Recipe Detail RE: Amount of Flour

2 cups is correct. This is her mother's recipe and it is more inline with the Caribbean style of black cake. My Guyanese friend said that this is a dense and boozy fruitcake, so not that much flour. I have seen similar ratio of flour to fruit from other Caribbean authors for black cake.

I did a quick cross-check of my favorite recipe for "Jamaican Black Cake," in "Visions of Sugarplums," by Mimi Sheraton (was a NYTimes food editor way back when they had only one or two, and you got four or five recipes each Wednesday, and that was it). Her ratio of flour to soaked fruit is midway between the two options discussed here. I see a lot more eggs, and more butter in this recipe, however. Either way, I see that a number of people have commented in the recipe that it turned out well. The recipe is test kitchen approved, and appears to have been baked by Food52 (though i cannot be certain about that), so I would go with the recipe as written. I probably would halve the recipe if I had any lingering doubts, however, as the quantity of dried fruits, etc., and their cost might suggest putting less at risk on the first go-round. ;o)

Wow. I looked at both recipes, and it’s shocking how similar they are. As you pointed out, the only big difference is the amount of flour. I remembered that Laurie Colwin also wrote about Black Cake in her wonderful book Home Cooking. Like The NY Times recipe, she, too, uses a pound of flour (actually a pound plus 1/4 cup). She uses a dozen eggs rather than 10 as well. There are comments on the recipe that indicate that it works as written, but I’d be inclined to go with four cups of flour. To confuse you further, David Lebovitz has also written about Black Cake, and it looks like he scaled back the recipe. Here is his version. https://www.davidlebovitz.com/black-fruitcake-recipe/