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Prep time
30 minutes
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Cook time
1 hour 30 minutes
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Makes
1 large tube cake or two large loaves
Author Notes
Here’s one of my mother’s best cake recipes. (She had quite a few. Many were from the sides of boxes of flour, cocoa or other basic ingredients. As she aptly stated in a letter to my niece, which included several family-favorite icing recipes, the food companies want you to buy their product, so they make sure their recipes are good.) I typed this recipe while visiting my parents many years ago, and included this note, based on comments made by my mother at the time: “From the mother of Nan Roberts, one of Mother’s sorority sisters, who served it at a Christmas party in 1949, and was kind enough to send it to Mother shortly thereafter.” Enjoy! ;o) —AntoniaJames
Ingredients
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½ pound golden raisins
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1 pound dried sour cherries
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¾ pound butter
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2 cups granulated white sugar
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1 teaspoon
vanilla
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6 egg yolks – beaten
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5 cups all purpose flour – sifted before measuring
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1 teaspoon baking powder
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2 teaspoons nutmeg
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6 egg whites – beaten until stiff but not dry
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1 pound shelled pecan halves or pieces
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2 1/4 cups Kentucky whiskey + more for soaking the cloth used to wrap the loaves
Directions
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Soak overnight the raisins and cherries in the bourbon.
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When ready to bake the cake, heat oven to 300 degrees.
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Cream until light the butter and sugar; add the egg yolks and beat well.
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Add soaked fruit and whiskey, along with the soaking liquid.
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Sift the flour, baking powder and nutmeg. Add to the batter, along with the pecans. Stir well to combine.
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Fold in the beaten egg whites. (Mrs. Roberts's recipe doesn't include this, but I always stir in about a third of the whites to lighten the batter before folding the rest.)
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Bake in a large, generously buttered tube pan for three hours, or in two loaf pans lined with parchment (make a sling coming up the two long sides) and well buttered at the ends, for about 1 ½ hours, or until a tester comes clean.
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Let cool thoroughly. Wrap in cheesecloth soaked in whiskey and store in a tightly covered container.
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Slices best when cold.
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Enjoy!! ;o)
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N.B. You can use candied cherries instead of dried cherries, if you like. Reduce the whiskey by about 1/4 cup.
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Also, if you don’t own a sifter and don’t wish to buy one, try to borrow one to use when making this. With this much flour to be sifted twice, it’s well worth using a sifter and not a sieve, as many seem wont to do these days.
See problem, solve problem. Ask questions; question answers. Disrupt, with kindness, courtesy and respect. ;o)
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