When Ellie King and her husband got married, they used Phoebe’s grandmother’s wedding cake as the wedding cake.
Ellie King/NPR’s Collage
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Ellie King/NPR’s Collage
When Ellie King and her husband got married, they used Phoebe’s grandmother’s wedding cake as the wedding cake.
Ellie King/NPR’s Collage
All Things We’re Cooking is a series featuring family recipes from you, our readers and listeners, and the special stories behind them. We’ll continue to share more of your kitchen treasures throughout the holiday season.
For all the fruitcake haters out there, Ellie King wants you to reconsider with a slice of Mrs. Phoebe’s fruitcake.
“I would say when I was a kid, I didn’t like fruitcake, but now I love it – and I think there’s a fruitcake for everyone,” says King, who lives in Pittsburgh. know. “It tastes almost like a spice cake, and the version we created doesn’t have any alcohol in it.”
The recipe has been in the King family for over half a century.
“Family legend has it that Great-grandmother Dimock hand-wrote a copy of this fruitcake recipe and sent it to Phoebe somewhere around World War II,” King said. “It had a lot of substitute materials, and it was assumed that there was a scarcity in wartime and so they had to substitute different things.”
King said great-grandmothers Dimock and Phoebe made sure the family grew up with fruitcake, but Phoebe was strict and insisted that fruitcake was just a Christmas dessert.
As is the case with many family recipes and traditions, thinking about when fruitcakes can be made has changed over the years. The King family’s big fruitcake celebration comes the day after Thanksgiving, when she, her parents, siblings, aunts, and cousins come together to make a giant batch.
“When other people are out shopping and lining up at Walmart to buy a new TV or whatever, we’ll make fruitcakes together,” King said.
And that big lot isn’t just for them. The fruit loaves are packaged and mailed to the rest of the family across the country so they can eat over Christmas.
“We sent it everywhere – from Alaska to New Mexico, Montana, Georgia, Texas, Boston. It was sent everywhere, no matter where the aunts lived,” King said. “And, you know, one of my uncles may or may not use it as a doorstop, but for most people, they love it because it’s tradition.”
The fruit cake meant so much to King that she went out of her way to celebrate it outside of the Christmas season. A few years ago, her family and friends participated in RAGBRAI, the annual Registrar’s Greatest Bike Race across Iowa, called Team Fruitcakes, and they shared their loaf of bread. with his team and the people they met along the nearly 500-mile route.
“It’s a really cool way to introduce fruitcake to a group of family and friends who know nothing about fruitcake – [who] there’s also this idea, this kind of misconception, that fruitcake is gross and like an old thing that doesn’t fit anymore,” King said.
King even served fruit cake at her wedding and people then asked her about the recipe. She says she’s happy to share the recipe and remembers the women in the family who made it before her.
“If you look back in history, women’s stories have often been overshadowed by the men in their lives, … and so, for me, it’s a way of honoring, remembering and tell their stories,” King said. “My grandmother, my great-grandmother, even my aunt and mother. That’s how I think about them, their importance and role in my life.”
Phoebe’s famous fruit cake
Recipe posted by King Ellie
Pittsburgh, P.
Element
- shorten 1/2 pound
- 1/2 pound brown sugar
- 6 eggs
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 2-3 cups flour (or 1:1 gluten-free flour blend)
- 1/2 teaspoon each: nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon, ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1/2 teaspoon hot water
- 1/2 cup orange juice, cranberry juice or apple juice (King usually uses orange juice)
- 1/2 pound almonds (or nuts of your choice)
- 1 pound raisins
- 1 pound sultan
- 1/2 pound of grapes
- 2 1/2 pounds dried fruit or candy or brandy
(Candied fruit can include dandelion, lemon, orange, pineapple, and cherries. Marinated fruit can include dried pears, apples, apricots, cranberries, golden raisins, etc.)
Direction
Preparation time: 1 hour. Cooking time: 3-5 hours
Grease and dough from 6 to 8 cake pans, depending on size (or use parchment paper to line the bottom for easy removal).
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Separate eggs. Mix shortening, brown sugar, 6 egg yolks and molasses together. In a separate bowl, beat 6 egg whites until stiff peaks form.
In another bowl, mix 2-3 cups of flour with spices. Combine your fruit with the flour/spice mixture.
In the largest bowl you have (a clean turkey roasting pan works well), slowly add the shortening to the flour/fruit mixture until incorporated. Gently add the egg whites, baking soda/water mixture, and juice.
Divide mixture between loaf pans. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, then reduce heat to 275 degrees. Large loaf pans can take 2 and a half hours to bake. Small loaf pan will be made sooner.
Watch for cracked tops (a sign they’re ripe!) and check periodically with a toothpick.
Baker’s Note: Using a combination of 9-inch and 4.5-inch loaf pans, the recipe makes two large loaves and six small loaves or four large loaves and two small loaves .
