Fruitcake Extraordinaire

(Reserve a few cherries and pieces of pineapple, and pecan halves for decorating tops of cakes.)

Cut dates, peels, and pineapple. Chop coarsely the pecans. Place into a container large enough to handle all the cake batter. Add rest of fruit. Sprinkle fruit/pecan mixture with flour (from the 4-cups), tossing mixture to coat with flour.

Cream margarine and sugar. Add eggs, jelly. Mix spices and baking powder into the flour, stir well. Add flour mixture alternately with coffee. Pour over fruit and mix (use hands and mix well).

Prepare pans for baking fruitcakes. Grease the pans completely and cut wax paper to fit the bottoms. (Mrs. Hawkins uses small round pans (not rounded bottoms) and places a small greased cheese glass in the center of each pan to make a hole in the center of each cake. She also uses some rectangular pans for small loaf cakes.) Keep each cake under 3 lbs. and it will do better; larger than that does not turn out as well. Spoon the mixture into the pans. (Mrs. Hawkins pointed out that the cake does not rise during baking, therefore fill the pans accordingly.) Decorate the top of each cake with reserved cherries, pieces of pineapple and pecan halves. It does not hurt to let the cakes set until they can be baked. Cover waiting unbaked cakes with damp towels. The unbaked, towel covered, cakes can also be refrigerated overnight if necessary.

Baking the cakes -- The cakes are steamed for the first 3 hours of cooking on top of the stove in a large covered pan as follows: Place the cake in a brown paper sack. Put water in the bottom of the large steaming pan (about 1" to 2" deep). Place a rack or old dish or something in bottom of steaming pan to hold the cake up out of the water (Mrs. Hawkins uses old saucers turned upside down -- maybe old bowls to hold it up a little higher). Place the paper sack holding the unbaked cake on top of the "rack" in the steaming pan, and cover the steaming pan. Steam for 3 hours on top of stove (she did not indicate required heat - I would guess bringing the water to a boil, then lower heat so that water is just simmering.

Add water to steaming pan as necessary to prevent it from going dry). After cake is steamed, remove it from the paper sack and put it into another dry paper sack and bake in a slow oven for 1 hour. When done, remove cake from sack, twist glass and remove. Run knife around cake and turn out onto a late. Then turn back over on piece of foil. Sometimes the pieces of fruit from the top of the cake will stick to the plate - just place them back on the cake and as it cools it will stick to the cake.

NOTE: You can vary the fruit. If you don't like citron, you can substitute it with 1/2 lb. of pineapple or extra pecans, etc. Mrs. Hawkins said that the original recipe for this cake called for whiskey in the place of the coffee, and that she had tried both and prefers the coffee. They are the most beautiful and tasty fruitcake I have ever tried. They are a rich brown color, and the fruit and pecans on top give it a nice "chunky" surface with a beautiful glazed appearance. These cakes make fabulous gifts. They also freeze well.

NOTES : Recipe from Jean Hoskinson's mother-in-law.