[Sca-cooks] Selene's spice cakes/breads

[Elaine Koogler]

I often make an applesauce cake using a recipe that I inherited from my
mother.   I do a similar kind of thing with the fruit and nuts, though she
used to use home made fig preserves and cherry preserves in it...she'd drain
off the "juice" from the fruit and add just the whole fruits to the mix.  As
I don't have her wonderful preserves to use, I simply take dried figs and
soak them in wine, often Takara Plum wine (from Japan...best plum wine there
is, IMHO).

If I am making it for Christmas, I usually make it at Thanksgiving, giving
me close to a month to soak and age the cake before serving.  I usually use
the aforementioned plum wine to soak the cake.  I get it thoroughly
dampened, then wrap the cake in a non-fuzzy kitchen towel and put it in a
cake box, usually a tupperware one.  I then repeat the soaking process every
5 or 6 days until I pull it out to serve it.  By the time I finish, it
almost has the feel of a plum pudding!  And I think it's much tastier than a
fruit cake.

Kiri

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Stefan li Rous
<stefanlirous at austin.rr.com>wrote:

<snippage>

>
> And I've never made one of these cakes which is doused/soaked in liquor
> before, which is one reason this one intrigues me. How much liquor would you
> use? Do you simply pour it on once? Or do you pour in a little bit multiple
> times over a particular time period?
>
> And I actually do have some candied citron. Having never seen it before, in
> any state, I bought a package to try.
>
> Stefan
> (see, some of this is an example why it is best for me to start with
> someone's redaction as a starting point. Otherwise you might *really* turn
> up with something strange)
>
>
>