A dense, dark, spice-rich cake heavy with pecans, dried and candied fruit, sometimes laced with bourbon or rum and aged for weeks. The much-maligned but deeply traditional holiday keeping-cake.
Fruitcake is the keeping-cake — made early, fed with spirits, and aged for the holidays, a tradition of patience and planning. In Black Southern households it was the cake set aside for Christmas, the one that took weeks and meant the season had truly come.
Fruitcake is actually nut- and fruit-dense — the pecans and dried fruit bring fiber, minerals, and good fats, more than most holiday cakes. The trouble is candied (sugar-soaked) fruit and added sugar. REHAB: use unsweetened dried fruit (dates, figs, raisins, prunes) instead of candied; load the pecans and walnuts heavy; cut added sugar sharply since the fruit sweetens it; use whole-wheat flour; and skip or minimize the sugar-syrup soak. A real-dried-fruit, nut-heavy fruitcake is a genuinely substantial, fiber-rich treat. Still calorie-dense and a treat — a thin slice. But it is one of the more nutritious holiday cakes when made with whole fruit.
Toss chopped nuts and dried/candied fruit with a little flour, fold into a spiced batter (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice), bake low and slow at 300-325°F in a loaf or tube pan for 1.5-2 hours. Brush or 'feed' with bourbon or rum weekly and wrap to age. The aging melds and mellows; it keeps for weeks to months.
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