radiojohn

I miss GOOD fruitcake and that is complicated by my wife's need to be gluten-free.
We were looking at her grandmother's hand-written recipes from the depression era and found one for "inexepensive fruitcake." Basically raisins, prunes and dates with no glazed, colored fruit.

I adapted it with 2 cups of white rice flour, 2 cups of buckwheat flour, 1 cup of almond flour, blackstrap molasses, pinch of apple pie seasoning a a fair amount of domestic brandy + sufficient water to mix. Made two solid loaves.

Came out great!

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Before you baked it you could have used it for wallpaper glue. After baking, I suspect you could sharpen and hone knife blades, planer blades a so on.

If you can eat that stuff, then you are a much bigger man than I am.

radiojohn

It is certainly no Little Debbie Snack Cake.

Around here the locals consume lutefisk. Dried cod from Norway and essentially reanimated. No thanks!

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

My buddy from Duluth talks about lutefisk. Just because you can torture fish with a little lye and a lot of anger doesn’t mean you have try to resurrect it and eat it. I’d gladly eat your fruitcake wallpaper paste before lutefisk if I had to choose.

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Radiojohn. I'd try your fruitcake. For an off the shelf variety, I like Claxton's Old Fashion which have been made in Claxton, Ga since 1911. I like them and got mine at Walmart in the Christmas candy aisle. They will probably will be reduced in price after Christmas.

Schoee Loc: Europe

Here is a recipe for a great tasting gluten free cake. I make it frequently for those who are gf. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/orange-and-almond-cake/gyb3hphf8

Morry Loc: Palm Springs, CA

Costco broke my heart when they discontinued their popular fruitcake. But I also found Claxton's Old Fashion. No it's not as good as Costco's was . . . but it is pretty good and I enjoy it. Happy New Year.

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Well, Morry, we both know that neither Costco nor Walmart cares whether or not we get our fruitcake.

BebuLamar

They do care whether or not they get your money don't they?

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

Amen to that. About 40-50 years ago WCCO radio played a humorous song - Lutefisk Lament. Among other things, the song mentioned that the smell of cooking lutefisk could peel wallpaper off the walls.

Floyd Loc: Misplaced Texan in Florence, Alabama

Looks good. My mother allowed no alcoholic beverages in the house, except for one bottle of inexpensive red wine. In late August she made fruitcakes much like yours, wrapped them in old T-shirts, soaked the baked cakes with 3 shot glasses of the wine, placed the cakes in air tight cans. Every 2 to 3 weeks the cans got opened and the T shirts again soaked with the wine. One cake was unwrapped for Thanksgiving; it and the others unwrapped for Christmas were dark and moist and all of our family always "saved room" for a sizable serving of mom's fruitcake.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

My mother made fruitcake and I grew to like it. When I got out in the world the commercial fruitcake was awful stuff. The primary thing I disliked about it was the citron (candied citrus peel?) Being a sugar addict, I really preferred the candied pineapple and cherries. So I took a pile of fruitcake recipes and averaged them, leaving out the citron and adding more cherry-pineapple mix plus raisins (and sometimes currants). I occasionally tried other candied fruits but never found anything else I really liked (by that time my tastes had become ingrained). I used to make fruitcake and fruitcupcakes and they had a following at the local Senior Center Christmas sales.

That was all before gluten was a thing. But fruitcake is mostly candied (or dried) fruit held together by a little bit of dough. I don't believe the dough really contributes much to the taste so making gluten free dough probably wouldn't be all that bad. Of course it also helps if you moisten the fruitcake with a bit of alcohol. The old method is to wrap the thing in cheesecloth soaked in rum/brandy/whatever. That takes a while for the alcohol to diffuse into the center of the fruitcake so I sped up the process by using a spinal tap needle (about 3" long, with an insert that prevents the fruitcake from blocking the tube). I had a 50cc syringe (a huge thing, more appropriate to inserting adjuvants into your fruitcake than medicines into people. Since spinal tap needles are probably hard to come by you might look for a larding needle at a kitchen supply store).

My mother's fruitcake didn't have alcohol in it because my father was a strict Methodist, and had a friend who died from an alcohol related accident in his youth. However, he liked the fruitcake with a little bit of brandied hard sauce on it. It is my belief that he never read the label. (And at any rate, the amount used was insufficient to produce noticeable effects).

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

All I can say is Floyd, I suspect the T shirt tasted better than the fruitcake and DirtFarmer, who has spinal tap needles just laying around??? That would be like me going out to the shop, digging around in a box of rusty bolts and bringing back a defibrillator. I’m afraid to ask what’s under your bed. Probably a bazooka or an octopus.

Have a good day!

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Haven't looked under the bed in a while. The cat spends time there occasionally so who knows what he has left there?

JBuckley

Thanks for the recipe.

My wife is restricted to Gluten Free foods, (along with all of her brothers).

I am the chief cook and bottle washer in the house and I've been able to convert
most of our baking and cooking over to the GF recipes.

I have yet to master the ability to make GF breads or flatbreads.
Every week or two, I have to make a trip to Winco grocery to purchase
my Gluten Free flour (in bulk). It's about $3.25 a pound versus the high prices
of gluten free flour in most grocery stores.
I learned the hard way about buying Almond flour vs the bulk flour (that also has
Xanthan gum) in it. The almond flour has a slight sweet taste in the final baking.
It would be a good choice if making cakes, cookies, or anything needing sweetness.

Good luck with with a life of GF baking.