A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [208]
11. The instant a fruitcake is inverted, decorate the bottom while it is still warm. I center half a glacéed red cherry in each loaf, add a little glacéed pineapple fan above and below, then bracket the cherry with 4 pecan halves so that they form a large X. Of course, you can decorate the cakes any way you fancy, but keep the designs simple so that the cakes will slice easily. Note: It’s imperative that each nut, each piece of fruit be pressed firmly into the fruitcake; otherwise they will not stick.
12. When the fruitcakes have cooled to room temperature, wrap snugly in plain plastic food wrap (not colored, which will obscure the decoration), pulling hard with each turn so that you compact the cakes and seal in the decorations. Note: This recipe may seem complicated; in fact it isn’t. Once all the fruits and nuts are prepped, Ida’s fruitcake is easier than those that bake for hours in pans lined with buttered paper.
JAPANESE FRUITCAKE
MAKES ONE 9-INCH, 4-LAYER CAKE
It isn’t Japanese, it isn’t fruitcake, and it’s unknown in some parts of the South. Where it is known, however—mainly the eastern Carolinas (although it was also a Carter family Christmas favorite when the former president was growing up in Plains, Georgia)—it’s both classic and beloved. Recipes vary significantly. Some cooks fold crushed pineapple and/or diced maraschino cherries into their filling, some prefer a tart lemon-coconut filling, some use a spice cake batter only and skip the nuts.
When and where did Japanese Fruitcake originate? And what accounts for its unusual name? No one knows for sure. When I queried southern food historian and cookbook author Damon Lee Fowler about this, he told me that a recipe for “Japanese Cake” appears in the Tested Recipe Cook Book published in 1895 by the Board of Women Managers of the Cotton States and International Exposition held that same year in Atlanta. It differs from today’s Japanese Fruitcake only in the details. “The contributor,” Fowler continued, “is presumably an American woman (at least her husband has a western name) living in Shanghai, China.” That cake contains no nuts and the filling is a cornstarch-thickened lemon-coconut one.
The two-tone version here—for me the quintessential Japanese Fruitcake—was given to me years ago by Pauline Gordon, a housing specialist with the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service. An elderly lady when I went to work in the “state office” in Raleigh, Miss Gordon was famous for her Japanese Fruitcake, an old family recipe from Kingstree, South Carolina. Like other extension specialists, Miss Gordon traveled the state, in her case to teach Home Demonstration agents the finer points of interior decorating. As she drove, she liked to keep a wedge of Japanese fruitcake on the empty seat beside her for a handy snack. One day a yellow jacket, perched on the piece she slipped into her mouth, stung her tongue. Being an old country girl, Miss Gordon simply pulled onto the shoulder, grabbed a gob of wet clay, and rubbed it on the sting—“to draw the poison and stop the swelling.” I don’t know if this old home remedy worked but I do know that she lived to tell the tale. Many times.
Cake
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, slightly softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup seedless raisins or dried currants (these are actually tiny Zante raisins)
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Filling
1½ cups fresh orange juice
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
Finely grated zest of 1 large orange
Finely grated zest of 1 large lemon
2 cups sugar
¼ cup unsifted all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups freshly grated coconut or sweetened