Gram's Famous Fruit Cake #BundtBakers

The only fruit cake I’d eat as a child, this recipe was my grandmother’s special treat at Christmas time. It’s chock full of pecans, walnuts, crystalized fruit, dates, cherries, raisins and pineapple.

I was not a fan of fruit cake when I was a child, at least not the store-bought sort. I made an exception for Gram’s famous fruit cake. (Famous in our family circle anyway.) It was not dry at all and it had lots of pecans, my favorite nut of all time. My grandmother made many of different sizes, wrapped them up in foil with ribbons to share and more for keeping safe under her bed.

I finally knew I was considered an adult one Christmas when I was given my very own little loaf.

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that both of my grandmothers were wonderful cooks and sometimes bakers and candy makers. I’ve inherited so many good recipes from them. Gram’s fig preserves and her Cajun rice dressing, Mo's chicken and sausage gumbo and her shrimp stew and crawfish étouffée, just to name a few. This fruit cake is one of my favorites.

Gram’s Famous Fruit Cake

Amongst my grandmother’s things I found several copies of the original recipe, copied out in her distinctive old-fashioned hand. I have no idea where she came by it or if it was a mixture of her own devise. I've downscaled her ingredient amounts to make one 12-cup Bundt cake.

Ingredients
8 oz or 227g pecans
8 oz or 227g walnuts
15 small bottled cherries (weight 48g)
1 cup or 125g flour
1 1/4 lbs or 367g crystallized fruit mix
12 oz or 340g seedless dates, roughly chopped
3 oz or 85g raisins
2 oz or 57g sliced pineapple, cut in chunks
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoons each allspice, cloves and cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups or 132g sugar
1/2 cup or 113g butter (plus extra to butter pan)
2 eggs
1/4 cup or 60ml red (dark) Karo
1/8 cup or 30ml fruit juice from canned pineapple and bottled cherries

Method
Separate out your prettiest pecans and walnuts to line the bottom of your classic Bundt pan and set them aside. I use a Nordic Ware anniversary Bundt so I set aside 8 of each. Cut the cherries in half and set aside an equal amount of cherry halves.

Check your nuts thoroughly for any errant bits of shell that might have been missed before they were packaged up. You do not want to break a tooth while eating the fruit cake! Roughly chop the rest of the pecans and walnuts, then mix all of the fruit and nuts with 1/4 cup or 31g flour.

Whisk or sift the baking powder, spices and salt into the rest of the flour. Set aside.

Preheat your oven to 250°F or 121°C. Liberally butter and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan, then arrange the reserved pecans, walnuts and cherries as decoration for when the fruit cake is turned out of the pan.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter. Separate your egg whites and yolks, adding the whites to a clean, grease free bowl.

Add the egg yolks, Karo, flour mix and fruit juice to the creamed sugar and butter. Mix well.

Beat the egg whites until foamy.

Fold them gently into the fruit cake and then do the same with the fruit and nuts.

Spoon the mixture into your prepared Bundt pan.

Bake the mixture for 3 1/2  hours in your preheated oven.

Leave to cool for about 10 minutes, then invert the fruit cake on a serving plate. If any of the bits stick to your pan, just pry them off and poke them back in the cake.

My grandmother never added alcohol to her fruit cake, but feel free to brush yours with some good dark rum or brandy if you so desire.

Leftovers should be tightly wrapped in cling film and foil and stored in a cool place.

Enjoy!

This month my Bundt Baker friends are all sharing fruit cake recipes. Check them out!

• Applejack Bundt Cake from Palatable Pastime
• Cake aux Fruit Bundt from Patyco Candybar
• Cranberry and Apricot Fruit Bundt Cake from Making Miracles
• Dried Fruit and Pecan Bundt Cake from I Love Bundts
• Dried Fruit Bundt Cake from Living the Gourmet
• Gram's Famous Fruit Cake from Food Lust People Love
• Macadamia and Tropical Fruit Bundt Cake from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Sorrel/Hibiscus Fruit Cake from Sneha's Recipe
• Spiced Rum Cake from A Day in the Life on the Farm

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

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Pecan Snowball Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

These little bite-sized pecan snowball cookies are buttery, tender and just the right amount of sweet. They practically melt in your mouth.

I’m calling these pecan snowball cookies because they are chock full of pecans and do look like little snowballs, but all across the interwebs, similar recipes are known as Mexican wedding cookies, biscochitos, polvorones, Russian tea cakes, Italian wedding cookies, Kourabiedes or Greek wedding cookies or butterballs.

Whatever you decide to call them, I hope you do give them a try. This recipe is a fun one to make with children. They love forming the little balls and then rolling the cookies in the icing sugar (twice!) after they’re baked.

Pecan Snowball Cookies

As you can tell from the recipe, the cookie dough isn’t very sweet because sugar is added outside with the double rolling, making these perfect, just as they are. If you are feeling adventurous, you might also want to try my Mexican chocolate (with cinnamon) wedding cookies too.

Ingredients – makes 6 dozen cookies
For the cookie dough:
2 cups, finely chopped, or 210g pecans
2/3 cup or 83g icing sugar
1 cup or 226g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour

For coating cookies:
1 cup or 125g powdered sugar

Method
Preheat your oven to 325°F or 163°C and prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper or silicone liners.

Place the pecans and powdered sugar in a food processor. Pulse the pecans and icing sugar, until the nuts are fairly finely ground with just a few bigger bits.

In the bowl of your mixer, add the pecan mixture, the butter, vanilla and salt. Beat until everything is well combined.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula then add half of the flour mixture to the mixer bowl.

Mix on low speed until everything is well incorporated. Repeat with the second half of the flour, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula before and after the addition.

Scoop up spoonfuls of the dough and roll the dough between the palms of your hands into balls about 1 in or 2.5cm big. Place the balls on the prepared cookie sheet spaced about 2 inches or 5cm apart.

Keep any balls that don’t fit in the first batch on parchment paper in the refrigerator if your kitchen is warm.

Bake the cookies for about 18 to 20 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool for five minutes.

While they bake, sift a cup of powdered sugar into a mixing bowl. When the cookies have cooled for about five minutes, roll them one or two at a time in the icing sugar to coat completely.

Leave to cool completely then roll them in the sugar again.

Enjoy!

After a hiatus of several months, I am delighted that my Cookie Exchange friends are baking together again. Many thanks to our leader, Laura of The Spiced Life, for organizing us this month. Check out all the other great seasonal cookies we are sharing today!

• Pecan Snowball Cookies from Food Lust People Love
• Chocolate Spritz Christmas Tree Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Espresso Sable Sandwiches with Blonde Chocolate Filling from The Spiced Life
• Gevulde Speculaas - Dutch Spiced Cookies from Spiceroots

Creative Cookie Exchange is a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board!

Pin these Pecan Snowball Cookies! 

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Sausage Jalapeño Cheese Kolaches #BreadBakers

These sausage jalapeño cheese kolaches are best made with quality beef franks, sliced fresh jalapeños and sharp cheese. They are the perfect filling for the soft, slightly sweet dough that surrounds them.

Kolaches, as you might remember from my Bread Bakers post three and a half years ago, are breakfast treats that can be either savory or sweet. If you’d like to know more about how such a traditional Czechoslovakia baked good made its way to Texas, check out my apricot kolaches recipe.

I also mention in that post that my personal favorite kolac (<that’s the singular) is one filled with sausage, jalapeños and cheese. This month, at my instigation, my fellow Bread Bakers and I are sharing breakfast breads that are made the night before, so you can have freshly baked breakfast in the morning. True confessions: This theme was completely driven by my desire to make my favorite savory kolaches, since they rise overnight in the refrigerator.

Sausage Jalapeño Cheese Kolaches

This dough is a bit different from the one I made to fill with sweet apricots. It’s a little less enriched – no sour cream, for one – with a little less sugar per kolache. I adapted this recipe from one on The Brewer and the Baker.

Ingredients – to make 10 kolaches
For the dough:
1 package (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm water
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 large egg
1/4 cup or 50g sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
 3 1/8 cups or 400g bread flour

For the filling:
1/2 cup or about 40g finely grated cheese
2-3 fresh jalapeños
5 good quality bun-length beef franks

For brushing the kolaches before baking:
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

Method
Sprinkle the yeast over warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer along with 1 teaspoon of the sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour. Let prove for 5 minutes. It should start to foam up and get bubbly. If it doesn’t, start over with new yeast.

Meanwhile, warm the milk and butter until the butter just melts. Set aside.

Turn the mixer to low and add the milk and butter mixture, egg, sugar, and salt. Beat until they are mixed thoroughly.

Add the flour gradually until you have a soft but kneadable dough.

Knead for 5 minutes by machine or 8-10 minutes by hand, until the dough isn’t quite as sticky as when you started. Add additional flour as necessary, but try not to over do it.  We want a soft dough. You may not use all the flour.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for about an hour in a warm place, or until the dough has doubled in size.

Cut the beef franks in two equal pieces. Slice the jalapeños into thin rounds.

When the dough has doubled, punch it down and divide it into 10 equal pieces and tuck them into balls. Mine were about 70+g each.

Using your clean hands, press each ball out into a rectangle. Add some grated cheese and a few jalapeño slices to the middle of each one. Place the half frank on top then use a spatula or dough scraper to fold each long side in.

Crimp and tuck to close the ends. Place the kolache in your lined pan, seam side down. Continue until all the kolaches are filled and formed.

Cover them with cling film and pop them in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, remove them from the refrigerator and then set your oven to preheat to 375°F or 190°C. Fill your kitchen sink about an inch deep with warm water and set the pan in it, being careful not to get any water in the pan.

When the oven has preheated, brush the kolaches with the melted butter and bake for 25-30 minutes or until the kolaches are golden brown.

Let the kolaches cool for 15-20 minutes then pull apart gently to serve. I love mine with some yellow mustard but you can eat them plain as well, as my husband did. To each his own.

Enjoy!

Check out all the other overnight breakfast breads my fellow Bread Bakers are sharing today!

• Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Morning Buns from A Messy Kitchen 
• Overnight Apple Gingerbread Cinnamon Rolls from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Overnight Breakfast Rolls from Anybody Can Bake
• Overnight Sourdough Boule from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sausage Jalapeño Cheese Kolaches from Food Lust People Love

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Sausage Jalapeño Cheese Kolaches!

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