Fruit Cake

I came to love fruit cake as a child.  It was one of my favorite treats as the holidays approached.  The house would be filled with special aromas on days I came home from school to find mom/Nana baking.
 

Nana’s fruit cake was a treat to receive.  Dark, heavy, and rich it was filled with nuts, dates, and candied fruits.  Sometimes we would go to pecan groves and walnut groves to gather the nuts, take them home, crack them, and extract the nut meat inside.  If Nana’s fruit cake ended up in your Christmas box you were indeed most fortunate.

2 cups chopped pecans

1 lb dates – chopped

½ lb candied cherries, chopped

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

4 egg yolks – beat separately

4 egg whites – add cream of tartar and beat

Add the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder to the chopped nuts and fruit

Add the egg yolks to egg whites to fruit and nut mixture and fold in

Put dough in angle food baking pan

Place a pan with water in it on lower rack of oven

Place fruit cake on oven rack above the pan of water

Bake at 325 for 1 ½ hrs

Chocolate Angel Food Cake

Nana had lots and lots of great cake recipes.  I had many favorites among them.  She made wonderful angel food cakes, so for my birthday one year I ask if she could make a chocolate angel food cake; she could, she did, and this was the result.  You can decide if it is one of your favorites

 

¾ cup sifted cake flour

4 table spoons cocoa

¾ cup sugar, stir together, set aside

1 ½ cup (12) egg whites

1 ½ tsp cream of tartar

¼ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp vanilla

¾ cup sugar

Pre heat oven to 375

Beat egg whites cream of tartar, salt & vanilla till stiff enough to hold up in soft peaks but still moist/glassy – add remaining ¾ cup sugar 2 tablespoons at a time, beating after each addition, sift about ¼ of flour mixture over egg whites then fold in remaining flour mixture.  Bake in ungreased 10” angel food pan, at 375 degrees for 35 – 40 min, invert pan and cool.

 

This is one of those recipes that leaves you with a dozen egg yolks for making homemade noodles.  See recipe for noodles elsewhere in this blog.

Burnt Sugar Cake

I am currently transcribing cake recipes from Nana's Kitchen; she has so many of these.  Her signature cake was, at least to my mind, the Red Velvet Cake, which I posted earlier on this blog.  I will add new recipes as I copy them.  I am sure you will find one, or perhaps several, that will become your favorites.  So enjoy reading and then hopefully trying these fabulous cakes.  Happy baking.

Let's begin with this one:  

Burnt Sugar Cake

This recipe is said to be Eva Hill’s; I don’t know who she is but do know this cake recipe goes at least back to her.  For Tad’s 2^nd birthday I decided to make him a burnt sugar cake (I don’t recall why), but an ambitious undertaking, to say the least, for a young mom.  Of course I approached Nana and EA for advice, and they got this recipe, apparently from Eva Hill.  It was my project and took me quite awhile to create this cake, but the results were worth the effort.  I seriously doubt that Tad remembers this, but I do and so will share it here.  Going through Nana’s recipe box I found several burnt sugar cake recipes but this one, written in Nana’s neat scribe, seems to be the one I made in November 1970.

1 ½ cup sugar

2/3 cup butter or shortening

3 cups sifted cake flour

3 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

Vanilla

1 cup cold water to make burnt sugar

Brown 1 cup sugar, add 1 cup boiling water, boil hard for 5 – 7 min, put 1 ½ cup of this liquid into cake mixture.

Pour into cake pan

Bake at 350 for 1 hr or until toothpick comes out clean

To remaining burnt sugar add 1 cup cream, 2 cups sugar, dash of salt, cook then whip until cool and ready to spread.  

Keep checking this blog as I hope to add new recipes each day. 

 

Red Cake

Many of Nana’s recipes came from friends or family.  Her sisters often gave her recipes they found but none were as adventurous to undertake some of these new and different forms of cooking or baking.  Many of her friends were not good cooks so they would hand off recipes to my mom knowing that if she made it she would share it; Nana was not only a good cook, but also a generous woman.

Her Red Cake recipe came from one of my aunts – her sister – can’t recall which one.  It arrived in her repertoire of recipes when I was in Junior high.  Her first cake was a big hit with family and friends, and she went on to make hundreds of them in her lifetime.  When I was in high school we would have banquets for groups and organizations that I was a member of.  My friends always hoped my mom would bring red cake. 

On one of her last birthdays Nana came to our house for dinner.  We had tried to prepare a dinner like she would have served us on our birthday.  I made fried chicken, and our youngest son Jason baked her a red cake.  Although she was no longer as clear mentally as she had once been, when she walked in saw the cake, and heard Jason say, “it smells just like Nana’s house” her eyes lit up and a smile graced her face.  It’s a memory Jason told to me not long before we decided to create this cookbook.

In her words here is her famous Red Cake recipe – written exactly as it is written on the card in her recipe box:

Nana’s Red Cake

½ cup shortening

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

2 oz. (1/4 cup) red food coloring

1-cup buttermilk

2 ¼ cups flour

1 tsp vanilla

2 TBSP Cocoa

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp Vinegar

Cream shortening w/ sugar (real good) – add eggs beat hard. Make a paste w/ cocoa and red food coloring – then add – continue to beat –alternately add flour & salt w/ buttermilk, continue to beat – add vanilla- lastly add baking soda w/ the vinegar – stir until it is mixed well – then put in 3 – 9” pans – bake at 350 about 25 – 30 min.  Test – do not over bake – cool –

Frosting for Red Cake

6 TBSP flour

1 – cup milk

1 – cup granulated sugar

1 – cup butter (I use ½ Crisco)

1 tsp vanilla

Cook flour & milk until real thick.  Cool

Cream butter and sugar – add vanilla.

Gradually add the flour & milk mixture

Beat well

Frost Cake

If you make this I promise you all will enjoy it.  When Nana started making Red Cake you could not buy it in bakeries or stores.  Today I find it in bakeries and supermarkets, but when she began making this cake she was probably the only person in our hometown who did so.

I personally think it is her signature cake – but read the other recipes and maybe you will find others that you like as well.