in a tin and then when our first baby was born in 1991 we brought it out, removed the marzipan and icing which would probably have been safe to eat but was discoloured, reapplied marzipan and icing and served it as the Christening cake. It was good. By the way, to answer your question, Dundee cake has no icing but has almonds arranged on the top.
I love fruitcake. Fruitcake was that thing in a can. It sat there for a while until I notice pecans in it. I love nuts, so I over a week, picked and ate every whole nut in it! Soon all the nuts were gone but I noticed there were chopped nuts throughout the cake! So I cut a piece and ate it. It was yummy and nutty. Eventually, I ate all. Later, I found it was a rum soaked.
@@MagentaOtterTravels I recently discovered a half eaten panettone on my mother’s kitchen counter. SCORE! It was still edible wrapped in foil paper, despite being probably a year old!
I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't like fruitcake. It's delicious. At Christmas what's even better is Christmas pudding, which has similarities with fruitcake but is looser but its lovely, once a year, with brandy cream. My favourite fruitcake has cherries in it, in a Dundee or Genoa style. It's funny to me how Americans are repulsed or bamboozled by foods we take for granted, like fruitcake, savoury meat pies, black pudding etc. I don't think anything repulses Americans more than a steak and kidney pie. They're really missing out by not eating meat pies. Fruit pies are fine but they don't compare to a good savoury pie or Cornish pasty 😂
Most of the time we dislike things because they "sound" weird or we just haven't tried something that was made well with high quality ingredients ;-) Now I want a Cornish pasty!! Thanks Gary! haha
@@MagentaOtterTravels Dara, I was in the pub in Naunton (which I know you know well) a while ago. On the next table was a young American couple who were eating steak and kidney pies, chips and peas etc, just because they'd heard of these weird things and that people in England actually ate them! They were wary but generally, quite enjoyed them! 😂 Have a very happy Christmas. 🌲
A good fruit cake is given 6 month head start then its stored in alcohol for about 5 month. If you can taste the fruit cake by Christmas you haven't marinated long enough . My family traditionally is stared in brandy . If you can't eat it you can always put it on the fire , it should burn for months and keep you warm though the winter . LOL
My late wife was born in Sri Lanka. Her Grandfather was a Dutch Burgher descended from the Dutch colonists who ruled Sri Lanka before the British. Her mother made a Christmas cake which has Dutch/ Sri Lankan roots. It is so much more moist than any British Christmas Cake. I have tasted cake from Fortnum and Mason and this is better. Just made it again this year and wow! Another Burgher dish is Breudher usually eaten Christmas. A cake with lots of sultanas and butter in it. Eaten with butter or Edam cheese.
I thoroughly agree with the "eaten with butter or Edam cheese" part! When I tasted bara brith or tea cake it was LOVELY with butter! I definitely want to try fruitcake with cheese sometime.
I worked for a holiday camp in the UK one Christmas in the 80s.Out of the blue, we were sent a very large ring style Christmas fruit cake from a supplier. Quite large and heavy. Must have cost a packet to send over. Full of radioactive fruit, very very colourful, lots of nuts, and not a lot of actual cake material . Everyone in the office had a little, and they all hated it, as being too sweet. They let me take the rest home, and my parents hated it as well. Never seen another until your video!
That is hilarious! I'm not surprised everyone hated it... the radioactive fruit is nasty tasting, and real dried fruit with less sugar would definitely be preferable!!
I think it’s impossible to buy a real Christmas cake worth eating in a supermarket . You may be able to get one in a small privately owned bakery. There is a huge difference between pale looking fruit cake and a Christmas cake. A Christmas cake has treacle, beer, spices butter, it’s darker and has a greater proportion of fruit. It needs to mature so you can’t make it the day before. They aren’t cheap to produce so not really commercial. A tip to Americans don’t buy those dreadful yellow cakes that look as dry as dust with radio active fruit. And no pecans!!
Dara! A few observations: cake and cheese - this isn't a northern preserve. I'm from Kent and got brought up with having a rich, dark piece of fruit cake (no icing or marzipan) and a piece of mature Stilton or similar blue veined cheese. It's a VERY traditional combo which goes back at least 200 years. Radioactive candied fruits??? Where the heck are you buying your candied fruit from???? The fruit in or on top of a fruit cake should be quite subtle/restrained in colour, not 'glow in the dark' 😂😂😂😂 DUNDEE CAKE - my absolute fave which my partner, Liz, bakes me each Christmas. It should have no marzipan or icing, and the whole top (usually square) is covered in diagonal alternating rows of fruit (cherries predominately) and nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts). If 'normal' Christmas fruit cake with icing and marzipan is the Rolls Royce, Dundee Cake is the Bentley - old money, and people who really run the country, not think they do!😂😂
Hiya Shane! Good to hear from you! I think the fruitcake with cheese tradition just changes a bit depending on where in Britain you are... it might be Wensleydale or Caerphilly or Stilton. I need to try this combo! That radioactive fruit is an American abomination I fear... sigh! Because I grew up in Dundee (Illinois) I think it is my duty to make a pilgrimage to Dundee (Scotland) this summer and enjoy a slice of this delightful Dundee cake everyone keeps talking about! Your last sentence made me smile. Cheers for that and HAPPY CHRISTMAS! X Dara
There’s tea bread where the fruit is soaked in black tea overnight. It’s great just eaten with butter. Rich fruit cake is where the fruit is soaked in alcohol, my mum used to use Jamaica rum for soaking the fruit. We made our Christmas cake in October and then fed the cake with rum until Christmas. Just delicious. I love fruit cake!
The radioactive fruit is what we call glacee fruit, and is typically from France. It is less coloured than what the US versions are. I use in make loaf cakes but not in Christmas cake.
Interesting! These loaf cakes are what many Americans think of as fruitcake. Would you have that for tea during the year, not as a Christmas treat then?
Recipes for "mixed spice" are easily found on the internet, and it doesn't contain anything too hard to find in large grocery stores in areas where I've lived (PA & NC).
The more alcohol the better! Soak your dried fruit in Brandy for a couple of days before you make the cake and then feed it every couple of weeks. I don't like marzipan and icing so I top mine with glazed nuts, cherries and dried apricots. No luminous fruit on mine though but then we don't use those kind of colourings in our fruit! Who decided cherries should be luminous green?!
My 96 year old mum always makes Christmas cake. She makes it in about September. I always add the brandy or rum. It’s a yearly custom we have carried out every year for the last 65 years, and knowing my mum, She’ll be carrying it out in 65 years with her great grandkids……… and they’ll be about 80! 🎄⛄️❄️🍾🍹
Fun video Dara I kept laughing when you spoke about the Radioactive fruit! I was part of the 2% in your survey. And I remember the Johnny Carson joke too! Great job! 😂🎄
I was talking with fellow Potterheads online, and they were all wondering how Harry’s birthday cake, stashed under the floorboards, lasted the 6 week summer holidays. I explained to them birthday cakes at the time were fruit cakes and could last for months, getting more delicious as time passed. They were American and didn’t believe me, and carried on thinking they’d found a major error by J K Rowling 🤭
on our sister isle of Guernsey, they have a fruit loaf called Guernsey Gâche (gâche means cake). it contains Raisins, Sultanas, Cherries and mixed peel.
The fruit cake at Christmas and 'normal' fruitcake are very different things. A Christmas cake is much much darker and richer, and many people who like a basic fruit cake are not fans of Christmas cake. Wedding cakes and Christening cakes tend to be of the same variety as Christmas Cakes. The fruit cakes you did find in the US stores looked much lighter in colour (what I referred to as 'normal' fruit cakes above), and as if they would have a much drier consistency - the cake to fruit ratio looked wrong for a Christmas cake- too much cake and too little fruit. A really traditional British fruitcake wouldn't have cranberries in.....cranberries are definitely a US import- though they have grown in popularity over the last couple of decades.
The American fruitcakes I showed in this video are pretty rubbish. But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out and let me know if they look more authentic.
For my Christmas cake I soak my fruit for at least a week in a rum and cognac mix. For the first 24hrs at room temperature in a sealed tub, I then store it in the fridge and stir it twice daily topping up with rum and cognac as it soaks up. I also add the spices as the fruit really absorbs them making the cake taste wonderful. I don't use allspice as that's just different types of pepper. I use mixed spice with freshly grated nutmeg and true cinnamon, not cacia, (what's in most packets you get from the supermarkets). There is a big difference in taste and aroma! I use really good quality fruit and no coloured fruit! My cherries are natural, as is the candied peel. The rest are a mix of a couple of different types of raisins for different flavours plus jumbo flame raisins, sultanas and currants. I add sliced almonds and roughly chopped walnuts too plus this year I chopped up some prunes and dates so they went in it too. My mum used to add a can of crushed pineapple to her Christmas cake but It's become hard to find in my area of the uk now. I use dark muscavado sugar or molasses sugar instead of white granulated and a tablespoon or 2 of treacle too as I like a dark rich cake. My Nan used to use a tablespoon of Gravy powder back in her day... I feed my cake for about 4weeks minimum and then cover completely with marzipan and thats left to dry, then fondant and lastly with royal icing and decorations!
So fun to hear everyone's traditions and recipes! Sounds like a LOT of work, but I applaud your use of very high quality ingredients. The most surprising part of your comment was the tablespoon of gravy powder... WHAT?!
British fruitcake doesn't come with fluorescent cherries. Dundee cake is not spiced, has less fruit and is something in between the heaviness of fruitcake and the lightness of US spongy stuff. Its also covered in a layer of almonds. It's delicious.
When I was in University I worked at a grocery store and that store sold the “radioactive” colored fruit prior to Christmas along with the other fruits (minus the currants) for home bakers of fruitcake. FYI. There is a store in Richardson Texas called British Emporium. It is on Campbell & Nantucket and they sale British Christmas Puddings. I bit pricey since it is imported.
I assume you were at uni in the US? I have heard about British Emporium, but not been there. Check out my video from today... I found quite an impressive array of Christmas goodies at World Market!
Never been a fan of the radioactive fruit, my grandmother always made a xmas cake months in advance but only used fresh and dried fruit...along with generous helping of alcohol!
I think that is key, those candied fruits are so sweet they don't have any fruit flavour left in them. Regular dried fruit would make a good fruitcake.
Dundee cake is supposed to have been first marketed by Keller's marmalade (it contains marmalade as an ingredient) but it's probably older than that. It is usually decorated with almonds and cherries.
It's all about the booze. Soak all the fruit and spices in brandy and port. Drain and use to make the cake in September, and then feed it with port and brandy every two weeks :) It's blooming lovely. and spices
I have heard pecan pronounced a lot of strange ways... I'll never forget my wedding reception in Herefordshire in 1992 when I heard Ian's family saying peekin. I was laughing. Sorry, but I refuse to say that the British way. Pecans are native to Texas and not very popular in Britain... so I'm sticking with my pronunciation ;-)
@@MagentaOtterTravels Dara, actually I looked it up and both ways are considered correct although you normally only hear British people say pecan as though it has a double e. I think you are wrong about the nut not being popular in Britain. You see them along with all the other nuts that are available along with recipes that use them, quite often.
@@valeriedavidson2785 i'm just thinking about shopping in supermarkets. I see lots of pecans here in Texas, but I have to search for one puny little bag at Tesco. And they are expensive!
@@MagentaOtterTravels Try the healthier supermarket on Bath Road. Cannot remember the name. They have almost everything. Near the Cheltenham College end, same side.
Bara Brith has most of the ingredients found in fruitcake, but doesn’t contain any fat, so is a ‘teabread’, and is baked in a loaf tin. Served sliced and spread with butter. -and a cup of tea of course.
I've had it a couple times, and really enjoyed it! The best was in a little café in the Lake District. It was fresh and warm and really delightful with a generous serving of butter on top! 😋😋
Shop bought Christmas cakes are nine times out of ten terrible. Fondant Icing is soft incipide stuff . Royal Icing is way better. If you want to make imho the best cake look up Rusty Lee's Jamaican Christmas cake. It uses Rum and Wine to make a cake that is wonderfully alcoholic . Just dont drive after you've had a slice😂
I LOVE fruitcake. At the Christmas Dinner lunch special at work there was a lot of leftover puddings and they were sliced up and given to staff other than binning it. Two colleagues gave me theirs. One was on a diet. The other doesn't like fruit cake. It felt like I won the food lottery. It was made from scratch and didn't have pecans or radioactive cherries on it. Just a thin layer of marzipan. Delicious.
You did win the lottery! Sounds like a merry Christmas! For the past month we've had all kinds of homemade Christmas treats around because of all of the celebrations. For us that means fudge and fruit crumble and chocolates and an endless supply of cookies! Now I am the one on a diet. Happy new year!
French and Swiss-German dual national here: I love fruit cake, especially the German types ones or the so-called Dundee cake. I currently live in the UK. A dundee cake is like a British fruit cake, with a topping made of nuts, and maybe cherries. It is in the shape of a cylinder (about 8cm high). I do not drink alcohol either, but it is ok in a Xmas fruit cake. German fruit cakes are a conglomerate of figs, nuts, raisins and other dried fruit. I am not sure there is any flour/baling involved. It is small, compact and definitely mountaineering fod.
Thank you so much for your comment! It sounds like you have connections to many countries all with delicious food! Have you been to Colmar? I recently posted a video of our visit there. I loved it!
My mom’s mother was born and raised in England and my mom’s father was born & raised in Scotland. My mom was also born in England but came over around eight years old. So when I was little I remember that around Christmas time that we had a fruit cake in the refrigerator but I don’t remember any one eating it or liking it. I think that my grandmother might have made it - she did make shortbread and meat pies (her sister made Yorkshire pudding which was delicious - they all were good except the fruit cake, which I don’t remember exactly trying but …). Also when I was little my mother would sometimes buy mince pies but I don’t think that I tried them - I’m not very adventurous!
I can relate to what you are saying... I think Americans are familiar with fruitcakes and mince pies but they don't trust them. They look and smell different and most people are afraid to even try them! Which I guess is not really fair, is it? haha Check out the video I filmed after this... I found a treasure trove of fruitcakes and mince pies and shortbread at another store in Texas! ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.html
There are a few things in a traditional Christmas fruit cake that I don't like and this lead me in my teenage years (many years ago) to start making my own version. I left out alcohol, mixed peel, nuts and currents. I made up the missing weight by adding more raisins, sultanas and cherries. It turns out as a slightly lighter and fruitier cake. And, of course, it can still be eaten with Wensleydale cheese. Merry Christmas.
I was brought up in the uk and was introduced to fruit cake at a very young age. The traditional Christmas fruit cake is a heavy and spicy flavoured “beast”. The alcohol is absorbed by the fruit and gives the fruit a different taste from what it would be normally the glacé fruit is what has been labeled as radii active fruit and was a regular component in fruitcake for special occasions. When younger I did try glacé cherrys from the the packet, and I must admit I did not like them, but once cooked they added to the overall flavour. I was a late comer to adding a slice of cheese to a portion of fruitcake, and the cheese used was the staple cheddar cheese. While I did have reservations regarding mixing the two types of food the contrast of flavours and textures did, in my case, work the strong flavour of the fruitcake was mellowed by the cheese and the different textures complemented each other. I have tried the Colin Street Bakery product, which does have a very high shipping cost but the tin it comes in can be reused for other foodstuffs for many years if they are treated carefully. The glacé process of preserving fruit is known in Europe , but in America they have expanded the range of fruits beyond that normally used in Europe. A long time ago I did visit America with some friends and experienced the fluorescent colouring present in some breakfast cereals which seemed extremely far away from the natural colour as to raise concerns about the ingredients used. On a slightly different topic candied peel is/was available in the uk which did introduce a strange colour to the peel, which were used for thee various aromatic oils they contained to add flavour, the process of ‘waxing’ the fruit to protect it does inhibit the processing of the peel I believe. The green bits you notice is, I believe are called glacé Angelica From a food website I found the following: Our glace Angelica comes from France. The stem of the plant, which is a member of the parsley family, is harvested and boiled in a sugar syrup to produce this product. I wonder if the expectation from the word cake differs in different countries? The assumptions seem to be that Americans are used to cake being a sweet item while in the UK cake can be a savoury item as well.
Another ‘Welsh cake’ is called Teisen Lap it translates as moist cake and traditionally is cooked on a plate it is not as deep as a traditional cake but can be served and eaten quickly.
I had never heard of angelica before this video! Very interesting! I agree that Britons and Americans think of different things when they hear "cake" and even moreso with "pie"! In the US the word pie always conveys a meaning of a sweet baked good. While sweet pies do exist in Britain, most Britons would first think of pork, steak, fish or other savoury pie.
Fruit cakes in the uk can range from the everyday lighter coloured fruitcakes that tend not to have alcohol in them and aren’t to fruit heavy so tend to be less heavy and dense. The Xmas fruitcakes almost always tend to be very dark and dense with alcohol added and are very varied in texture and taste because of the booze added. I personally love anything with fruit in it but not all cakes are equal even in the uk,you can get good and some not so good.
Thanks for explaining the cake spectrum a bit! Of course not all fruitcakes are equally good in Britain... but I fear the ones that are on offer here in the US are a bit of a lower bar unfortunately :-(
At my Wedding, and every Christmas that I can once the cake had been baked then we used to pierce the bottom of the cake we poured some Sherry in the bottom of the cake . You never see and then we covered in Marzipan and the when dried off a little put Royal Icing over the top and sides of the cake.
The preserving method for cherries is to process them in lye (like hominy), bleaching them. The red or green food color is added. I don't hate them, and the texture is different from other preserved fruit. I think some of that red and green stuff is candied citron peel.
Fruit cakes vary from quite light - almost a Victoria sponge with some fruit- to really dense. Spices can go from nothing to powerful ginger and allspice (which is wonderful). On a similar note we Brits also like mincemeat - dried fruit, spices, brandy and suet - popped into a pastry case. Originally it had ground beef in it as well (hence the name), and originates from mediaeval times when spices, meat and fruit were commonly mixed (a bit like Moroccan cooking now).
Interesting connection to Moroccan cooking... I hadn't thought of that before, but I see your point! If you haven't seen it yet, check out my follow up video about Mince Pies here: ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.htmlsi=nK6E9D48HJwblSzR
Interesting! I am surprised that you make fruit cake that often. Sounds a bit like Bara Brith or "tea cake" because of the tea that is used in making it. I don't drink tea, but I once had tea cake in the Lake District (by mistake) and it was DELICIOUS!!
We agree with your opening statement, Dara and Ian. Can't stand it! But, it's handy to give away with such a long shelf life! Have to ask if mixed pickling spice could make it taste any worse? 🤣🤣
Yes Dundee Cake has marmalade as an ingredient, it was developed by the Keiller Marmalade company in Dundee, Scotland. My grandparents, on my mom’s side were born in Scotland and my mom in Canada so our holiday desserts definitely reflected that. My grandmother made a white fruit cake, more like a pound cake with the candied cherries, walnuts, citron peel, and raisins, but no alcohol. My youngest sister called it “dead fruit” cake. The Mrs. Carver’s fruit cake looked similar to my grandma’s. She didn’t arrange the “radioactive fruit” on top, which I noted the Carver’s cake also omitted. However my grandmother’s didn’t look as weird as the Carver’s did.
Oh my, dead fruit cake! I hope your gran wasn't offended! Most of the fruitcakes in this video looked weird... but I found some much nicer ones in this follow up video: ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.html Thanks for your comment and Happy New Year! Dara
There is a Channel 5 program called Christmas in the Cotswolds tonight. It shows the Christmas market in Broadway and the food of the hotel in Lower Slaughter. I thought that I would let you know Dara and Ian!
I like fruit cake we used to have it every Christmas, Unfortunately I don't celebrate Christmas anymore Cause my mom died on Christmas day 5 years ago. So. I'll just be. Spending time with my 10 siblings, Good video dara. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas 👍
The cafe and deli I visit sells individual slices of Christmas cake, dark and full of fruit, displayed on the counter for impulse buying, not bothered with the marzipan, but I’ll eat it.
Hi dara and Ian The fruit cakes you will find in many shops and in the US, like the ones you found, while they are called fruit cakes, they are not the same, usually have a use by date on, alot cheaper, well not the US ones lol, We get similar to what you had at out locat store for £2.00ish. they are usually bought to for a snack, either to take o work, for when you have a break and cup of tea, or at home, they are also very great to have with custurd as a desert also or wamded with bit of fresh cream.
American fruitcakes for the most part are really quite rubbish. But I would try one of the Collin Street "cherry fudge" or "apricot pecan" cakes... if they didn't cost 40 dollars!!
Just loved your fruit cake piece! Any day is an excuse for a home-made fruit cake: birthday, Christmas, Easter, even May 26th or 27th...or 28th...! Every fruit cake tastes slightly different and - you're right - fruit cake matures and improves with a little age. Growing up in a small terraced house at the end of the Northern Line, I was allowed a slice of iced Christmas fruit cake on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and the remainder was kept until July or August when it would be unwrapped and we'd all finish it off. Clearly, my Dad thought seven months maturity benefited its flavour and texture. I can remember the strong flavour...and also the rock-hard consistency!
Wow... you are not the first person who mentioned finishing Christmas cake over the summer holiday... and I can't wrap my brain around that concept! haha
Dundee cake is the traditional rich uk fruitcake but the top is covered in blanched almonds. Most people would make their Christmas cakes from scratch. My mother used to soak the dried fruit in tea to plump it up, make as normal wrap it well and then feed for two months with brandy or rum fortnightly. I think Australian fruitcake have the glacé fruits like pineapple, crystallised ginger.
My grandmother used to make her Christmas cake in January or February, wrap it in brown paper and put it in a tin just taking it out to 'feed' once a month until Christmas day.
this is what my gran did also. She was born 1909 and the recipe she used was her mother’s. We lost her in the 80s and my mum took over. Non of us bother now and I miss that fruit cake. After watching your video it brought it all back to me so maybe in February I may just get the recipe out and have a go. Merry Christmas
The green coloured decoration is angelica , Dundee cake all year-round with flaked or whole almonds ,royal iced Christmas and Easter cakes my mum used to make six a year started in June for Christmas,ten inch diameter and five high so heavy fed with brandy till ready fruit steeped in dark rum.You will be lucky to find pecans used in a fruit cake more likely Brazils or walnuts, all Cake shops and supermarkets sell a variety of fruit cakes all year round ,and some very expensive matured and decorated for Christmas ten by two inch £60-100 or more,UK produces enormous quantities of currants for the soft drink Ribena and other cordials and jams.
The 'currants' used in cakes are dried grapes, small, and black in colour. Ribena etc is made from blackcurrants (a bush fruit similar to redcurrants), _not_ grapes. Blackcurrants also make a very good dark purple jam.
This reminds me. Michelle is supposed to be making our Christmas cake about now. Special request from my mum because she makes a brilliant fruit cake. The fruit is marinated in alcohol for a couple of days. Michelle doesn't like it with icing but I love Christmas cakes with fondant icing. The cake is supposed to mature for a couple of weeks before serving and they do last for ages. In fact they used to be common as wedding cakes here in Oz. The tradition was that you saved a piece of your wedding cake for your first anniversary. We can get as many dried fruits as necessary separately but we usually get bags of "mixed fruit" which contains Sultanas, Currants, Raisins, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel and glazed cherries. Michelle usually buys a couple of more bits and pieces for her cake including nuts. The cake is usually dark, rich and moist. A lot darker than many of the American ones in the video. Now I have to go and make my traditional Christmas treats - rum balls, sago plum pudding (called a plum pudding but it also contains mixed fruit) served with brandy sauce and custard, various biscuits (cookies). 😁 So yes, fruit cake is definitely an Oz Christmas tradition - and traditionally a wedding cake base too. I loved this video. I'm quite partial to your food videos for some reason. 😂Merry Christmas! 🎄🥮🎅🦌 PS Speaking of Christmas, Christmas seafood has become a thing over the last couple of decades here in Oz. Christmas turkey and ham etc are still traditionally big but prawns and oysters are hitting the Christmas tables hard. Places like the Sydney Seafood Market opens for 36 hours straight in the lead up to Christmas Day. Apparently 100,000 people go. They expect over 350 tonnes of seafood is to be sold this Christmas. That includes 120 tonnes of prawns, and almost 70,000 dozen oysters. When we lived in Sydney we were local to the fish market and it was really good. It is the second or third busiest fish market in the world. 🍤🦐🦪🐟
Wow, Michelle's fruitcake sounds lush! And I think a sunny Christmas in Sydney eating seafood would be quite an interesting departure from American tradition! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! All the best to you and your family... MERRY CHRISTMAS! XX Dara and Ian
Dundee cake is fruit cake covered with almonds as opposed to marzipan &icing. Bara brith is made by marinating the fruit in cold tea (no milk) and is best eaten with butter (british) on each slice.
I am very anxious to try Dundee cake! That is a goal for this summer! ❤️🏴 I have had Bara brith once before, but it wasn't very high-quality. I'm hoping to make some this summer with my Welsh friend !🏴
Fruit Cake is probably my preferred. In order Fruit>Lardy>Lemon >Coffee> Carrot >plain sponge(Victoria), Chocolate (too often badly done). Fruit Cakes are in a ranged heavy>light. Christmas/Wedding>Dundee>Fruit Sponge. Cake Mix (SF Flour=Sugar=Butter+eggs): Fruit+Nuts, 1:4, 1:3 ,1:2 respectively. Christmas and Dundee will include darker sugars and/or treacle, whole nuts (almonds) and red(not green)glacé cherries . The top tier of a marzipaned and royal iced wedding cake is supposed to be kept as a Christening Cake for the 1st born. Christmas Cakes and Puddings are supposed to be made on the Weekend before Advent, the penultimate of November, Stir Up Sunday. I make a number of Figgy Puddings (a productive Fig Tree+Apple/Pear Orchard) and two rich fruit cakes for Birthday and Christmas in December. Note Currants are not "Ribes" but a variety of dried grape from Turkey which have been in short supply recently ("Ribes"Blackcurrants are banned in USA)
I've noticed the ratios I wrote were weight of flour: fruit+nuts. The green glacé cherries reminded me of a traditional ingredient that I find difficult to find; Crystallised Angelica, it was sometimes found in Candied/Crystallised Mixed Peel. The "Black Corinth/Zante" grapes are dessicated to make Currants.
Its weird how most American food has been fiddled with preservatives to extend shelf live as well as using banned processes - and yet here is a natural made food that gets matured for better flavour and Americans cant stand it because the cherries on top look flaurescent lol yet they love the fluorescent drinks like mount dew and Fanta
Not to mention every other colour (color for my colonial cousins) of radioactive joy that is in American food. Please remember that red food colouring in its natural form (Cochineal) is derived from a beetle from Mexico squashed live to extract the juices.😮❤
Couldn’t agree more
I think it's things we aren't familiar with. I used to often eat raw meat before I moved to UK where people were shocked and convinced me that doing the same in UK would result in severe illness or death! I suppose that is true after what I have witnessed in supermarkets but I'm sure reputable butchers can produce meat safe enough to eat raw. I never ate raw meat in large quantities, it was mostly a sample taste before cooking. Beef and lamb, plus some wild meats but never chicken, pork, etc.
Fair point.
Rediculous isn't it?
The upside to this tale is that there are fewer fruit cakes in the USA than many of us in the UK thought.😂
🤣🤣🤣
You can’t have been watching the US political news it’s full of fruit cakes
My nan used to say we kids were nutty as a fruitcake 😂
But that would mean the UK is full of fruit cakes 🤪
Nice one
Florescent candied fruit must be an American thing. I've eaten fruit cake all my life and NEVER been faced with it!
Nor I!
Neither have I dislike artiicial addatives, including Sacaharin and aspartame
Absolutely true! Nor are pecan nuts to be found on or in traditional fruitcake!
@@alexrafe2590for the record, plaster of Paris is calcium sulphate, and potassium bromide is/was used as a sedative, anticonvulsant and antiepileptic. You're thinking of potassium bromate, which is a completely different thing, although I'd still rather not be consuming it. Thankfully it's banned as a food additive in the UK and EU.
@@JuniperBoy I acknowledge you’re points about the chemical composition of plaster of Paris and the actual unhealthy attributes of potassium bromide.
My grandmother had a back kitchen, as well as an ordinary kitchen - she lived in the country - and on shelves were about six fruitcakes in rotation. She would make a fruitcake for the Christmas cake every year, but it was for several years time. She would then ‘feed’ each cake throughout the year with Brandy in order to help it mature, and the taste was absolutely phenomenal because fruitcakes improve enormously with age if they’re wrapped up carefully. The whole family loved her Christmas fruit cake.
That is crazy... I can't imagine preparing fruitcakes for YEARS?!?!
Make the cake in September & then feed it every week to 2 weeks with brandy. I’ve never put radioactive fruits in it!! Also in the U.K. we do not have as many box mixes for cakes as you do in the US
Also it has to be marzipan & a good layer of royal icing
I thought the Dolly Parton cake was funny! The things I find in American grocery stores constantly amuse me...
We aren't fans of royal icing in my family so leave it at toasted marzipan.
That bivouac coloured fruit is not British. Dundee cake is a rich fruit cake topped with almonds. Bara brith is a fruit loaf, less fruit, loaf shaped served as buttered slices.
I use the Delia Smith recipe for traditional UK Christmas cake. I make the cake in September/October then ‘feed’ it with brandy every week until mid December when I put the marzipan on it. A few days before Christmas I put the Royal Icing on it. I nearly always have a slice of my Christmas cake with a large slice of cheese. Apparently it’s a northern UK thing to have cheese with it.
Yes, the Yorkshiremen claim it's a Yorkshire tradition to the have the fruit cake with Wensleydale. Now I want to try it!
@christhorpejunction8982
My daughter doesn't like fruit in cakes, so she just eats the marzipan and icing! I have to leave some aside for her when I put it on the cake.
I am from Southern England. A work colleague of mine lived and worked in York for a few years before moving back to be with the guy she later married. When she was in York she went to a colleague's family on Christmas Day. When she was handed her piece of Christmas Cake, she was very surprised to be asked whether she wanted a piece of cheese with it.
I’m from the South of England and have never eaten cake with cheese. Nor would I dream of doing so.
@@trickygoose2 I grew up in Illinois and it wasn't crazy to have a slice of cheddar cheese with a piece of apple pie. But many Americans think that's bizarre as well!
You generally don’t find those neon green things in British made fruit cakes
Australians who still make fruit cake is like the English and Irish ones Delicious with Irish whiskey I had one for my wedding in 1978.2 tiers with icing .The guests took a piece home.The shops don't make for weddings anymore Americanised A lot of mud cake, which I don't like.i like a milk chocolate cake.
Yes, the American fruitcakes I showed in this video are rubbish! But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out.
I make Christmas fruit cake every year. I make it by the 2nd week of November. No preservatives just brandy fed to eat once a week. I also use brandy soaked fruit it makes the cake moist.
Thank you and Merry Christmas. I'm a Brit and a big part of my childhood was the making of the family Christmas cake, mixed by hand with a wooden spoon, it's hard work so everyone gets a turn at creaming the butter and sugar together, has to have real butter, good eggs, demerara sugar, plain flour and lots of dried fruit, spice and orange zest, if you prefer to eat it in a short period use a mix of rum and tea overnight to soak the fruit and plump it up before making the cake. Add nuts if you enjoy them, I personally add ground almonds. (and yes, it's very good with a nice piece of cheese).
Perhaps the European traditions of various types of fruit cakes come from earlier history when fresh fruit was almost impossible to get or keep for most of the year, making the use of the exotic dried fruits etc. something for special occasions. When food spoilage and ingredient availability were both big problems items that would keep for a decent period in the store cupboard were needed.
From memory Dundee cake has a decoration of whole almonds and a jam/marmalade glaze I think rather than the marzipan and royal icing of the Christmas cake, and sometimes marmalade in the batter instead of orange/lemon zest)
Yes, I agree... before we had freezers and shipped food from the Southern hemisphere year round, it was nice to have dried fruit in the winter and use it in cakes!
I would love to have a fruitcake with any kind of nuts, and I think a Dundee cake with almonds is something I need to try! Cheers! Dara
I made a fruitcake following an authentic British recipe. And it was delicious. I bought the mixed spice on Amazon. American fruitcake recipes differ from British ones.
I agree... and I dare say the American ones are not as nice ;-) Well done you for making a proper one with good ingredients!
In Britain we tend to weigh the ingredients whereas in USA people tend to measure volumes. Weight gives a more consistent result, especially for things like flour that can vary in density.
All the American fruitcakes are rubbish. No self respecting British fruitcake lover would touch these with a bargepole!
I lived in the US for three years and the first Christmas (3 months in) I went out to buy the ingredients to make a Christmas cake and had a homesick meltdown in the store (a Krogers actually) because I couldn't find sultanas or currants. 😢It broke me that day. I did later find out that I needed golden raisins and just omitted the currants! AND all the Americans who tried it loved it - said it was nothing like any fruitcake they'd ever tried before.
Please share your recipe
I bought an Aldi or Lidl Christmas cake, and it wasn't bad, but a commercial cake could never touch a homemade cake made with love.
My ex missus was a bit of a cook and her Christmas cake was made in September and then drip fed various alcohols, both spirits and fortified wine.
More solid than a malt loaf, it should still be sodden and keep for well over 12 months. Some of the cakes featured were an anaemic colour and were more the colour of a barmbrack (An Irish fruit loaf sweeter than bread but not a cake) Barmbrack may be toasted like a teacake.
The Yorkshire custom of cake or fruit loaf with cheese must be tried. Not as weird sounding as the Spanish red wine and coke it does, in a similar way, just work.
For the unknowing, Lancashire cheese is very similar to Wensleydale and might be more available.
Crumbly Lancashire also makes the world's best cheese on toast.
All the above to be consumed with lashings of hot tea. Is it significant for the barmbrack that the Irish drink more tea than the British.
Merry Christmas to ye all.
Truth is british/ irish and german/Austrian fruit cake is the best, all the others have weird ingredients like glow in the dark coloured sugar coated fruit
@COIcultist Shh! We try not to enlighten heathen's about proper Lancashire crumbly😅
@@jericho_bees I lived on "The Dark Side" of the Pennines for quite a few years. It is an odd thing.
While loving cod, one occasionally desires skin on haddock.
With a preference for Burry Black Puddings, there is the occasional desire for a Yorkshire one.
Yet Lancashire and Wensleydale cheese are both perfect in their own way. Nothing matches crumbly Lancashire grilled onto toast, though. The only option, I'm for using butter first, some have without.
I love fruitcake. My wedding cake in 1980 was a three tier heart shaped cake with royal icing. The top tier was kept (as per tradition for the christening of my eldest child. It lasted for several years.
Now I get to eat a whole Christmas cake as my kids don't like fruitcake, it's a high point of the Christmas period for me (the boozier the better .🥳
It is so fun hearing everyone's traditions!
"the boozier the better"
Does that refer to the Christmas period or the cake?
Or perhaps both.
@@theolder_man5768 Mainly I was referring to the Christmas cake although I do drink over the holiday as well, starting in the morning with crumpets for breakfast and continuing throughout the day. 🥳
Oh I love Christmas cake, but I make my own. Made in August/September, injected with rum or brandy until December, marzipan, then thick royal icing. I think fondant tastes like play dough 😂.
I am gobsmacked that you make your Christmas cake in August!
@@MagentaOtterTravels I make my Christmas cake in September
@@MagentaOtterTravels .
I had an aunt who made hers in the summer. She stored it in a tin and very couple of weeks, she would pour a glass of brandy over it.
@@MagentaOtterTravelsaugust is perhaps a little late, 6 months is needed for full maturity.
@@MagentaOtterTravelsMy mother always made several Christmas cakes each year, beginning in July or August, and ‘feeding’ with brandy every week for several months until they were iced & decorated (using ‘Royal Icing’, the difference from ordinary ‘icing’ or ‘frosting’ as Americans call it I think, is that it contains both egg white & glycerine, and it becomes very hard - and is completely delicious 😋) in late November or early December - some were for our family’s own use, others were given as gifts and at least one was stored until the following Autumn, to consume before the current year’s cakes had time to mature. Once my mother stopped making Christmas cakes as she became quite old & arthritis affected her hands, I made a couple of similar cakes each year using her proven recipe - they were very good too, although I never mastered the elaborate icing, my icing was nice too, but not so detailed. However my brother for several years made excellent Christmas cakes with very complex icing - he actually went to evening classes to learn how to do professional icing. Finally, mentioning Collins Street Bakery reminded me that 30 or 40 years ago, when I lived in various parts of the Middle East that American Express used to include flyers for this company’s Deluxe Fruit cakes in summer/autumn statements to order as Christmas gifts which could be sent anywhere in the world - for several years I ordered them as gifts for family & friends back in the UK and various other parts of the world. By all accounts they were very good cakes, delivered in decorative tins, but the inclusion of pecan nuts in particular , as well as the red & green glacé cherries & other fruits, made them really good, but the pecan nuts were certainly different from most UK-made fruit cakes, certainly in those days. One dried fruit that I never seem to see now (no doubt still available from specialist suppliers) is candied Angelica - it always adds a subtle but distinctive flavour in my view. I love fruit cakes in general, whether iced or not, but rarely eat them now, because they’re just too rich & crammed with calories - occasionally if I’m invited to a wedding or a christening I’ll take a sliver of the wedding cake (one or more tiers is traditionally kept for christenings of any children that may result) and really enjoy it as a special treat.
I usually make my own Christmas cake any time from the end of September to the end of October and “feed” it with brandy until I put marzipan on the top on Christmas Eve
Living in the north of England we also eat it with cheese (proper cheese not that neon stuff you get in the US but a cheese like Wensleydale or blue Stilton)
Also those are glacé cherries on the top which have natural dyes added to make them red green or yellow and how you can claim they are fluorescent when you have stuff like Mountain Dew and skittles beats me
Dundee cake is a lighter (both in colour and texture) fruit cake that has almonds placed on top before it’s baked most recipes do include marmalade
Dundee cake was the favourite cake of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
I love hearing people talk about "feeding" their cakes! LOL
I really want to try Dundee Cake! It sounds great!
Interesting, although calling something a Holiday Cake has a different meaning, people would think this is for taking to the seaside in the summer.
If I were by the seaside on a hot day I'd fancy a slice of lemon drizzle cake!
I was born in 1952, and I like fruitcake.
I remember my Aunt made them every September, put them in the bottom drawer of her bureau, and kept soaking them with brandy until Christmas. They were great on those cold Connecticut evenings.
That's so funny! I am picturing a cake being fed brandy... all hidden in the bottom drawer of a bureau. That makes me smile! Thanks for your comment. Cheers! Dara
I'm english, my grandmother used to make the best fruitcake. She would mature it for a few months with extra rum and fill it with pecan nuts, walnuts, glace cherries, crystalised ginger root, and a little bit of coconut. Topped with a layer of marzipan and white icing, of course.
I do like this channel. It’s always well presented, interesting, honest and engaging. Most of all though it’s unassumingly smart and treats its viewers with respect. What you see is what you get with no agenda.
Very sweet of you to say, Andrew! Cheers! Bless your little cotton socks XX
Yo Brother…if there were a million subscribers i think Dara and Ian would engage with them all..
You mentioned All Spice, but did not elaborate. Allspice is a spice made from the dried berries of a plant known as Pimenta dioica, which is a member of the myrtle family.… while it reminds of several other spices it’s actually just a single spice. The flavor of allspice brings to mind cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and pepper. It is available at my local grocery store in Texas.
All spice is a strange thing, and I think mixing it with "mixed spice" and mace would be a bit much for me.
I'm British and I've lived in the US for many years, and fruitcakes on either side of the pond are completely different cakes. I love English fruitcake, it's dark with fruit like raisins, spicy with nutmeg and ginger, and of course it's often topped with marzipan and royal icing. The flavor is very slightly bitter in addition to sweet, enhanced with brandy, and/or sherry and the texture is firm. I've had it as a birthday cake, my wedding cake, and at every Christmas dinner. American fruitcake tends to be lighter in color and filled with cherries, pineapple and other neon-bright candied fruits. It's quite often more fruit than cake, and it's also far too sweet.
That is a very good summary! I agree with your assessment and thank you for sharing your opinion! I always love hearing from people who have lived in both the US and UK. ;-) Cheers! Dara
IMy parents and I used to make 4 or 5 Christmas Cakes each year, one for ourselves and the rest for the neighbours, the local vets ( as a thank you to the staff for the care to our dogs) ,relatives and local school Christmas prize raffle. We used Delia Smith's Creole Christmas Cake recipe. You could get tipsy from the fumes from 4 types of spirts as you poached the alcholic fruit and nut mixture on tbe hob, ah the lovely memories as sadly both parents are no longer here.
Bless your family... that sounds like a great tradition! Sorry that your folks are gone... so are mine. Christmas is a bittersweet time as we miss our loved ones who are gone. What my mum used to make was marizpan fruit, since my father was German. One of these days I'll do a video to show how we made it. It's very artistic and interesting.
I'm English and had a fruit cake at my wedding, weddings nowadays are tending to have sponge cake. I have made christmas cake, and have added Rum or Amaretto in the mix, when cooled tapped in foil in an air tight container, then fed it once a week for 4 weeks
Oh no! American tradition seeps into Britain again if people are having sponge cakes at their weddings! Unless of course it's Victoria Sponge...
Fruitcake and wedding cake are the same. As some have said, the top tier of the wedding cake is traditionally kept for the first christening. My dad was a baker and made wedding cakes in our local area. I do remember a woman bringing back the top tier to be re-iced 8 YEARS after the wedding. My dad used a hammer and chisel to get the old icing off but the cake was perfect underneath it. He re-iced it and it looked as good as new and was enjoyed at the christening!
How fun to have a dad who was a baker! That is an AMAZING and amusing story! Only in Britain ;-)
My mother used to make such a nice Christmas cake - complete with marzipan and Royal icing . It was so good that some years she had to make a second one ( once we were no longer small children and liked it with coffee in the forenoon) . There used to be a tradition of keeping the top tier of your wedding cake ( there were often three or four tiers) to use as a christening cake for your first born - so maybe a couple of years later ! Later siblings would get a fresh cake baked with ornaments on it like a stork.
I made my own wedding cake, a year before the date, I 'fed' the layers with brandy, and then three weeks before the wedding I got the local baker and pastry chef to ice and decorate to my design, because by that time I had far too much to do to fit in cake icing too. It was worth it though, and I still love fruit cake, but home made ones are much better than store bought, always!
WOW, I'm amazed you started prepping your cake a year before your wedding. That is impressive planning!
I love hearing all the fruit cake traditions!!
I am a dual national and I LOVE fruit cake. I grew up in England (live in the US now)and I always buy fruit cake when I go home. I have yet to find a fruit cake in the US that is worth the calories. I have tried expensive and less expensive cakes. In the USA I can only get a yummy fruit cake by baking my own. I married in England and we had a wedding fruit cake with marzipan. The US fruit cake has an unusual taste and I don't know what causes that taste.
I don't imagine the high fructose corn syrup is doing it any favours. I just get mine online from the UK (British Corner Shop). They'll ship 30Kg for only 20 quid.
My guess is that it's nasty preservatives! Same reason the bread smells so yucky here in the states...
@@MagentaOtterTravelsDepends on the bread, but the US the industrial milling system effectively renders most store bought flour empty of nutrition. It’s best to grind your own if you can. Ask me how I know…
BTW, I imagine a lot of European Flour is similar…
Yes. Fruit cakes are pretty popular here. My mum used to bake Dundee cake frequently when I was growing up and also baked (and still does bake) Christmas cake (she's 82 now). I might be biased but it's the best I've ever tasted.
She bakes the cake weeks in advance then "feeds" it with brandy. After that she covers it in Marzipan and finally ices it with Royal Icing.
When we got married we had our wedding cake made the same way but in 3 tiers. We kept one of the tiers which we used as the christening cake at the christening of our first child - 6 YEARS later and it was still good. (We did re-ice it though).
Great video 👍
I love reading comments like yours! Many people have said similar things. That their mum or Nan made the best fruitcake ever. And that they saved the top-tier of their wedding cake for their first child's christening. To an American, the idea of eating a cake six years later is totally incomprehensible! Lol. But I've heard many people say it, so It's definitely "a thing"! 😉
Thanks for watching! Dara
@@MagentaOtterTravels Thank you 🙏
I was born in Sri Lanka, now resident in the UK for 63 years. Because of British and Portuguese influence in Sri Lanka, fruit cake is a really big thing there, especially the Sri Lankan variety of Christmas cake. British Christmas cake is nice, but when you are able to make it from homegrown Sri Lankan ingredients (both fruit and spices, one of which is cardamom, not coriander or mace), it tastes SOOOOO much better, like eating cake made in heaven 😄 The difference is it's only aged a month, and doesn't have a burnt taste to it
It's a big deal when everyone gets together at the end of November/beginning of December to chop and mix ingredients - a lot of puhul dosi and rulang.
Sounds delicious! My dear friend from grad school is from Sri Lanka and is back living in Colombo. It's always interesting to discuss food and cooking traditions with her!
I was born and raised in Canada - a British Commonwealth country. Although I am not of British descent my mother made fruitcake every year. It was a dark fruitcake full of fruit and absolutely delicious! She made it a few weeks before Christmas so the flavours can develop. So yummy.
Nice! I love hearing everyone's Christmas traditions.
I am not English, (Hungaria) but grew up in Toronto Canada, in the 60's, a very WASP town then. All my English friends would treat me to their home made fruitcake, I persuaded my busy with her career mother to try to make this fabulous Christmas cake for us. She did, and when I treated my friends, their mothers asked for my Hungarian mom's recipe. I am now 77 years young, and I am still continuing this fabulous English tradition for my famiy.
@@146agi122 that's wonderful! Bless you! 🙏
Fruitcake is definitely more an adults cake as it's for a sophisticated palate so, if the tradition & 'proper' recipes haven't been followed through the generations it's no wonder it's died off Dara. I bake my own cake because I can't stand the candied fruit (orange peel & glacé cherries yuk) I steep raisins, currants and sultanas in whisky, brandy or sherry for 4 or 5 days in a covered bowl & make up for the missing candy peel with chopped nuts & flaked almonds , I have also put drained maraschino cherries into the mix too as I love the marzipan flavour & they add moisture . As to decorating the cake with the (white) fondant paste...another yuk ! First comes marzipan made to the original recipe as in the Bero book of recipes (this recipe book has been used in my family since it was 1st published 100 years ago by Bell-Royal of Newcastle and is now on it's 41st edition) . After the marzipan you apply Royal icing , made, again as per the Bero recipe , we have always added a few drops of glycerine so the icing stays soft ...absolutely delicious and always made with love ❤️ Our doctor used to always drop in to my grandparent's home for his Christmas cake , 1 bottle of ginger wine and 1 of rhubarb wine 🍷 😋 A tradition that went on for 50 years 😅
Boppy makes Be-Ro recipes on his channel all the time! That's how I know about that cookbook ;-)
It's so amazing hearing everyone's family traditions!! I do think of fruitcake as being an adult cake... especially because of all the booze that is poured onto it for months (if not years!).
My mum would make Christmas fruit cake in October. We would always lick the mixing bowl after she'd filled the 20 or 30 cm rectangular backing paper-lined tin with the mix. The paper rose 4 or 5 inches above the tin to prevent burning. After a long, slow. cooking time, it was allowed to cool, before piercing with a knitting needle and feeding it with brandy or port for two months, sealed in a paper-lined tin. Just before Christmas it was wrapped in home-made marzipan and royal Icing. It was wonderful, although a little boozy for kids.
I can't believe how long fruit cakes bake for! I've never baked anything that long!!!
I think our fruit cake is totally different to yours especially a home made version. A Christmas cake holds many memories for me, my mother making it month# before Christmas storing it in a tin in a spare room that was cool and watching her feed the cake with brandy a few times a week. Then covering it in marzipan and royal icing and decorating it with cake ornaments we reused every year, Deers, Christmas tree and Father Christmas. Also her making a Yule log and my job placing the Robin on top. Although she never made her own Christmas pudding which I’ve never understood why because it the easiest of them all to make. Also her trifle was legendary in our family. As you will probably know most Christmas food in the UK is filled with alcohol.
Yes, I agree they are totally different! Thanks for sharing your Christmas food traditions and memories :-)
I am British and I used to be a cake decorator. Fruit cakes were traditionally made for a wedding cake and for Christmas.
When I made them I preferred to bake them only about 2-3weeks before the occasion. The cake was made with lots and lots of different dried fruits. I used to add sultanas, raisins, currants, cherries, apricots, prunes, dates, figs, pineapple and whatever I could get. It has coffee in it, vanilla, brandy, mixed spice etc and plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, brown sugar, eggs. These ingredients were all mixed together then cooked for several hours or overnight and as soon as it was cooked I added more brandy while it was hot when it came out the oven. I didn’t add any more after this. The cake was wrapped in grease proof paper and tin foil for as long as it needed. Usually 2-3 weeks before being decorated. It was then coated in marzipan then either royal icing or sugarpaste. The marzipan is there to stop the cake discolouring the icing. Once the cake is covered after coming out the over there is a weight put on it so that it flattens the top.
I absolutely love fruit cake and my fruit cake tastes the best, even if I say so myself. I used to get lots of compliments on the flavour and how moist the cake was.
I didn’t put nuts in it. If anyone didn’t like something in the cake I changed it for them with something else.
Most Christmas cakes from the shops have only sultanas, raisins and cherries
Oh I love hearing from bakers and chefs! Thanks for leaving a comment!
Your fruitcakes sound amazing... so many types of delicious dried fruit! I still can't wrap my head around baking a cake for HOURS... but I know that's how it's done! Interesting to learn that the marzipan is a buffer to keep the royal icing pure white. Makes sense!
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Happy New Year! XX Dara
I preferred cold Christmas pudding to cake!! Although my mum used to make her own ,it was a family thing making next years pudding in November I was encouraged to help & everyone took a tern to mix it with a wooden spoon & made a Wish & little me was allowed to scrape out the remains in the bowl with the spoon!! Loved it, always dark rum in(with a bottle of Stout or Porter mixed in with the eggs) It's the alcohol & Brown sugar & black Treacle aka: molasses that preserves the pudding usually a year Brandy is warmed poured over it & set alight, Fruit cakes are not ignited & for good Barabrith soak the fruit overnight in cold Tea!! & eat it sliced either buttered or if you feel decadent Clotted Cream??
Have a Merry Christmas & Good Fortune & Health throughout the year to come !!
Warmed through with melted butter and with the remains of the brandy butter. Very good indeed.
OK, dumb question ... all these puddings/cakes sound like they have a lot of alcohol in them. How does that work with feeding young children? Just curious!
@@MagentaOtterTravels We used to have silver coins hidden in the pudding, It was the incentive to acquire the taste. I never did as I didn't like the custard or brandy butter that was served with it. I moved to Australia and someone served Christmas pudding with a slosh of Marsala and ice cream. That was my Eureka moment for the pudding. My children acquired the taste from my sister's Christmas Pudding ice cream recipe. One shop pudding, cooked and cooled and the same amount of Clotted Cream Ice cream, same mount of whipped Cointreau Double Cream all stirred up together then frozen in a lined bombe shaped bowl. Thaw slightly before turning out on to a plate and decorating with a sprig of holly.
If no Cointreau cream, used double cream and slosh in a little booze of your taste. I fancy Baileys would be good. Not too much or the freezing can be disrupted.
We made our Christmas (fruit) cake last June. I made candied orange & lemon peel (quite fun) and the whole thing, loaded with alcohol, matured slowly. Excellent.
Well done you! I admire the advance planning and dedication!
Hi Dara,
The thing about UK fruit wedding cakes (basically the same a Christmas cake) is that traditionally with a 3 tier cake, the top tier is retained, for the Christening of the 1st child, so needs to last (maybe).
Its very difficult to make a good fruit cake, without feeding with alcohol, I assume prohibition will have had a bad effect, similar to that felt in US Cider (hard) industry.
I might use Strong Beer/Stout to sock the fruit prior to making, then feed the cake with whisky/whiskey or brandy, for me it would need to be a 'warming' style of drink, so not Vodka or Gin.
On spices, 'All Spice' sometimes called Chinese All Spice, can be got from Asian stores here, wondering if you have Asian grocery stores in Texas?
Apparently the US equivalent to British mixed spice is Pumpkin Pie Spice ;-)
I've read some incredible stories in the comments about people saving the top tier of their wedding cake for many years till their first baby is christened!
@@MagentaOtterTravels Apparently Chinese Allspice is called Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, or pimento in the US, it has a similar taste and effect to Mixed spice or 5 spice which are often given in UK recipes.
When I was a kid in the UK in the 70’s my mum would always buy a Dundee cake at Christmas. It is well known by the way it is topped with candied cherries and dried fruit plus walnuts and Brazil nuts. These are arranged over the entire top of the cake and are glazed so the colours give it an almost bejewelled look which looks very pretty on your Christmas table. It is a very delicious fruit cake not dissimilar to the ones you describe in your video. It’s the decorative topping that classes it as a Dundee cake.
OK, that sounds delicious! I definitely want to try a Dundee cake!
OMG all the fruitcakes you showed in US stores looked nothing like fruitcake I've eaten in the UK. They all seem to have weird toppings or strange additions. Sorry! I love UK fruitcake with a strong cheese slice like Wensleydale.
I really want to try fruitcake with cheese!!! Yes, the American fruitcakes I showed in this video are rubbish! But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out.
@@MagentaOtterTravels think it's a northern or Yorkshire thing to eat a strong mature cheese (mature cheddar or wensleydale works great) with fruitcake. The cheese cuts the richness of the fruitcake.
Love fruit cake
Traditional fruit cake much darker with dates ,black treacle and gravy browning(caramel) rich undecorated will keep years rather then days.
@@jamesbaker429 True. My nan as a kid used to have fruitcake wrapped in paper stored in an air tight cake tin in the food cupboard. She'd go mad if you left it out or forgot to wrap it back up and place it back in the tin!
When I visit the States at Christmas I always bring fruit cake and plum pudding with me. The airport security always comment on the aroma of the cake and puddings. Americans I know that are of recent English decent and Irish Americans do like fruit cake and plum pudding. The English Americans would make both a light and dark coloured Christmas cake, the Irish Americans tended to mostly make a dark coloured cake made with black treacle as opposed to golden syrup. All the spices and ingredients were available in Epicurean markets and Irish import shops. The ingredients are dear, but the flavour is superb. Happy Christmas!
I hope you had a splendid Christmas! Thank you for your comment!
Two points. 1) Neon dyed fruit is an American thing.....none of those things in our cakes, thank heavens! 2) Wensleydale Cheese is essential with your fruit cake, mmmmm! As the saying in Yorkshire goes, "Cake without the Cheese is like a Kiss without the Squeeze." You have to have Wensleydale Cheese with your fruitcake. Make your Xmas cake in mid-October it will be nice and mature/boozy by December. I love other countries Xmas traditions but I'm so glad to be British, ours are best!
OK, serious question... since I don't drink alcohol, and I AM going to Yorkshire this summer, do you think I could get fruitcake there and try it with Wensleydale? But I would need nonalcoholic fruitcake.
@@MagentaOtterTravels The alcohol evaporates so no worries there. Yorkshire fruitcake especially Yorkshire Christmas cake does not have icing and marzipan. They are left plain or decorated with sliced almonds. The Wensleydale cheese is a good balance to the sweet richness of the fruitcake. An alternative cheese is white stilton which is a "dry and slightly bitter cheese". The cheese you should never have with fruitcake is Lancashire cheese. 🤣🤣
Hi Dara, I am a born and bred Londoner, in my seventies, who loves fruitcake. You mentioned somewhere, either in the vlog, or the comments about using mace. Mace is the outer husk of the nutmeg and unsurprisingly, tastes like nutmeg, only milder, it is also lighter in colour. Dundee, was always known for jam, journalism and jute. The jam part comes from James Keiller, who, in the mid to late 16th., century owned a family run business making jam. As luck would have it, a Spanish, trading vessel carrying a cargo of Seville oranges, was stuck in Dundee, due to stormy weather. James Keiller, was able to buy the oranges at a good price, as their shelf life, was coming to an end. His mother came up with a recipe and Keiller's Dundee Marmalade, was born and was made in their factories, ensuring the Keiller, families ongoing wealth. The journalism part, comes from D. C. Thomson, a Scottish media company, formed in 1905, when David Couper Thomson, took over and expanded an already existing printing company. Your husband, may well remember reading The Beano and The Dandy, as I did as a child. These titles, as well as others over the years, ensured the Thomson family, never had to worry about money again. The third J, stood for jute and Dundee, became the largest processor of Jute, in the world. Taking the raw materials, mainly from India and processing them into various forms of fabrics and twine. Dundee, did rather well from these three J's. Best wishes and keep up the good work.
Thanks for all that interesting information! Because I lived in Dundee Illinois from age 8 to 18, I enjoyed learning so much about the Dundee in Scotland! I'm a huge fan of jam, but still haven't managed to learn to love marmalade yet!
Thanks for your support. We are currently in Sussex and Kent, exploring the wonderful castles around here! Cheers XX Dara
Born and raised, and still living in the U.S. I love fruitcake and plum (Christmas) pudding! However, I make mine from scratch. I never use the fluorescent fruit. Natural fruits all the way - including maraschino cherries from Italy. I can't tolerate what they call "maraschino" cherries from the U.S. Once you have had the "real" maraschino cherries from Italy you can never go back to those produced in the U.S.
Very sensible. I agree that high quality ingredients make all the difference!
We had fruitcake for our wedding in 1987 as was completely usual at the time. My mother in law made it and a friend iced it- a layer of marzipan followed by hard royal icing. People who couldn’t attend were sent a piece in the post- they used to sell little cardboard boxes specifically for this purpose. The smallest top tier of the cake was saved in a tin and then when our first baby was born in 1991 we brought it out, removed the marzipan and icing which would probably have been safe to eat but was discoloured, reapplied marzipan and icing and served it as the Christening cake. It was good. By the way, to answer your question, Dundee cake has no icing but has almonds arranged on the top.
I have seen those little cake sliced boxes! They are very cute.
I would really like to try a Dundee cake! Hopefully next summer ...
I love fruitcake. Fruitcake was that thing in a can. It sat there for a while until I notice pecans in it. I love nuts, so I over a week, picked and ate every whole nut in it! Soon all the nuts were gone but I noticed there were chopped nuts throughout the cake! So I cut a piece and ate it. It was yummy and nutty. Eventually, I ate all. Later, I found it was a rum soaked.
That's so funny!
@@MagentaOtterTravels I recently discovered a half eaten panettone on my mother’s kitchen counter. SCORE! It was still edible wrapped in foil paper, despite being probably a year old!
@@OuryLN the best use for that is to slice it and make French toast. It's absolutely delicious!
I'm 81 and I've never seen green cherry things on a fruit cake. There are many varieties of fruit cake from dry to booze-soaked. Love 'em!
Someone said they are a thing called angelica... I'd never heard of that before!
I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't like fruitcake. It's delicious. At Christmas what's even better is Christmas pudding, which has similarities with fruitcake but is looser but its lovely, once a year, with brandy cream. My favourite fruitcake has cherries in it, in a Dundee or Genoa style. It's funny to me how Americans are repulsed or bamboozled by foods we take for granted, like fruitcake, savoury meat pies, black pudding etc. I don't think anything repulses Americans more than a steak and kidney pie. They're really missing out by not eating meat pies. Fruit pies are fine but they don't compare to a good savoury pie or Cornish pasty 😂
Most of the time we dislike things because they "sound" weird or we just haven't tried something that was made well with high quality ingredients ;-) Now I want a Cornish pasty!! Thanks Gary! haha
@@MagentaOtterTravels Dara, I was in the pub in Naunton (which I know you know well) a while ago. On the next table was a young American couple who were eating steak and kidney pies, chips and peas etc, just because they'd heard of these weird things and that people in England actually ate them! They were wary but generally, quite enjoyed them! 😂 Have a very happy Christmas. 🌲
Wow, what a history of fruitcake. We love your jingle bells!
My festive jewellery is tacky but I gotta bring it out once a year! ;-)
A good fruit cake is given 6 month head start then its stored in alcohol for about 5 month. If you can taste the fruit cake by Christmas you haven't marinated long enough . My family traditionally is stared in brandy . If you can't eat it you can always put it on the fire , it should burn for months and keep you warm though the winter . LOL
My late wife was born in Sri Lanka. Her Grandfather was a Dutch Burgher descended from the Dutch colonists who ruled Sri Lanka before the British. Her mother made a Christmas cake which has Dutch/ Sri Lankan roots. It is so much more moist than any British Christmas Cake. I have tasted cake from Fortnum and Mason and this is better. Just made it again this year and wow! Another Burgher dish is Breudher usually eaten Christmas. A cake with lots of sultanas and butter in it. Eaten with butter or Edam cheese.
I thoroughly agree with the "eaten with butter or Edam cheese" part! When I tasted bara brith or tea cake it was LOVELY with butter!
I definitely want to try fruitcake with cheese sometime.
I worked for a holiday camp in the UK one Christmas in the 80s.Out of the blue, we were sent a very large ring style Christmas fruit cake from a supplier. Quite large and heavy. Must have cost a packet to send over. Full of radioactive fruit, very very colourful, lots of nuts, and not a lot of actual cake material . Everyone in the office had a little, and they all hated it, as being too sweet. They let me take the rest home, and my parents hated it as well. Never seen another until your video!
That is hilarious! I'm not surprised everyone hated it... the radioactive fruit is nasty tasting, and real dried fruit with less sugar would definitely be preferable!!
That wasn’t a Christmas cake that was commercial yuk!!
I think it’s impossible to buy a real Christmas cake worth eating in a supermarket . You may be able to get one in a small privately owned bakery. There is a huge difference between pale looking fruit cake and a Christmas cake. A Christmas cake has treacle, beer, spices butter, it’s darker and has a greater proportion of fruit. It needs to mature so you can’t make it the day before. They aren’t cheap to produce so not really commercial. A tip to Americans don’t buy those dreadful yellow cakes that look as dry as dust with radio active fruit. And no pecans!!
Fun fact: Dundee cake was often found in tins around Christmas; often in Christmas Hampers. They are always decorated with blanched almonds.
I really want to try one! Hopefully next summer... if I can find it that time of year!
Dara! A few observations: cake and cheese - this isn't a northern preserve. I'm from Kent and got brought up with having a rich, dark piece of fruit cake (no icing or marzipan) and a piece of mature Stilton or similar blue veined cheese. It's a VERY traditional combo which goes back at least 200 years.
Radioactive candied fruits??? Where the heck are you buying your candied fruit from???? The fruit in or on top of a fruit cake should be quite subtle/restrained in colour, not 'glow in the dark' 😂😂😂😂 DUNDEE CAKE - my absolute fave which my partner, Liz, bakes me each Christmas. It should have no marzipan or icing, and the whole top (usually square) is covered in diagonal alternating rows of fruit (cherries predominately) and nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts). If 'normal' Christmas fruit cake with icing and marzipan is the Rolls Royce, Dundee Cake is the Bentley - old money, and people who really run the country, not think they do!😂😂
Hiya Shane! Good to hear from you!
I think the fruitcake with cheese tradition just changes a bit depending on where in Britain you are... it might be Wensleydale or Caerphilly or Stilton. I need to try this combo!
That radioactive fruit is an American abomination I fear... sigh!
Because I grew up in Dundee (Illinois) I think it is my duty to make a pilgrimage to Dundee (Scotland) this summer and enjoy a slice of this delightful Dundee cake everyone keeps talking about!
Your last sentence made me smile. Cheers for that and HAPPY CHRISTMAS! X Dara
There’s tea bread where the fruit is soaked in black tea overnight. It’s great just eaten with butter. Rich fruit cake is where the fruit is soaked in alcohol, my mum used to use Jamaica rum for soaking the fruit. We made our Christmas cake in October and then fed the cake with rum until Christmas. Just delicious. I love fruit cake!
I have had tea bread with butter. It was scrumptious!
The radioactive fruit is what we call glacee fruit, and is typically from France. It is less coloured than what the US versions are. I use in make loaf cakes but not in Christmas cake.
Interesting! These loaf cakes are what many Americans think of as fruitcake. Would you have that for tea during the year, not as a Christmas treat then?
Recipes for "mixed spice" are easily found on the internet, and it doesn't contain anything too hard to find in large grocery stores in areas where I've lived (PA & NC).
Thanks for that! Someone else mentioned that "pumpkin pie spice" here in the states is similar ;-) Happy New Year! Dara
The more alcohol the better! Soak your dried fruit in Brandy for a couple of days before you make the cake and then feed it every couple of weeks. I don't like marzipan and icing so I top mine with glazed nuts, cherries and dried apricots. No luminous fruit on mine though but then we don't use those kind of colourings in our fruit! Who decided cherries should be luminous green?!
My 96 year old mum always makes Christmas cake. She makes it in about September. I always add the brandy or rum. It’s a yearly custom we have carried out every year for the last 65 years, and knowing my mum, She’ll be carrying it out in 65 years with her great grandkids……… and they’ll be about 80! 🎄⛄️❄️🍾🍹
Aw, bless her! I'm hearing so many stories of mums and grandmothers who are master fruitcake bakers! What a wonderful tradition.
@@MagentaOtterTravels It is. Hope you two have a great Christmas. x
That $11.00 fruit cake is £1.40 at Sainsbury. Genoa cake they call it.
WOW! What a markup!
Fun video Dara I kept laughing when you spoke about the Radioactive fruit! I was part of the 2% in your survey. And I remember the Johnny Carson joke too! Great job! 😂🎄
haha, thanks so much!
I was talking with fellow Potterheads online, and they were all wondering how Harry’s birthday cake, stashed under the floorboards, lasted the 6 week summer holidays. I explained to them birthday cakes at the time were fruit cakes and could last for months, getting more delicious as time passed. They were American and didn’t believe me, and carried on thinking they’d found a major error by J K Rowling 🤭
That's so funny! What are your favorite Harry Potter filming sites to visit?
on our sister isle of Guernsey, they have a fruit loaf called Guernsey Gâche (gâche means cake). it contains Raisins, Sultanas, Cherries and mixed peel.
Sounds good... except the for peel. I'm not a fan of peel and zest... one reason why fruitcake isn't my favourite.
The fruit cake at Christmas and 'normal' fruitcake are very different things. A Christmas cake is much much darker and richer, and many people who like a basic fruit cake are not fans of Christmas cake. Wedding cakes and Christening cakes tend to be of the same variety as Christmas Cakes.
The fruit cakes you did find in the US stores looked much lighter in colour (what I referred to as 'normal' fruit cakes above), and as if they would have a much drier consistency - the cake to fruit ratio looked wrong for a Christmas cake- too much cake and too little fruit.
A really traditional British fruitcake wouldn't have cranberries in.....cranberries are definitely a US import- though they have grown in popularity over the last couple of decades.
The American fruitcakes I showed in this video are pretty rubbish. But then I found a treasure trove of British Christmas treats at World Market a few days later... I published that video today. It includes MINCE PIES as well as better fruitcakes and Christmas puddings! I hope you check it out and let me know if they look more authentic.
For my Christmas cake I soak my fruit for at least a week in a rum and cognac mix. For the first 24hrs at room temperature in a sealed tub, I then store it in the fridge and stir it twice daily topping up with rum and cognac as it soaks up. I also add the spices as the fruit really absorbs them making the cake taste wonderful. I don't use allspice as that's just different types of pepper. I use mixed spice with freshly grated nutmeg and true cinnamon, not cacia, (what's in most packets you get from the supermarkets). There is a big difference in taste and aroma! I use really good quality fruit and no coloured fruit! My cherries are natural, as is the candied peel. The rest are a mix of a couple of different types of raisins for different flavours plus jumbo flame raisins, sultanas and currants. I add sliced almonds and roughly chopped walnuts too plus this year I chopped up some prunes and dates so they went in it too. My mum used to add a can of crushed pineapple to her Christmas cake but It's become hard to find in my area of the uk now. I use dark muscavado sugar or molasses sugar instead of white granulated and a tablespoon or 2 of treacle too as I like a dark rich cake. My Nan used to use a tablespoon of Gravy powder back in her day... I feed my cake for about 4weeks minimum and then cover completely with marzipan and thats left to dry, then fondant and lastly with royal icing and decorations!
So fun to hear everyone's traditions and recipes! Sounds like a LOT of work, but I applaud your use of very high quality ingredients. The most surprising part of your comment was the tablespoon of gravy powder... WHAT?!
British fruitcake doesn't come with fluorescent cherries. Dundee cake is not spiced, has less fruit and is something in between the heaviness of fruitcake and the lightness of US spongy stuff. Its also covered in a layer of almonds. It's delicious.
I really want to try Dundee cake now!
When I was in University I worked at a grocery store and that store sold the “radioactive” colored fruit prior to Christmas along with the other fruits (minus the currants) for home bakers of fruitcake.
FYI. There is a store in Richardson Texas called British Emporium. It is on Campbell & Nantucket and they sale British Christmas Puddings. I bit pricey since it is imported.
You should buy your Christmas Pudding each Christmas, for the following Christmas. It really benefits from being able to mature for 12 months.
I assume you were at uni in the US? I have heard about British Emporium, but not been there. Check out my video from today... I found quite an impressive array of Christmas goodies at World Market!
Never been a fan of the radioactive fruit, my grandmother always made a xmas cake months in advance but only used fresh and dried fruit...along with generous helping of alcohol!
Yeah, that radioactive fruit just does not look like something a person should eat!😳
I think that is key, those candied fruits are so sweet they don't have any fruit flavour left in them. Regular dried fruit would make a good fruitcake.
Utterly smashed by the time she'd baked it. 🙂
Dundee cake is supposed to have been first marketed by Keller's marmalade (it contains marmalade as an ingredient) but it's probably older than that. It is usually decorated with almonds and cherries.
Sounds good 😋
Of the fruit cakes you managed to find, I think the one with Famous Grouse sounded best...
I think most Americanised fruit cakes are nasty. That Buckingham you mentioned one looked most British.
It's all about the booze. Soak all the fruit and spices in brandy and port. Drain and use to make the cake in September, and then feed it with port and brandy every two weeks :) It's blooming lovely. and spices
Dara and I was astonished to hear you pronounce Pecan. In Britain it sounds like PEECAN, although it only has one 'e'.
I have heard pecan pronounced a lot of strange ways... I'll never forget my wedding reception in Herefordshire in 1992 when I heard Ian's family saying peekin. I was laughing. Sorry, but I refuse to say that the British way. Pecans are native to Texas and not very popular in Britain... so I'm sticking with my pronunciation ;-)
@@MagentaOtterTravels Dara, actually I looked it up and both ways are considered correct although you normally only hear British people say pecan as though it has a double e.
I think you are wrong about the nut not being popular in Britain. You see them along with all the other nuts that are available along with recipes that use them, quite often.
@@valeriedavidson2785 i'm just thinking about shopping in supermarkets. I see lots of pecans here in Texas, but I have to search for one puny little bag at Tesco. And they are expensive!
@@MagentaOtterTravels Try the healthier supermarket on Bath Road.
Cannot remember the name. They have almost everything. Near the Cheltenham College end, same side.
@@valeriedavidson2785 thanks! We usually buy nuts at the Grape Tree health food store in town. They have really good prices!
Bara Brith has most of the ingredients found in fruitcake, but doesn’t contain any fat, so is a ‘teabread’, and is baked in a loaf tin. Served sliced and spread with butter. -and a cup of tea of course.
I've had it a couple times, and really enjoyed it! The best was in a little café in the Lake District. It was fresh and warm and really delightful with a generous serving of butter on top! 😋😋
Those candied fruits do look radioactive.
I think they are the American bastardization of fruitcake...
But they give the cake a half life of two years ☢
My husband bought Zante Currants in Houston a couple of weeks ago --- it was either HEB, Kroger, or Foodarama.
Oh, he was lucky! Probably HEB... they have a much better selection than Kroger I think.
I happen to be one of those folks who actually like the much maligned fruitcake.
There aren't too many of us but that's ok.
More for me
You are a TRUE Anglophile, Christian! ❤️🇬🇧
Shop bought Christmas cakes are nine times out of ten terrible.
Fondant Icing is soft incipide stuff .
Royal Icing is way better.
If you want to make imho the best cake look up Rusty Lee's Jamaican Christmas cake.
It uses Rum and Wine to make a cake that is wonderfully alcoholic .
Just dont drive after you've had a slice😂
@@Lee-70ish Royal Icing all the way.
@@Lee-70ish you can have my share 😉... I'll be designated driver 😊
I LOVE fruitcake. At the Christmas Dinner lunch special at work there was a lot of leftover puddings and they were sliced up and given to staff other than binning it. Two colleagues gave me theirs. One was on a diet. The other doesn't like fruit cake. It felt like I won the food lottery. It was made from scratch and didn't have pecans or radioactive cherries on it. Just a thin layer of marzipan. Delicious.
You did win the lottery! Sounds like a merry Christmas! For the past month we've had all kinds of homemade Christmas treats around because of all of the celebrations. For us that means fudge and fruit crumble and chocolates and an endless supply of cookies! Now I am the one on a diet. Happy new year!
Moral of the story: do not buy supermarket cakes. They're all rubbish.
TRUE! But check out today's video... I think I found some much nicer fruit cakes here in Texas... and even MINCE PIES!
French and Swiss-German dual national here: I love fruit cake, especially the German types ones or the so-called Dundee cake. I currently live in the UK. A dundee cake is like a British fruit cake, with a topping made of nuts, and maybe cherries. It is in the shape of a cylinder (about 8cm high). I do not drink alcohol either, but it is ok in a Xmas fruit cake. German fruit cakes are a conglomerate of figs, nuts, raisins and other dried fruit. I am not sure there is any flour/baling involved. It is small, compact and definitely mountaineering fod.
Thank you so much for your comment! It sounds like you have connections to many countries all with delicious food! Have you been to Colmar? I recently posted a video of our visit there. I loved it!
My mom’s mother was born and raised in England and my mom’s father was born & raised in Scotland. My mom was also born in England but came over around eight years old. So when I was little I remember that around Christmas time that we had a fruit cake in the refrigerator but I don’t remember any one eating it or liking it. I think that my grandmother might have made it - she did make shortbread and meat pies (her sister made Yorkshire pudding which was delicious - they all were good except the fruit cake, which I don’t remember exactly trying but …). Also when I was little my mother would sometimes buy mince pies but I don’t think that I tried them - I’m not very adventurous!
I can relate to what you are saying... I think Americans are familiar with fruitcakes and mince pies but they don't trust them. They look and smell different and most people are afraid to even try them! Which I guess is not really fair, is it? haha
Check out the video I filmed after this... I found a treasure trove of fruitcakes and mince pies and shortbread at another store in Texas! ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.html
There are a few things in a traditional Christmas fruit cake that I don't like and this lead me in my teenage years (many years ago) to start making my own version. I left out alcohol, mixed peel, nuts and currents. I made up the missing weight by adding more raisins, sultanas and cherries. It turns out as a slightly lighter and fruitier cake. And, of course, it can still be eaten with Wensleydale cheese. Merry Christmas.
Sounds excellent! I think we'd prefer that 😉
I was brought up in the uk and was introduced to fruit cake at a very young age. The traditional Christmas fruit cake is a heavy and spicy flavoured “beast”. The alcohol is absorbed by the fruit and gives the fruit a different taste from what it would be normally the glacé fruit is what has been labeled as radii active fruit and was a regular component in fruitcake for special occasions. When younger I did try glacé cherrys from the the packet, and I must admit I did not like them, but once cooked they added to the overall flavour.
I was a late comer to adding a slice of cheese to a portion of fruitcake, and the cheese used was the staple cheddar cheese. While I did have reservations regarding mixing the two types of food the contrast of flavours and textures did, in my case, work the strong flavour of the fruitcake was mellowed by the cheese and the different textures complemented each other.
I have tried the Colin Street Bakery product, which does have a very high shipping cost but the tin it comes in can be reused for other foodstuffs for many years if they are treated carefully. The glacé process of preserving fruit is known in Europe , but in America they have expanded the range of fruits beyond that normally used in Europe.
A long time ago I did visit America with some friends and experienced the fluorescent colouring present in some breakfast cereals which seemed extremely far away from the natural colour as to raise concerns about the ingredients used. On a slightly different topic candied peel is/was available in the uk which did introduce a strange colour to the peel, which were used for thee various aromatic oils they contained to add flavour, the process of ‘waxing’ the fruit to protect it does inhibit the processing of the peel I believe.
The green bits you notice is, I believe are called glacé Angelica
From a food website I found the following: Our glace Angelica comes from France. The stem of the plant, which is a member of the parsley family, is harvested and boiled in a sugar syrup to produce this product.
I wonder if the expectation from the word cake differs in different countries? The assumptions seem to be that Americans are used to cake being a sweet item while in the UK cake can be a savoury item as well.
Another ‘Welsh cake’ is called Teisen Lap it translates as moist cake and traditionally is cooked on a plate it is not as deep as a traditional cake but can be served and eaten quickly.
I had never heard of angelica before this video! Very interesting!
I agree that Britons and Americans think of different things when they hear "cake" and even moreso with "pie"! In the US the word pie always conveys a meaning of a sweet baked good. While sweet pies do exist in Britain, most Britons would first think of pork, steak, fish or other savoury pie.
Fruit cakes in the uk can range from the everyday lighter coloured fruitcakes that tend not to have alcohol in them and aren’t to fruit heavy so tend to be less heavy and dense. The Xmas fruitcakes almost always tend to be very dark and dense with alcohol added and are very varied in texture and taste because of the booze added. I personally love anything with fruit in it but not all cakes are equal even in the uk,you can get good and some not so good.
Thanks for explaining the cake spectrum a bit! Of course not all fruitcakes are equally good in Britain... but I fear the ones that are on offer here in the US are a bit of a lower bar unfortunately :-(
At my Wedding, and every Christmas that I can once the cake had been baked then we used to pierce the bottom of the cake we poured some Sherry in the bottom of the cake . You never see and then we covered in Marzipan and the when dried off a little put Royal Icing over the top and sides of the cake.
Sounds like a popular practice in Britain... but very different from American cakes ;-)
The preserving method for cherries is to process them in lye (like hominy), bleaching them. The red or green food color is added. I don't hate them, and the texture is different from other preserved fruit. I think some of that red and green stuff is candied citron peel.
It's an unusual process that gives a unique flavour. Obviously lots of people enjoy it... but sadly I'm not one of them ;-)
Fruit cakes vary from quite light - almost a Victoria sponge with some fruit- to really dense. Spices can go from nothing to powerful ginger and allspice (which is wonderful). On a similar note we Brits also like mincemeat - dried fruit, spices, brandy and suet - popped into a pastry case. Originally it had ground beef in it as well (hence the name), and originates from mediaeval times when spices, meat and fruit were commonly mixed (a bit like Moroccan cooking now).
Interesting connection to Moroccan cooking... I hadn't thought of that before, but I see your point!
If you haven't seen it yet, check out my follow up video about Mince Pies here: ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.htmlsi=nK6E9D48HJwblSzR
Do you know...I think I will...@@MagentaOtterTravels
Our weekly fruit cake at home the mixed fruit was soaked in tea for the moisture where as the Christmas cake was feed with alcohol
Interesting! I am surprised that you make fruit cake that often. Sounds a bit like Bara Brith or "tea cake" because of the tea that is used in making it. I don't drink tea, but I once had tea cake in the Lake District (by mistake) and it was DELICIOUS!!
We agree with your opening statement, Dara and Ian. Can't stand it! But, it's handy to give away with such a long shelf life! Have to ask if mixed pickling spice could make it taste any worse? 🤣🤣
Oh I'm certain it would make it worse! I can't imagine... yuck!
17:13 oops Ian you walked right into a challenge 😂😂😂
Yes, I may have to "eat" my words.
Yes Dundee Cake has marmalade as an ingredient, it was developed by the Keiller Marmalade company in Dundee, Scotland. My grandparents, on my mom’s side were born in Scotland and my mom in Canada so our holiday desserts definitely reflected that. My grandmother made a white fruit cake, more like a pound cake with the candied cherries, walnuts, citron peel, and raisins, but no alcohol. My youngest sister called it “dead fruit” cake. The Mrs. Carver’s fruit cake looked similar to my grandma’s. She didn’t arrange the “radioactive fruit” on top, which I noted the Carver’s cake also omitted. However my grandmother’s didn’t look as weird as the Carver’s did.
Oh my, dead fruit cake! I hope your gran wasn't offended!
Most of the fruitcakes in this video looked weird... but I found some much nicer ones in this follow up video: ruclips.net/video/ye5cZniCHPM/видео.html Thanks for your comment and Happy New Year! Dara
@@MagentaOtterTravels fortunately my sister never called it that when Gran was around. Thanks for the link, Happy New Year!
There is a Channel 5 program called Christmas in the Cotswolds tonight. It shows the Christmas market in Broadway and the food of the hotel in Lower Slaughter. I thought that I would let you know Dara and Ian!
Oh, I would love to watch that programme! And I would really love to visit that market! One year we HAVE to spend Christmas in England...
I like fruit cake we used to have it every Christmas,
Unfortunately I don't celebrate Christmas anymore
Cause my mom died on Christmas day 5 years ago. So. I'll just be. Spending time with my 10 siblings,
Good video dara. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas 👍
Wishing you and your family a nice Christmas gathering!
The cafe and deli I visit sells individual slices of Christmas cake, dark and full of fruit, displayed on the counter for impulse buying, not bothered with the marzipan, but I’ll eat it.
I'm a fan of bara brith... with butter ;-)
Hi dara and Ian The fruit cakes you will find in many shops and in the US, like the ones you found, while they are called fruit cakes, they are not the same, usually have a use by date on, alot cheaper, well not the US ones lol, We get similar to what you had at out locat store for £2.00ish.
they are usually bought to for a snack, either to take o work, for when you have a break and cup of tea, or at home, they are also very great to have with custurd as a desert also or wamded with bit of fresh cream.
American fruitcakes for the most part are really quite rubbish. But I would try one of the Collin Street "cherry fudge" or "apricot pecan" cakes... if they didn't cost 40 dollars!!
Just loved your fruit cake piece! Any day is an excuse for a home-made fruit cake: birthday, Christmas, Easter, even May 26th or 27th...or 28th...! Every fruit cake tastes slightly different and - you're right - fruit cake matures and improves with a little age. Growing up in a small terraced house at the end of the Northern Line, I was allowed a slice of iced Christmas fruit cake on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and the remainder was kept until July or August when it would be unwrapped and we'd all finish it off. Clearly, my Dad thought seven months maturity benefited its flavour and texture. I can remember the strong flavour...and also the rock-hard consistency!
Wow... you are not the first person who mentioned finishing Christmas cake over the summer holiday... and I can't wrap my brain around that concept! haha
Dundee cake is the traditional rich uk fruitcake but the top is covered in blanched almonds.
Most people would make their Christmas cakes from scratch. My mother used to soak the dried fruit in tea to plump it up, make as normal wrap it well and then feed for two months with brandy or rum fortnightly.
I think Australian fruitcake have the glacé fruits like pineapple, crystallised ginger.
I need to try Dundee cake. It sounds good! And since I went to school in Dundee (Illinois) I think a pilgrimage is very fitting!
My grandmother used to make her Christmas cake in January or February, wrap it in brown paper and put it in a tin just taking it out to 'feed' once a month until Christmas day.
That is serious dedication and planning!!!
this is what my gran did also. She was born 1909 and the recipe she used was her mother’s. We lost her in the 80s and my mum took over. Non of us bother now and I miss that fruit cake. After watching your video it brought it all back to me so maybe in February I may just get the recipe out and have a go. Merry Christmas
@@Hippydays1959 do it! Keep the tradition alive! 👍🎄❤️
The green coloured decoration is angelica , Dundee cake all year-round with flaked or whole almonds ,royal iced Christmas and Easter cakes my mum used to make six a year started in June for Christmas,ten inch diameter and five high so heavy fed with brandy till ready fruit steeped in dark rum.You will be lucky to find pecans used in a fruit cake more likely Brazils or walnuts, all Cake shops and supermarkets sell a variety of fruit cakes all year round ,and some very expensive matured and decorated for Christmas ten by two inch £60-100 or more,UK produces enormous quantities of currants for the soft drink Ribena and other cordials and jams.
The 'currants' used in cakes are dried grapes, small, and black in colour.
Ribena etc is made from blackcurrants (a bush fruit similar to redcurrants), _not_ grapes. Blackcurrants also make a very good dark purple jam.
This reminds me. Michelle is supposed to be making our Christmas cake about now. Special request from my mum because she makes a brilliant fruit cake. The fruit is marinated in alcohol for a couple of days. Michelle doesn't like it with icing but I love Christmas cakes with fondant icing. The cake is supposed to mature for a couple of weeks before serving and they do last for ages. In fact they used to be common as wedding cakes here in Oz. The tradition was that you saved a piece of your wedding cake for your first anniversary.
We can get as many dried fruits as necessary separately but we usually get bags of "mixed fruit" which contains Sultanas, Currants, Raisins, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel and glazed cherries. Michelle usually buys a couple of more bits and pieces for her cake including nuts. The cake is usually dark, rich and moist. A lot darker than many of the American ones in the video.
Now I have to go and make my traditional Christmas treats - rum balls, sago plum pudding (called a plum pudding but it also contains mixed fruit) served with brandy sauce and custard, various biscuits (cookies). 😁
So yes, fruit cake is definitely an Oz Christmas tradition - and traditionally a wedding cake base too.
I loved this video. I'm quite partial to your food videos for some reason. 😂Merry Christmas! 🎄🥮🎅🦌
PS
Speaking of Christmas, Christmas seafood has become a thing over the last couple of decades here in Oz. Christmas turkey and ham etc are still traditionally big but prawns and oysters are hitting the Christmas tables hard. Places like the Sydney Seafood Market opens for 36 hours straight in the lead up to Christmas Day. Apparently 100,000 people go. They expect over 350 tonnes of seafood is to be sold this Christmas. That includes 120 tonnes of prawns, and almost 70,000 dozen oysters. When we lived in Sydney we were local to the fish market and it was really good. It is the second or third busiest fish market in the world. 🍤🦐🦪🐟
Wow, Michelle's fruitcake sounds lush! And I think a sunny Christmas in Sydney eating seafood would be quite an interesting departure from American tradition!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! All the best to you and your family... MERRY CHRISTMAS! XX Dara and Ian
@@MagentaOtterTravels Merry Christmas Dara and Ian!!!
Dundee cake is fruit cake covered with almonds as opposed to marzipan &icing. Bara brith is made by marinating the fruit in cold tea (no milk) and is best eaten with butter (british) on each slice.
I am very anxious to try Dundee cake! That is a goal for this summer! ❤️🏴
I have had Bara brith once before, but it wasn't very high-quality. I'm hoping to make some this summer with my Welsh friend !🏴
I am intrigued by the addition of a marzipan topping. Sounds delicious!
That does sound like something YOU would like! Of course stollen is a fruitcake cousin ;-)
It is. I've never seen it just on top though. Usually the whole cake is covered in a layer of marzipan and that is then covered in a layer of icing.
Mixed spice is not the same as allspice; the first is used in sweet bakes and the latter in savoury dishes like curries.
Mixed spice being a mixture of spices, whereas all spice is a single spice from the all spice plant.
Fruit Cake is probably my preferred. In order Fruit>Lardy>Lemon >Coffee> Carrot >plain sponge(Victoria), Chocolate (too often badly done).
Fruit Cakes are in a ranged heavy>light. Christmas/Wedding>Dundee>Fruit Sponge. Cake Mix (SF Flour=Sugar=Butter+eggs): Fruit+Nuts, 1:4, 1:3 ,1:2 respectively.
Christmas and Dundee will include darker sugars and/or treacle, whole nuts (almonds) and red(not green)glacé cherries .
The top tier of a marzipaned and royal iced wedding cake is supposed to be kept as a Christening Cake for the 1st born.
Christmas Cakes and Puddings are supposed to be made on the Weekend before Advent, the penultimate of November, Stir Up Sunday.
I make a number of Figgy Puddings (a productive Fig Tree+Apple/Pear Orchard) and two rich fruit cakes for Birthday and Christmas in December.
Note Currants are not "Ribes" but a variety of dried grape from Turkey which have been in short supply recently ("Ribes"Blackcurrants are banned in USA)
Thanks so much for the most informative comment! That's fantastic! Cheers! Dara
I've noticed the ratios I wrote were weight of flour: fruit+nuts.
The green glacé cherries reminded me of a traditional ingredient that I find difficult to find; Crystallised Angelica, it was sometimes found in Candied/Crystallised Mixed Peel.
The "Black Corinth/Zante" grapes are dessicated to make Currants.