Making Candied Fruit for Fruitcake

Fruitcake seems to be one of those sweets that most folks just tolerate for the holidays.  I've tasted those red and green cherry studded loaves and they really don't taste like much of anything but corn syrup with an overlay of something that just isn't quite right.

Pineapple chucks drying after candying process.

Years ago, my mother and sister and I began making fruitcake from a Ladies Home Journal recipe. It's a white fruit cake and is full of store bought candied fruit. We love it. We baked the weekend after Thanksgiving and made several cakes baked in angel food cake pans. That's a big cake but we had a bigger family then and all the old folks loved the fruitcake.

 When they were cool we wrapped them in a piece of old sheet and stored them in a round tin, dousing them a couple of times a week with Sherry until Christmas.

When I grew up and moved away from home I missed the fruit cake baking and decided to bake my own.  I was horrified to see how much candied fruit cost, particularly the pineapple. That lead me to try candying my own pineapple.  It was such a success that I've made homemade candied fruit a part of my November ever since.

Candied pineapple just off the stove

I get my recipes for the candied fruit  from a favorite cookbook of mine called Better Than Store-Bought by Helen Witty and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie.

It's an easy recipe of sugar and corn syrup and canned pineapple chunks.  I have a large shallow pan that fits perfectly on my Aga's boiling pad and it works great for two 20 oz cans of good quality pineapple.  I usually get Dole pineapple.

This year for the first time I'll be able to candy cherries from our own trees. There are no green cherries in my fruit cake just red tart ones that are used for pies.  I tried candying sweet cherries one year but they were too sweet.

Last year I started candying lemon and orange peel. They both make a delicious sugar plum like candy treat. I make extra for that purpose.

That leaves only Citron to purchase along with golden raisins, currents and slivered almonds. It's a little time consuming to make the pineapple, cherries, lemon and orange peel but it is so worth it.  The flavor is wonderful. You taste the good white cake and each of the fruit's flavor as well.  Maybe next year I'll grow Citron melons and candy them. Currents, golden raisins, why not. Too bad we can't grow almonds around here!


Transferring candied pineapple chunks to drying rack

First Seed Catalog Arrives With Many Wonderful Seeds for Sale

Usually by the end of December the seed catalogs begin to arrive.  Since I purchased from a couple of them last year, I expect to receive lots of catalogues this winter.  I'm pretty sure they all share their mailing lists, which is fine with me.

Flower seeds from Pinetree

Much to my surprise though, I received a Pinetree Garden Seeds & Accessories catalogue last week! That's the earliest ever.

I've heard about Pinetree for years.  It's a well respected family owned business in Maine, begun about 30 years ago.  Their focus is the home gardener and their seeds are very reasonably priced. 

I was taken with the variety of flower seeds, especially perennial seeds. For example,  I've never seen Edelweiss seeds for sale before.  Edelweiss is the national flower of Austria. You might remember it from the song Herr Von Trapp sings at the music festival in The Sound of Music movie.

Marshmallow

I'm also taken with their herb selection and how they group them together by their purpose.  There is a great selection of medicinal herbs.  Here at last is Marshmallow seeds and Elecampane, two of the plants I've been trying to find for Glendower's medicinal herb garden.

Marshmallow is used for stomach and urinary tract problems.  It also soothes skin aliments.

Elecampane's roots are used as an expectorant and it also has antibacterial and anti fungal properties. It grows to be eight feet tall.

Woad

 Pine tree also has a section of herbs for dyeing.  I've always wanted to grow Woad for the color blue.  Remember in Braveheart the Scots painted their faces in blue to intimidate the enemy. That blue paint was made from Woad.

I can find plenty of dye plants producing yellows, greens and browns growing wild on the farm, but blue, red and lavender are pretty much impossible.  Woad has long been a staple for blue. Pinetree offers Black Hollyhock for lavender and mauve and Bulls Blood Beet for red.  I've not seen either the Hollyhock or the beet discussed in my dye books, so I'll be anxious to try these two plants and see if they work with just an alum mordant.

Round Bales Arrive for the Winter

The first 18 round bales arrived yesterday afternoon, just in time for the first snow of the winter.  The cows were happy to see them and are munching on a couple this morning.  These bales weigh  somewhere in the 700 pound range.  I have a big spear attached to my tractor's front end loader that I use to spear the bales and move them around. 

I cleaned up the garden yesterday. I still have a little mulching to do and a lot of herbicide to spray on honeysuckle bushes but basically it is time to start a my winter exercise program. From here on out most of my winter activity will be sitting on the tractor moving round bales into round bale feeders. I miss my garden!