We love fruitcake! I know it spoils the joke, but MMMMMMmmmmmmm, we love fruitcake!

This year, I returned to my cooking roots for the recipe. I taught myself to cook by following the recipes on ingredients packages. So this year, I read the recipe on the Kroger Fruitcake Mix label and totally followed it for the cakey part.

Kroger’s Fruit Cake Mix Fruitcake Cakey Part

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 5 eggs
• 2 tablespoons dark molasses
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Measure all ingredients together in large bowl. Beat at low speed until blended, beat at high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Stir in fruit mixture. Spread evenly in greased 12-cup fluted or angel cake pan, or 2 greased 6-cup fluted cake pans. Press mixture firmly into pan. Bake in pre-heated 250-degree (F) oven until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 3 to 3 1/2 hours. Cool in pan on wire rack 20 minutes; invert onto wire rack and cool completely.

FRUIT MIXTURE

I used 1 pound (453g) of fruit cake mix, and 1/2 cup each of raisins, golden raisins, dried cranberries, chopped dates, walnuts, and pecans. Mix all that together and pour 1/2 cup of bourbon (or rum, I guess, or orange juice or apple juice, but we like bourbon) and let it sit for 2 to 3 hours.

After you take the cake out of the oven,

Sprinkle the top with your liquid of choice (bourbon). After you invert it from the pan, sprinkle more over its bottom.

After the cake is cool,

You can eat it right away! Or, you can wrap it in cheesecloth and sprinkle that with more bourbon (or whatever). A friend suggested putting the cake into a plastic bag with a jigger of bourbon, so it’s infused with the fumes. So we’re eating one half and infusing the other half.

It’s plenty good, without aging.

I’m posting at Fatal Foodies about bean soup and cornbread. Delicious! But not vegetarian or kosher, for my friends who follow those paths.

And, because I’m nothing if not random:

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about a forbidden pleasure.

MA