Mom’s Molasses Fruitcake

Fruitcakes are one of those holiday confections one absolutely hates or affectionately adores. In many cases, it’s because the cake in question is store-bought and topped with that plastic-like white fondant. My mom’s homemade Molasses Fruitcake is absolutely delicious!

There is a long list of ingredients in Mom’s Molasses Fruitcake, but I don’t want that to deter you from making it. You see, Dear Reader, even though there are a lot of ingredients, the amounts for each of them are quite low. To make this cake budget-friendly, I highly suggest you visit your local bulk foods store to get the ingredients you might not already have on hand. For example, there is no need to buy a whole packet of raisins from your local grocery store if you only need a half cup for this recipe and you know for a fact you won’t use them again for quite some time. With that out of the way, let’s talk about fruitcake!

Fruitcake was always present in our home when I was growing up.  From the end of November until well into January, fruitcake was in full supply and ready for the taking.  My mom used to make her fruitcakes in a bundt pan, which might be more traditional. And, she loved to use apricots, dates, raisins, and cherries in her cake. I remember telephoning her once to ask her for her fruitcake recipe and I wrote it down while she listed the ingredients and read the instructions back to me. The cake as written below is my mom’s cake, but I did make just three small changes.

My mom’s cake did not have any of the following ingredients in it – orange zest, dried cranberries, and pecans. To be quite honest, my mom loved to bake but she was quite old-school in her approach to it. If she had read a recipe that called for the zest of a large orange, I’m not quite sure she would have known what zest meant! Even if she had, I’m pretty sure she would have just omitted it completely because she couldn’t be bothered with what she referred to as ‘high and mighty.’

As for the dried cranberries, she did like them, but it wasn’t a very common ingredient in our home – especially not in the 80s and 90s which is when I remember her baking this particular cake most often. And, finally, the pecans are one of my favourite nuts to bake with, so I added them along with the walnuts, because my mom baked with walnuts regularly. She loved them! Needless to say, I’m sure that even with my minor additions, she would have loved a slice of this cake with a cup of tea, and I would love to have the chance to share a slice with her just one last time.

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So, welcome, Dear Reader, to my annual holiday-themed recipes. Traditionally, every year I share a series of recipes that you might already be familiar with. For example, I’ve previously shared 12 Holiday Trifles, 12 Holiday Bars & Squares, and even these 12 Edible Holiday Wreath recipes! Also, some of my favourite recipe collections from previous years are my 75 Homemade Gifts from Your Kitchen, my 50 Make Ahead Freezer Friendly Christmas Recipes, and my 30 No-Bake Christmas Recipes post.

This year I’m doing it differently. Rather than sharing multiple back to back series, I’m sharing a new holiday-themed recipe almost every day from now until Christmas Eve. For those of you who have followed my annual Lord Byron’s 24 Cookies of Christmas series, don’t worry, you will still get lots of new cookie recipes this year too. I will not, however, be publishing the cookies back to back in a 24-day series. This would have been my 8th year running the series and it becomes very exhausting. Also, we have a vacation booked in what would have been the middle of the series, so this year, I’m spreading the recipes out so that I’m not sharing the same type of recipe every day.

You really don’t want to miss one of these recipes, so if you have not yet subscribed to Lord Byron’s Kitchen, I encourage you to do so. That way, a new recipe will be emailed to you every day. You won’t have to bother to come looking for it! And, just in case you’re curious, you can see previous annual posts for my 24 Cookies of Christmas Series here!

INGREDIENTS NEEDED TO PREPARE THIS RECIPE

The following is a list of the ingredients needed to prepare this recipe. For exact amounts and measurements, refer to the printable recipe card located near the bottom of this post.

• All Purpose Flour
• Baking Powder
• Spices and Seasonings – You will need ground cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. You will also need salt.
• Butter – The butter must be at room temperature.
• Brown Sugar
• Orange Zest
• Eggs – Just like the butter, be sure that the eggs are at room temperature as well.
• Molasses – This gorgeous, sticky, sweet concoction is just boiled cane sugar.  When baking, the best molasses to use is fancy molasses.  Stay away from dark or blackstrap molasses unless instructed otherwise.  Fancy molasses is a light molasses. 
• Milk
• Dried Fruit and Nuts  – You will need apricots, dates, cranberries, and raisins. For the nuts, I used both pecans and walnuts.
• Candied Cherries– A fruitcake isn’t a fruitcake at all without candied cherries. I used both red and green.

HOW TO MAKE MOM’S MOLASSES FRUITCAKE

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9 inch cake pan with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside. Measure the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, and the zest from one large orange until smooth and fluffy – about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs. Beat in the molasses.

Transfer half of the flour mixture to the mixing bowl and beat until just combined. Add the milk and beat until combined. Beat in the remaining flour mixture. Add apricots, dates, cranberries, raisins, cherries, walnuts, and pecans to the batter. Use a spatula to fold those ingredients in until well dispersed. Transfer the batter to the prepared cake pan. Smooth out the batter and tap the pan firmly on a cutting board or your countertop to settle the batter into the pan.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Depending on the moisture content in the dried fruit, the cake could take 70+ minutes to fully bake. Once baked, remove from the oven and place onto a wire cooling rack. Allow the cake to rest for 10 minutes before turning it out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

BUNDT PAN OR CAKE PAN

You can bake this cake in a bundt pan if you wish. Or, you can use a cake pan like I did. If you use a cake pan, you will need a 9 inch cake pan. You can use a smaller size if you wish, but just remember that no matter what size cake pan you use – and this applies to a bundt pan as well – only fill the pan 3/4 full!

If you’re using a bundt pan, the cake will take a little longer to cook all the way though, because the cake batter will be higher and thicker. Be sure to check with a toothpick to see if the cake is done before removing it from the oven. Whichever you choose to use, just know that while your cake is baking, the candied and dried fruit is creating a lot of steam inside the cake. Cracking or bubbling on the top is completely normal!

FRUITCAKE – ICING OR PLAIN?

Here in Canada, fruitcake is commonly known as a Christmas cake and is commonly consumed during the Christmas season.  Truth be told, it is rarely seen during any other time of the year. Unless, of course, you end up soaking it in brandy or rum and then it will last much longer. I remember finding fruitcake at the bottom of my freezer in August and it still tasted fine. Although I admit, I threw it out, because I’m a stickler for best-before dates!

The Canadian fruitcake is similar in style to the UK version, however, there is rarely icing on the cake and alcohol is not commonly put in Christmas cakes. The cakes also tend to be void of any decorations. Dark, moist, and rich Christmas cakes are the most frequently consumed, with white Christmas cakes rarely seen. These cakes tend to be made in mid-November to early December when the weather starts to cool down. They are a staple during Christmas dinner and a gift generally exchanged between business associates and close friends and family.

WHERE CAN I FIND CANDIED FRUIT?

Now, even though fruitcake was a common occurrence in our home, I would never partake of it.  I thought the idea of dried and candied cherries and fruits baked into a cake was just plain gross.  I wouldn’t be caught dead eating it. Probably around the age of 35 though, I really started to appreciate the complex flavours of a really good fruitcake. That was when I actually tried candied cherries and learned that they were quite delicious.  And, I’ve been a fan of dried apricots for a long time. I even eat those as a snack! Now, I make it a goal to bake at least two or three things every holiday season with dried and candied fruits being the star of the recipe.

The best place to find candied fruit is the Paradise Fruit Company. The company is located in Florida, but you can buy the products online. Whenever I bake with candied fruits or peels, I use Paradise products. You can find candied cherries in grocery stores and baking supply shops, and I used to do that too. But the quality of the fruit, and especially the colour and taste, is so much better at Paradise. For this recipe, I used Paradise’s candied red cherries and candied green cherries.

QUESTIONS?

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