I've been macerating all day and, boy, are my arms tired!

It's that time of the year again...time for The Dreaded Fruitcake.

For several years I've been making fruitcakes using Alton Brown's Free Range Fruitcake recipe. He's tweaked the recipe for his book "I'm Just Here For More Food" (I'm sure you can get it at Otowi Station) and I've followed those tweaks again this year.

Last year I made three fruitcakes. One for Jerry and Me and two for my New Mexican family members to divide four ways. This year I decided to be more ambitious.

Today I made six fruitcakes. One for each of my sisters and my mother. And one for Jerry and me.

The day started with macerating the dried fruit in rum.

After the fruit has plumped up it is cooked in apple juice, apple cider (hard), sugar, and butter.

After it cools for half an hour, eggs are mixed in and the wet ingredients are added to the flours, leavenings, and cinnamon (using the Muffin Method (see AB's book)). The cakes are baked for an hour. After they come out of the oven they are doused with brandy.

Here are the first two fruitcakes.
It was another hot day (it got up to 91°F) so they got baked in the convection oven out in the garden room. I have three big loaf pans so I baked a third cake after the first two came out of the oven.

They have to cool completely before taking them out of the pans so I couldn't bake the other three right away. And big fruitcakes take a long time to cool. But they finally cooled and I got to do it all over again.

This time I baked in the kitchen. It cooled off by evening time so I didn't mind heating up the house. I baked them in two shifts again since I didn't want to crowd the oven.

It's been a long day and I'm beat. The sixth fruitcake is about to come out of the oven and I'll be able to finally take a nap!

So, unless I hear pleas from any of you sisters or mother demanding otherwise, you should be getting a fruitcake in about a month. That's how long it takes for me to finish the process. Brandy spritzes, you know.