COLONIAL FRUITCAKES WITH WATERMELON RIND PICKLES

 I have made these little fruitcakes

many times for Christmas over the years.

This time I could not find the required

watermelon Rind Pickles anywhere

in my town so I ordered 3 jars  of

Jake & Amos brand from

Pennsylvania.

I cut this recipe out of the Woman's

Day magazine back in the 1970's.

Actually I saw a note that it was published

many years ago in several historic cookbooks.

These fruitcakes are really fun.

As you can see, we don't have snow

but it was a cold 39 degrees today.

Did see that in the UK they have

already had snow?  And lots in

Colorado where we lived years ago.

So this recipe made

9 little fruitcakes:

Here is what you will

 need to make

them:

The cake base is made with 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tsp baking powder

6 eggs, 2 sticks of melted butter (1 cup)

and 1/2 cup of rum.

Mix all these ingredients together in a

large bowl or Kitchenaid.

You need to chop most of these

items which you will be adding to the

cake base and mix together well:

16 oz container red candied cherries cut in half, 1 20 oz jar of watermelon rind pickles which are chopped and drained,

1 8 oz container of candied pineapple,

1 box of about 15 oz golden raisins, 2 cups of chopped walnuts, 1 1/2 cups of chopped

almonds (we find the almonds always

settle down to the bottom of those bit

jars of mixed nuts so I just stole mine

from there!)

This year our Walmart didn't have the candied fruits above but I found them at another

local market (HyVee)

I baked these cakes in the mini foil

little pans at 300 degrees for 50 minutes 

in my convection oven

After they cooled I brushed

more rum on them and will do

this again every 3 days for the

next week or so.

I actually used some green candied cherries too and also used 27 additional whole candied red cherries for the tops (3 per cake)

Did you know they used these pickles

in their fruitcakes in the 18th

century?