CHOCOLATE CRANBERRY FRUITCAKE...

"Do you know what chocolate is made of? It is made of cocoa, dense, strong, velvety... abyss, dark, deep, enveloping..." -Fabrizio Caramagna

….I’ve tweaked the original recipe and changed a few ingredients around to make it work better. Absolutely a favourite. You can scatter chocolate chips on top of the batter before baking....the combination of cranberry and chocolate is definitely wonderful.                 

PREHEAT oven to 300 degrees. Line 7 small loaf tins with veggie sprayed parchment paper. 

Basic recipe makes a normal loaf. I TRIPLE this recipe to get 7 small loaf pans, or ONE angel food cake pan.

                                        

I prefer the small loaves as they freeze well.

Easier to do a TRIPLE batch as then you can have the cake on hand...

So here we go.....recipe is as follows........

"Baking a Christmas cake is a work of art that warms the soul..." -Unknown

A GROUP (SOAK the FRUIT)

                1 cup golden raisins, 1 cup dried cranberries, ¼ cup rum  or other,                  1 cup slivered almonds,1 ½ cups choc chips                                      

"Cake, like Christmas, is ALWAYS a good idea..." -Unknown

B GROUP ( Dry ingredients) 1 ½ cups flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp gr ginger

                 ½ tsp baking powder, ¼ tsp baking soda, ¼ tsp nutmeg, ¼ tsp allspice

                                                      

"Other foods are just food. But chocolate is CHOCOLATE..." 

                                                                                                              -Patrick Skene Caitling

 C GROUP: ½ cup plant butter, ¾ cup brown sugar, 3 large eggs, 2 tbsp maple syrup

                    1/3 cocoa mixed into the softened  butter,  ½-3/4 cup orange juice or other

Fold all together with a wooden spoon or spatula till well combined. Divide between pans

Bake in oven till cake tester comes out clean. This may take 40 minutes to 1 hour. You must test cake periodically, and add minutes to baking timer as needed. Wrap well by putting entire small loaf pan with baked Cake into a freezer bag, and label...

"Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves."- Eric Severeid

Photographs 2025

APPLES and CRANBERRIES

 Time to pick the last of the apples. Kind of  a little wormy and buggy on the inside, so  requires a deft hand when cutting around the core. No slate bugs allowed in the cranberry sauce. Already had an earwig crawl out of the pot.....

 Labour intensive picking  apples.This year, the trees produced heaps and heaps.Every so often an apple would come plopping down. Good idea not to be standing underneath. How many  times did I feel  like Chicken Little and think the sky was falling......

 As always, the neighbours' cats  kept us company, watching while buckets and bags were filled and piled.

 Opened a bottle of Cordelia's Concord Cordial to let it breathe. Plenty of time to slosh a generous amount into the cooking apples and cranberries. 

 And let it  breathe, and breathe and breathe while the apples were peeled.After about the first couple of dozen I wished they could peel themselves.

  I tossed  apples into a lemonade bath. I think they like floating in their bowl of lemonade.They don't brown as much, and you can add extra lemonade into the pot when you cook up the fruit.

 I guesstimate everything to make this. Just take a large pot, toss in a lot of apples, and maybe 4 bags of fresh cranberries. Add some sugar to taste, or add 1 cup per bag of cranberries. It is whatever you like best. You can add no sugar at all, and just add it later. But it does best added in the pot so it cooks down.

 I also added  1 cup water to each bag of cranberries, and substituted a cup of wine ( or two) instead. And a good shake of cinnamon. If you have a cinnamon stick you can add that, but I don't have sticks at the moment. Fresh cookies had just been made, so we snacked on those while waiting for the pot to finish blupping away.

 Let cool. Freeze. Serve with anything you like.Let the  pot  bubble and burp away. Be careful of splattering, keep the heat fairly low. Ladle into a pretty bowl,or freeze in plastic containers.