Best Christmas Fruitcake

This is my favorite recipe. I have been making this cake every year for Christmas and everybody loves it. I soak my fruits in Rum months in advance, sometimes as early as the summer. If you love fruit cake, this is a recipe I would recommend.

I was worried that is not enough flour, but the recipe turned out great!

We LOVE this recipe at our house. Three years ago, I stumbled across this trying to make a surprise fruitcake for my husband for Christmas. He loved it so much that he asked me to bake a few extras for friends last year. This year I made twelve (12) fruitcakes for friends and family across the US and Canada. A couple of things that I do differently: I use a mild flavor molasses (Brand: Brer Rabbit) to cut down on some of the strong molasses taste, I add cloves, allspice, and nutmeg in addition to the cinnamon, I’ve changed up the fruits that I use with the biggest adjustment being substituting dried pineapple for citron, I’ve always used brandy instead of rum because I do not like rum and I always have brandy on hand, and this year I had an abundance of bread flour from another baking project which I substituted for all purpose flour. I think that bread flour will be my standard going forward. The extra protein and gluten really absorbed the alcohol well and gave a nice structure so that this was more cake-like and less crumbly than in previous years. An amazing recipe with lots of room for adjustments and experimentation!

I was very disappointed with this recipe. Another reviewer said it was similar to an Assumption Abbey fruitcake, and as soon as I read that, I was all in. HA! Assumption Abbey’s is sweeter, has some candied fruit in it, and has more of everything. Yes, I could have added candied fruit and additional nuts, but I try to always make a recipe as written the first time. But the one thing that really killed this fruitcake was the overage of rum! After 10 weeks of aging, the rum taste (and bite) was still so overwhelming that you could hardly taste anything else. AA’s fruitcake does have rum injected in it, but it, in no way, overpowers the fruitcake. This should have been called rum cake. 3 stars only because it was edible, and I didn’t want to waste the ingredients, because it was expensive to make.

Not a fan of rum? I’m not either–I use bourbon and it’s great!

I found this recipe last year and made it then and now again yesterday. This is such an amazingly good fruit cake and gluten free as well though you would never guess. I used regular rum with grand marnier for the top instead of cherry liqueur. You can mix and match the fruits and nuts to your own preference. Decorated the top with mixed green and red glaze cherries cut in half but lots of them. Everyone has raved on how good it is. It will be the only one I make and I will probably need to make another before Christmas!

Made this four years running, and learned a lot! Kept at it, because it is so TERRIFIC. Most important thing I learned: Measure fruit and liquor carefully…too much will ruin the texture of the cake, and it won’t hold together. Found the perfect pan at Aldi–a six-inch springform. Works like a dream for this. I have also learned that I MUST bake this for one full hour. My oven temp is spot on. When I first made this, I had to keep bumping up the time and an hour is perfect, by the toothpick. I have substituted a variety of fruits to suit my taste. I have always used toasted pecans, and admit to being generous with them. I have used whatever liquor was on hand (what DID happen to that bottle of rum?)…first Irish Whisky; now Cognac. It’s all good. This is a fabulous cake. Now I need to print out the recipe again, because there are too many notes about what didn’t work on the original printing. It’s simply wonderful.

This tastes great. We’ve made two already. This recipe is very flexible. I doubled the recipe and used available dry fruits like peach, glazed cherries, dates, raisins, almonds and walnuts and spiced it up a bit more with 1.5 tsp cinnamon powder, 1/8 tsp clove, 1/2 tsp cardamom powder and 1/8 tsp nutmeg powder. I used a 50-50 mix of all purpose flour and wholewheat flour and cachaca rum for soaking. It turned out absolutely divine, the taste and texture was to die for, that’s after maturing only for 3 weeks !

Wow!! Made exactly as written and baked in a 9×5 loaf pan. Baked it in September and sprinkled a couple

Followed the recipe but omitted dried mangoes and used cherries, cranberries, papaya, barberries, dates and pineapple. Also tossed crushed cashew nuts into the batter. Doubled the recipe and was able to fill two 6×2 tin cans. They are now wrapped in parchment paper and aluminum foil to age until Christmas. This is by far the best fruit cake recipe.

I put a lot if rum in there and i must say it was the best decision

I made some changes in fruit, and the flavor is not bad. However, it is a very dark cake because of the molasses and marinated fruit. It looks nothing like the photo. It also is a very wet batter, makes only a half loaf. It’s extremely crumbly at the end of the bake. I won’t spend time soaking it in rum for 10 weeks, nor will I ever make this again.

I make multi batch fruit cakes every year using a new recipe most years. This year I used this recipe & it turned out really nice. The only changes I made was I soaked all my fruit in rum for 24 hours so used no rum in the recipe. My multi batch consisted of 8 x this recipe so the only other change I made was that I used half the amount of butter. Thanks for the recipe Karen.

Instead of 1/4 cup molasses, I used 1/8 cup molasses, 1/8 cup honey. Instead of 1 6×3 inch loaf, I made 2 2×4 inch loaves (baking time was same @40+ minutes)

I kind of forgot about this in the back of the fridge – we tried it after close to 6 months! It was delicious!!!! Will definitely make this again!

I am one of those who never liked fruitcake, but decided to make this recipe. I used dark rum and they turned out wonderful! I didn’t realize that it should sit for many weeks, so next time I will make it much earlier. Nonetheless, everyone who tried it (including me) really enjoyed this one!

This is not your “old school” fruitcake! After researching many recipes, I decided on this one because it included dried fruit rather than the red and green candied stuff we’ve come to dread. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but used a variety of dried fruit that I found available and that we enjoy to equal the total amount called for in the recipe. I added 1/8 tsp ground ginger. I doubled the recipe and divided the batter into six aluminum loaf pans. I was surprised that, even after doubling the recipe, that was all it produced. For future reference, if I want to prepare these as gifts, I’ll need to increase the recipe or make several batches. Because of the smaller pans, I reduced the baking time to 35 minutes. These little mini-loafs turned out scrumptious! Buttery, not too sweet, just right with the fruit/nut combo, and the perfect amount of rum flavor. I’m looking forward to trying different dried fruit combinations, including dried candied ginger, citron (which I could not easily find) and using Grand Marnier as I’ve read in other recipes. Definitely a fun specialty project.

Excellent recipe. I didn’t use all the fruit ingredients, just about 1 cup of whatever nuts and dried fruits. Highly recommend grating an orange into it. Cooked for 40 minutes and it was done at that time. My first time making fruitcake and this is by far the best thing I have ever baked. NOTE: you really do need to put parchment paper in the pan or else it will break trying to get it out. Its much heavier and will not pop out of the pan like a normal cake does.

I thought it was very good. I didn’t change a thing. But I also rushed it this year. I do hope to make it earlier next year.

Although a bit of work, this recipe is well worth it. It made a very tasty fruitcake that had many requests for the recipe. Just about the only thing I did differently was about halfway through the baking time, I gently decorated the top with whole pecans, and whole candied red and green cherries.

This is my second year making this rum fruit cake. My parents have always had a family friend make their cake since I was little but now the friend has gotten older they are not able to bake like they used to. I found this recipe last year and followed it to the letter except for the aging part. It was only able to sit for 20 days but it was still such a hit with the family that I decided to make more than one this year. I doubled all the ingredients to make the cakes larger than they were last year and I was not able to make the cakes until the week of Christmas!! We will not eat the cake until tomm (Christmas day) but I did try a little residual that was left in the pan and all I can say is AMAZING!!!!! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe