Aunt Hennie's Fruit Cake

This morning I laid down the fruit cakes.

Let me explain…

Most all of us have family traditions with roots back to our childhood. Sure, they can be quirky and idiosyncratic, but cherished nonetheless. One of the ones that bubbled up for me recently was homemade fruit cake—far better than store-bought—which was deemed an essential contribution to the Schaub family Christmas hoopla. lovingly assembled by my Mom's older sister, Aunt Hennie.

As it happens, Hennie and I share a birthday (a sure omen of astral connection). She was born in a two-story frame house built on the open prairie 20 miles west of Chicago in 1899 and lived a homesteading life growing up. Over the years, of course, the inexorable march of the suburbs gradually overtook her and today the house—which still stands—is located smack in the middle of an established residential neighborhood in Elmhurst Il. 

As the acorn that wandered furthest from my suburban upbringing, I helped start Sandhill Farm  a homesteading community in northeast Missouri when I was just a callow youth of 24. One serendipitous result of that was that I was the beneficiary of much homesteading equipment that had been languishing in Hennie's basement, looking for a good home. I'm talking about a major league cabbage shredder (think sauerkraut in quantity), a bunch of ceramic crocks, a start of hard-to-find black currant cuttings, and a massive wooden butcher block contributed by my mother. 

In any event, Hennie got along in years (it's a trend, I've noticed) and at some point she was no longer able to deliver the fruit cakes. I believe that ended in the 80s, but the memory persists and she passed along the recipe. Once or twice my sister Tracey had a go at it, and another time my daughter Jo did a batch. This fall, in the Year of Quarantine, I decided it was my turn in the barrel and I took advantage of my weekly trips to Mayo Clinic (in Sept and Oct) to lay in a supply of dried fruit and nuts.

Not finding a ready source of dried orange and lemon peel, I made my own (isn't that what homesteaders do?). I chopped and combined all the fruit, nuts, and spices in late October and the sticky conglomeration all went into an airtight container where it marinated in a sacred concoction of brandy and whiskey. This got carefully stirred and replenished from time to time until yesterday, when it the baking happened!

This entailed creaming sugar and butter until my arm cramped, adding the fruit, and finally some. flour before pouring it all into tins (think banana bread size) and slowly baking for a couple hours.

They turned out beautifully and I'm now in the finally stage. This morning I took the cooled down cakes (there are four) and wrapped them in brandy-soaked cotton cloth (did you notice the alcohol theme?) and then in tin foil to retard evaporation of the precious liquor. They now rest on the basement floor in an airtight container for two weeks of seasoning. They'll be ready Dec 17—just in time to be mailed to my kids for a renewed under-the-tree tradition.

What could be a more loving gift?