Fruit cake? No thanks!
I'm not one for that tradition of fruit cake. Sticky, too sweet and filled with a collection of gooey, tooth-rotting chunks of things that may or may not have been fruit in some former incarnation baked into a thick, sugary cake.
I'm not sure anyone has ever eaten a fruit cake. Two or three hundred of these cakes were made sometime in the last century and these goodies, wrapped tightly in that hard, crinkly plastic that can no more easily pierced with a knife than the cake itself. Those cakes have been passed from generation to generation, family to family...regifted and regifted, but never actually eaten.
Me? I prefer fruit and cake rather than fruitcake.
A golden pound cake with some Granny Smith apple slices is a great alternative to the super-sweet cake.
The cake is just the right amount of sweet and the green tart apples are a nice complement to the cake. Of course, you could use strawberries or blueberries or even pineapple or bananas...the cake is the canvas upon which you can paint your dessert. Make it as sweet or tart as you like.
Start with the cake and take it from there.
Golden Pound Cake
1/2 cup of butter
1/2 cup of margarine
2 cups of sugar
5 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon or orange juice
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
- Bring all ingredients to room temperature and preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and the margarine until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat at high speed.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add the lemon (or orange) juice, the almond extract and the vanilla extract.
- Sift the salt and the flour twice and gradually add it to the egg mixture.
- Beat at slow speed until the whole thing is just combined. Don't beat the mixtue too much.
- Pour this batter into a pan you've sprayed with cooking spray.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 70-80 minutes.
