Recipe review: Fiona Cairns Rich Tamarind Fruitcake

As I mentioned in my previous post on the fruitcake tasting, my friend Laura's contribution to the event was a homemade fruitcake using the Fiona Cairns' recipe. You can see the beautiful results below; my friend Laura is an excellent baker and, evidently, food stylist, as she made the cake look gorgeous.

This recipe is definitely for a dark fruitcake, similar to what I call Monastery fruitcakes on my ratings page. Reviewing the recipe, you'll see that it contains molasses and brown sugar, and, in a surprising twist, tamarind concentrate. I have some of this in my house, but have never used it for baking; rather, I use it for cooking Indian food:

Tamarind paste brings a sour, fruity note to food. I know that may not sound terribly pleasant, but it's an essential component of Indian cooking, used to offset heat or sweetness, really just as a counterpoint to the other flavors going on. And I feel it's an essential component to the deliciousness of this cake. Because it was, indeed, delicious.

Here's a slice of the cake:

It contains cherries, currants, and gold and dark raisins, as well as walnuts and almonds, well distributed throughout the cake. The cake itself is rich and spicy, containing almond flour, orange, and lemon peel as well as crystallized ginger, all adding to the complexity of the flavor. Plain ginger would add one note, I think, but crystallized ginger adds a flavor and a texture that steps it up a notch. Laura tells me she followed the recipe faithfully (as she does any time she tries a recipe the first time), but admits that she may have rolled just a bit more crystallized ginger into the mix. I don't care--I can eat crystallized ginger like candy.

A strange ingredient in this recipe, I think, is "apple pie spice." It just seems very un-British. Basically, it's cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and ginger. I guess I'm a spice snob, and prefer to have my spices individually named. Interestingly, though, "apple pie spice" describes a specific flavor profile, different, say, from "pumpkin pie spice," which contains cloves. So there you have it -- you have an apple pie spice profile in this cake, augmented with the citrus rind and crystallized ginger.

And of course, there's booze -- brandy (Laura used cognac). The fruit is macerated in the brandy, along with the tamarind paste, which will definitely impart a different flavor to the fruit than if it were just soaked in brandy alone. And after baking, of course, the cake was fed with brandy. The cake we tried was a young cake--only about a week old.

Before I get into the taste of the cake, I should call out one other unique ingredient - bitter orange marmalade. Yup, in addition to the orange peel, lemon peel, oh, and I forgot, there's mixed candied peel in there as well, which Laura said she bought from King Arthur Flour. It was a challenge for Laura just to collect all these ingredients, and I've heard that from other fruitcake bakers--maybe that's why there are so many commercially-made fruitcakes. People just give up! Anyway, back to the marmalade, just another addition to the macerated fruit which imparts another layer of complexity to the flavor of the cake.

On to the flavor. This cake was delicious. It reminded me of a salted caramel, a combination of richness, sweetness, and a spice/salty edge. The scent was boozy, sweet, spicy. The cake was moist but not wet, rich, and sweet. There was this note of spicy, buttery saltiness to it. Again, I know that sounds weird, and let me assure you it tasted like sweet fruitcake, but that additional note, just like the salt on a caramel, enhances the underlying sweetness and makes it that much more delicious.

What can I attribute this note to? I think it's a combination of the crystallized ginger and the tamarind paste. The crystallized ginger imparts a warm spiciness when you hit a piece. Worcestershire sauce also contains tamarind paste, and it's often used to add a deep savoriness (maybe one would call it umami?) to dishes. I think that tamarind imparts a certain je ne sais quoi to this cake, which makes all the difference.

And yeah, I went there - referring to Worcestershire sauce when talking about a fruitcake. I don't know if that comment will win any fruitcake converts. But regardless, this is a fabulous cake recipe, which I recommend!

The Fruitcake Tasting

Last night I was invited to a party with a fabulous theme: a Fruitcake Tasting! A group of friends gathered to have pizza and then finish the night with a "flight" of fruitcakes. Here's a photo of the collection:

Clockwise from lower left, we have a chunk of my wedding cake (Veda's Dundee cake); a Gethsemani Farms fruitcake; Fraters from Holy Cross Abbey; a homemade fruitcake by my friend Laura, made from Fiona Cairns' recipe for Will & Kate's wedding cake (Rich Tamarind Fruitcake); the Sunnyland Farms light and dark fruitcakes; and finally, the vintage 2011 and 2012 white fruitcakes from Robert Lambert.

Oh, and of course, it wouldn't be a party among friends without:

Fruitcake martinis! Recipe courtesy of Wegman's. They were EXTREMELY sweet, and frankly I don't recommend them with fruitcake, but they'd probably be delicious at a holiday party with savories--they actually did taste like fruitcake. (We splashed in a bit of Cointreau, which didn't hurt a bit).

We started the tasting, similar to a wine tasting,with the lighter tastes first. I suggested, since so much sweetness might quickly spoil our palates, that we start with the Robert Lambert cakes. They, as usual, were delicious. Pretty much everyone else at the party was a fruitcake noobie, but all were foodies, so this was a nice way to start--there were some comments like "I never expected a fruitcake to taste like this!" As for noting the difference between the two "vintages"--one fruitcake was actually from 2011, and is aged for a full year--I can't say we noticed a huge difference. There were some subtle differences in flavor, but nothing so striking that I would recommend one year over the other.

On to the next - I think we went to the Sunnlyand Farms light fruitcake. It was an excellent contrast to the Robert Lambert: sweet, bright, and non-alcoholic. The group really got into thinking critically about the differences, noting the differences in flavor and texture from the previous cake. One observation about this cake was that, where the Lambert cake might be nice in the morning with a cup of coffee, having an almost quick bread texture (or at least a lot more cake), the Sunnyland farms cake was much sweeter, more like a candy, and definitely more like a dessert.

And to the next (and I gotta tell you, fruitcake fatigue was already setting in): my wedding cake. The cake itself, I gotta admit, had been through a lot in the past month: it had seen three different states, a wedding, being chopped up, and had been sitting wrapped in plastic for about 3 weeks. It was still tasty and boozy, and the marzipan adds an element of richness, but the fondant was pretty tired at that point, and people found that to be a bit too sweet.

Next we got to the beauty in the middle of the table: the Fiona Cairns Rich Tamarind Fruitcake, made by my friend Laura, who is a magnificent baker. As I believe I've already noted in this blog, really, nothing beats a fresh, homemade fruitcake. We all agreed on this, and this was my personal favorite. I took a big chunk home and plan on reviewing the cake recipe in a later post. It was delicious: moist, flavorful, chunks of candied ginger, interesting spices, just really good.

Finally, running on fumes, we all took a deep breath and dove into the last one we could handle: the Gethsemani Farms fruitcake. Honestly, I think we could have stopped (hey, fruitcake is rich), but I insisted, because all the previous cakes contained cognac or brandy, and this was our first fruitcake containing bourbon.

So, sports that they are, the guests dug into one last slice. One guest immediately did NOT like it--the taste of bourbon did not suit her. Others liked it.

My conclusion from all of this? It's kind of hard tasting so many fruitcakes at once! The taste is so rich and sweet that your tongue quickly gets burnt out. At some point our conversation flowed towards what would be a good palate cleanser for a fruitcake tasting--certainly not oyster crackers! Maybe a nice dry champagne would have done the trick (or a shot of bourbon, as I suggested). All the same, I think it was really fun trying different fruitcakes, comparing and contrasting, and I would guess that, although I might not have created any fruitcake addicts, I think we definitely had some fruitcake converts, or, if nothing else, some people who could at least defend the fruitcake's right to exist.

You may have noticed that there were a couple of fruitcakes that went uneaten--the Sunnyland farms dark and the Fraters. Yup, we just couldn't--fruitcake satiation. The Fraters were nice parting gifts for everyone, and I suspect the Sunnyland dark will be enjoyed by Sherry, the hostess, along with the remnants of all the rest of the fruitcakes. I have to say that the "after" photo of the table looked very similar to the "before" photo--we were eating very skinny slices, and there was a lot of fruitcake left over.

I happily left the party with chunks of a couple of the cakes, and I look forward to reviewing the Fiona Cairns recipe very soon. Thanks Sherry and all the fruitcake tasting guests for the good food and conversation--we may have short-term fruitcake burnout, but at least it was from some good tasting cakes!

Mary of Puddin Hill back in business

A commenter clued me in that Mary of Puddin Hill is producing cakes again. I hope they're still of the same good quality. This is exciting news!

My favorite fruitcake of all.

Wanna see my favorite fruitcake of all time? Here it is!



My wedding cake -- and of course, being Isabelle from THE Mondo Fruitcake, it HAD to be a fruitcake. Veda's Dundee Cake, to be more specific. 

This is the reason the posts on this blog have been so few--I got married on the 4th of November, and here was the beautiful cake, all fruitcake, decorated by Festive Flamingos Cakery in Bristol, Wisconsin, in the most gorgeous way! Everyone admired the cake--it was simply beautiful. The cake topper was composed of two tatted hearts edged in Swarovski crystals. Tatting is a form of lace making that I do, so I created those. Isn't the cake gorgeous? Here we are enjoying our first slice as man and wife:

He is a wonderful man: he doesn't like fruitcake at all, but willingly ate the cake I fed him. Now that's love.

Many people tried and enjoyed this cake at the reception--it was delicious. Similar to a slice of wedding cake I had shown earlier, the cake was enrobed in a layer of marzipan and fondant, both of them delicious.  I may have made a few fruitcake converts! We also had a dessert bar for non-fruitcake-eaters. And as a gift for the way out, guests had this:

Boxed slices of fruitcake to take home, which many did. To my delight, however, there were many boxes left over, so I contentedly ate my way through the remainder when I returned home from the honeymoon. It was a fabulous day, and it warms my heart to know that fruitcake was a part of it.

I'm not sure how many more fruitcakes I'll be eating this year, but I will be back on track soon, and some friends are having a fruitcake tasting at the end of the month, including some vintage fruitcake, so I'll be sure to report on that.

....because it's fruitcake season, people!!