I dunno, I get mine off the internet? Not many stores stock the brand at all. Jalapenos have a flavour besides FIRE?!
They do! It’s hard to describe but it’s quite pleasant—I really should try the non-spicy ones, I have pretty good tolerance for Spicy but I do find that the Core Jalapeño Flavor is overpowered by Fire.
Dense iced fruit cake, usually with brandy in the batter and decorations of a seasonal nature. Unless you're Japanese, in which case Christmas cake is a light fluffy sponge cake with cream and strawberries.
Huh, I’d heard about Christmas cake as a concept but I had no clue what it actually entailed. Interesting—I wonder if it’s less of a thing stateside? (EDIT: Or maybe even just a terminology difference? Fruitcake is definitely a Thing here but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “Christmas cake” used to refer to it.) (also fruitcake is Good Actually. fight me irl)
I can't get anyone to believe me that I don't care about spicy it's the jalapeno flavour I don't like so bless u for acknowledging Is Flavour
Haha, I was raised by a dad who is practically incapable of telling if things are spicy (his heat tolerance is frankly fucking insane) so I’ve had the virtues of The Actual Flavor Of Jalapeño drilled into me my whole life. I’m sorry that people are weird about it but let it be known that you are Valid And Correct!
Fruitcake without icing is eaten pretty much whenever, and it's not Christmas cake then; it only becomes Christmas cake when iced in the right way and eaten at the correct time. Here's a recipe that's pretty typically traditional. While it's not usual nowadays, traditionally Christmas cake and Christmas pudding were both made up some time in advance and left to mature (that's why the booze, it preserves them). It meant less cooking to do on the actual day and gave time for the flavour to develop. Icing, and a layer of marzipan under that, help keep the cake moist. Decorations are sometimes edible shapes made of more icing or marzipan, but they can also be little plastic figures on wires that are stuck into the top, like with these two.
Huh! I've never actually had frosted fruitcake, now that you mention it? So yeah, maybe it's regional. My family's whole thing is just that my grandma sends us a fruitcake (unfrosted, comes in a tin--I can take a pic later for reference) every year around Christmas and then @Neurogabu and I eat all of it because neither of my parents like fruitcake. :P
Fruitcake with frosting is a no for me. It just seems unnecessary and over the top for my tastes All time favorite holiday treat though? Panetonne all the way :D i love using its leftovers for french toast
This sounds so terrible that I need to try it. Is it with an alfredo sauce? How do I tell my local pizza place to construct this monstrosity.
As someone who's mum still makes Christmas cake traditionally, like her mother and her mother before her - and I will probably take up the mantle when she's not longer capable, because that shit is delicious - I should add: - you make it about a month (sometimes more, but in my family the cake is baked around mid/late November) in advance, and 'feed' it regularly with brandy until it's gooshy and moist as a good brownie. I've always said that a good Christmas cake should be living, fruity, and boozy - just like me lol - calling the icing frosting feels deeply inaccurate and slightly heretical, because to me frosting is more like buttercream or whipped sugar paste, and this is what we call 'royal' icing - its more like a very thick fondant, I think, that you roll out and drape like a sheet over the marzipan layer on the cake. -The marzipan is added about a week or two before Xmas, so the almond oils can sink properly into the cake and add that extra layer of deliciousness. - I've never had non-Christmas fruitcake, I don't think, because it's such a ubiquitous holiday thing here? It is quite dense and I'm never sure what the actual dried fruit mix because you can just buy it premixed but I hope to one day learn the Secrets. Because I'm That Bitch, I nearly always have Christmas cake for breakfast during/after the holiday season. Fight me, I don't care, the sun is dead and the throne of God lies empty, one of the few things I was genetically blessed with is a strong liver function and I fully intend to take every excuse I can to keep living through this hell-season.
This sounds way better than The Shitass Cake My Father Insists Is Not Fruitcake But Is Totally A Really Terrible Fruitcake Brick
My dad's family would do like a christmas pudding with hard sauce, which i never liked as a kid and continued to dislike every year it was served weird flavour :(
It is alfredo usually, yes. You can order pineapples and pickles on a pizza no prob at my local dominos, or just order a cheese and add them yourself after a quick light saute in a frying pan. You def dont wanna add them cold and drippy
Some years ago, before my body became the mortal enemy of all vine fruits, I made a Christmas cake to a very traditional recipe which called for soaking the fruit mixture before baking... For six weeks. I used half a bottle of plum brandy. After the third week of daily shaking and stirring, I had to add the second half of the bottle. I baked the damn thing first week of November and then, as per instructions, fed it every couple of days with a sugar-and-brandy mix up until Christmas Eve, then coated it in marzipan and royal icing. It was, I cannot stress enough, horrendously and obnoxiously alcoholic. Picking it up was like picking up a disc of solid lead. It practically sloshed when you cut it. I gave it to my parents, because my dad loved fruit cake and alcohol. He was still attempting to eat it, piece by tiny fucking piece, the next January. Not a month later; no, no. A full 13 months later. I swear it bloody grew in the Tupperware he kept it in, just swelling and swelling, a monstrous and unkillable Elder God of a Christmas cake, ancient and unfathomable and smelling of the ghosts of dead plums. I don't think they ever did finish it.
On the one hand, witnessed, but on the other I was so tempted to rate this post winner solely because you told the story so well. Thirteen months, jfc...
Also, as promised, this is what the fruitcake we get every December looks like. I don't think it's alcoholic--it certainly doesn't taste it, and I've never gotten even mildly buzzed off it, so if there is any alcohol it's very minimal. It's super dense, and the fruit is kinda jellied? So yeah, that's where my brain goes when fruitcake is mentioned.
