Grandma Hunter's Christmas Cake

This is my Great Grandma Hunter, she is my dad's mom's mom. She lived in Victoria located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia while my Grandma was growing up. After my Grandma passed away my Aunt Renee became the owner of many of Grandma Hunter's recipes along with many other priceless family heirlooms too numerous and 'valuable' to list. One of the recipes from Great Grandma Hunter's collections was for 'Christmas Cake' aka fruitcake to us Americans.

My Dad is a huge fruitcake lover - it's the thing he likes best about the holidays, perhaps the only thing he likes. We have always purchased him store bought fruitcake during the Christmas season and I can remember going up to Victoria as a kid and going into bakeries where they always seemed to have something similar to fruitcake available throughout the year.

Probably four or five years ago Aunt Renee asked me if I wanted to try making fruitcake with her for the holidays and of course I agreed. We have been making it ever since - each year is a new experiment and adventure. We took the original recipe which was written all in pounds and converted the things that needed to be converted into cups. Each year we are shocked by the pound of butter and the dozen eggs and then the many many types of strange candied fruit we add. It's amazing to think of Great Grandma Hunter making that recipe in an old fashioned kitchen.

This years fruitcake creating was no exception in terms of our shock at the bulk of ingredients we needed and the time it took to make the cakes. Each year we write down what we added the previous year, how long we baked them, how many the recipe made and the cost of our ingredients. We did have a special helper this year. McKenzie didn't join us last year for the fruitcake making she was home in bed but this year she was right there in the action - minus the two hour nap.

Here's the fruit for the fruitcake - a mixture of lots of raisins, currents, candies cherries, orange peel, lemon peel, slivered almonds, crushed pineapple and a whole lot of Brandy. This is only one batch - we made two!! I wonder what type of bowl Great Grandma Hunter had that held all this fruit.


Here's Aunt Renee with an even bigger bowl stirring the fruit mixture in with the batter!


McKenzie's helping Aunt Renee measure dry ingredients - such a good helper!

I wish I had a picture of the finished fruitcake - they turn out very pretty. We bake them into assorted sizes of decorative bundts. I'll have to take some pictures and add them to a later post if my Dad doesn't eat them all first!

People might dread receiving a fruit cake during the holidays but I think it's a great tradition and one that I look forward to continuing as long as I've got my Dad to eat the results : ) McKenzie also tried the fruitcake and thought it was pretty good!