The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [177]
If I detect a competitive or compulsive edge to the food giving of the Salt Lake City area—I once observed two women frantically trying to force platters of fudge on each other as though they contained toxic waste—it is a contest from which the observer can only benefit. But as the years pass and Christmases come and go like clockwork, fewer of my wife’s relations are able to bake as much as they would like, and most of the younger generation seems more skilled with the can opener than the canning jar. Marjorie and Aunt Vivian kept the fruitcakes coming until the end. Five years ago, after an illness, Aunt Vivian substituted what people in Salt Lake call TV Mix or TV Crunch, which is a mélange of Wheat Chex, Corn Chex, Rice Chex, peanuts, and pretzel sticks tossed with onion salt and soy sauce and intended, presumably, to be enjoyed while watching television. Trying not to sound ungrateful, we phoned Vivian to let her know how much we missed her fruitcake. The following Christmas she came out of retirement at the age of eighty-eight.
Now Vivian and Marjorie are gone. Last year, as Christmas approached, I finally acknowledged that no matter how many times I ran down to the mailbox, the fruitcakes would never arrive. The idea of baking them myself did not instantly occur to me. Real men do not bake fruitcake.
One night I could stand it no longer. My kitchen was well stocked with flour, butter, eggs, raisins, and walnuts but sadly lacking in the lemon extract and candied fruit departments. Unlike Salt Lake City, New York is a twenty-four-hour town, so I hopped in a cab and traveled from one all-night bodega and Korean grocer to another in search of red and green candied cherries and pineapple. By midnight I was desperate. I toyed with the idea of buying thirty boxes of Jujyfruits and removing the licorice ones. But at last some candied fruit miraculously appeared, plastic tubs of bright candied cherries, sufficient even without the pineapple for my immediate needs, and by two in the morning the fruitcakes were done. I aged one of them for nearly five minutes and cut it open, and it came close enough to Marjorie’s white fruitcake to pacify us until the stores opened in the morning. Since then I have baked the cake many times, using Aunt Esther’s advice to clear up various ambiguities in the recipe and add some new ones. My wife can’t tell it from her mother’s.
Smith Family White Fruitcake
Marjorie Smith, Aunt Esther, and Aunt Vivian
¾ pound candied red cherries (Aunt Vivian increased both the cherries and the pineapple, below, by ¼ pound each)
1 pound mixed green and red candied pineapple
1 pound yellow raisins
1 pound walnut halves
1 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 pound (2¼ cups) granulated sugar
6 large eggs
4 cups (1 pound) sifted all-purpose flour
1½ ounces (3 tablespoons) lemon extract (Aunt Esther uses twice this amount)
Halve the candied cherries and cut the pineapple into ½-inch pieces. Put all the candied fruits in a strainer and wash them under cold water. Mix them thoroughly with the raisins and walnuts in a bowl with at least a 6-quart capacity.
Beat the butter in a standing mixer or with a hand beater until it is light, add the sugar, and beat until fluffy. Beat in 3 of the eggs, half the flour, the other 3 eggs, and finally the remaining flour. Beat in the lemon extract. Pour the cake batter over the fruit and nuts and thoroughly fold everything together with a large spatula.
Butter two large loaf pans and line them with parchment paper or brown paper. (The Smith family uses brown paper, which they feel prevents the cakes from becoming dark and crusty on the outside, a fatal flaw.) Butter the paper. Pour and scrape the batter into the pans, leaving at least ¼ inch for the cakes to expand.
Bake the fruitcakes in a preheated 300° F. oven for 45 minutes, cover tightly with aluminum foil (leaving space above the top