Off My Game

 It's December and I don't have my fruitcake made. Everyone knows you have to make your fruitcake with the first frost of November. I picked Monday to get mine in the oven and it was sunny and 63 degrees out. I should have known better.

I had my new Echo synced tablet in its dock ready to show me what I needed to know. I was making Alton Brown's Free Range Fruitcake and this year I could cook along with his video. Cool.

First I had to let the dried fruits soak in the booze all morning.

 Using my mom's micro-planer is always cool. It's really the only time I use it. I could zest fruit all day.

 Alton cooks his fruit and sugar mixture. I usually don't but I thought I'd give it a try.

 It's like adding mincemeat to your batter. It looked iffy to me. I tasted the batter and it seemed very sweet. I was worried. I also forgot the nuts. I had to scrape it all out of the pans and back in to the bowl, wash the pans and then fill them all over again. Argh....

Uh, oh. The loaves turned out fine but the little bundt did not. It worked just fine last year. I did Pam the heck out of it.  Oh, well. It gave me a piece to test and it's not too bad. It is a little sweeter than usual but since I ate quite a bit of the broken pieces I think it will be okay. Different but okay. I guess....

 You know I got up Tuesday morning at 6 am and redid the whole thing, don't you?

 This time I brought the ingredients together like any other cake batter and then added the dried fruit after just a wee soak in the booze. I did not forget the nuts. I also used only half the sugar in the original recipe.

 Better. Much better. I am more the cakey type than the fruity type but that could probably be argued in either direction.