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This
year I decided to bake a fruitcake. I have made fruitcakes before,
and even have a recipe I developed back in my vegan days using beans. For this
year’s fruitcake, however, I wanted to make a rather boozy version along the
lines of a fruitcake I picked up during a trip to the UK a few years ago, what
was called a “Christmas cake” with frosting. This cake tasted very unlike the fruitcakes I avoid here in the States.
Many Americans dislike fruitcakes, mainly because of mass production of this confection in the mid-twentieth century with nuclear green candied fruit. I learned from my English fruitcake that many US mass produced versions are mistakes, but what I did not know until this year is that a quality fruitcake "matures" in a rather similar fashion to our puerh cakes. That is, if looked after properly, a fruitcake and puerh over time will develop sought-after complex flavors.
Many Americans dislike fruitcakes, mainly because of mass production of this confection in the mid-twentieth century with nuclear green candied fruit. I learned from my English fruitcake that many US mass produced versions are mistakes, but what I did not know until this year is that a quality fruitcake "matures" in a rather similar fashion to our puerh cakes. That is, if looked after properly, a fruitcake and puerh over time will develop sought-after complex flavors.
For
my fruitcake, I hoped to use up much of
the dried fruit accumulated in my kitchen cupboards over many years. Alas, one large fruitcake made only a small dent in the number of packages of prunes,
apricots, dried cranberries, figs and the like that somehow ended up in my
house. Where did all this dried fruit come from? I like dried fruit, but
really! Apparently I do not eat any of it, and neither does anyone else in the
house. I guess I ate it to stay regular, but now in recent years I need only brew
up a drain cleaner puerh for this purpose.
Fruitcakes are part of my family history. My aunt Alvina baked fruitcakes
every year. She developed a family tradition during World War II when my uncle
Leonard fought as an infantry soldier. Aunt Alvina sent him care packages at
Christmas time with fruitcakes and frosted cookies packed into a huge box full
of plain popped popcorn. The box arrived with most of the cookies broken, but
the popcorn and broken cookies eaten together were a huge hit with my uncle’s infantry unit.
So Alvina continued mailing out Christmas boxes to her brothers, my father
included. Dad was the only one in my family who ate the fruitcakes. They remained in the refrigerator wrapped in tin foil well into the following summer
(I found out the tin foil actually has a rationale for maturing fruitcakes).
I
remember asking my dad one July whether I should toss the leftover fruitcake.
“No,
no don’t throw that out, it is still good.”
He’d hack off a chunk, eating it in
front of me to show he still planned to finish the cake. One could never be
certain of food facts from my father. This was a guy who ate lettuce and
pasta out of the sink drain, and saved soups in pots out in the garage for
weeks.
So
really, in terms of fruitcake knowledge, I am on my own here. Although I have plenty of fruitcake recipes in my kitchen already, I am intrigued by a BBC recipe. Sort of following the recipe, I cook up prunes, apricots, cranberries and figs into spiced rum (I am not a brandy fan) and
then fold them into the cake portion of the recipe. I did not have fresh lemons, so I use a chopped preserved lemon. I cannot bother to go buy one orange just for the zest, so I toss in some fruit punch instead. I slow bake the lot in
the oven and the cake turns out all right.
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| My fruitcake |
Now,
this is when the OCD kicks in. I have some notion that a fruitcake needs to mature with some alcohol in it, but not much idea of how to do this because all the fruitcakes of my past were ready to eat. How much booze do
I use? How often should I add some to the cake? Do I just pour it on, or brush
it on? How long should the cake sit, weeks or months? I turn to the internet
for information.
Let
me tell you that every single fruitcake article on the internet for the past
seven years is repetitive and blatantly plagiarized from the same sources
without attribution. I am ashamed at all the blog posts I read on fruitcakes
that repeat the same tropes over and over as if they are original to the
author. A typical fruitcake article has the following:
--a
trope on ancient Roman fruitcakes
--a
trope on Filipino fruitcakes
--a
Johnny Carson joke
--a
Jay Leno joke
--a
trope on American fruitcake nuclear green tutti frutti (even I repeat that one
here)
--the
American designated day for fruitcake toss games.
--the
106 year old fruitcake found in Antarctica, still edible.
Finding
useful and apparently obscure information on “maturing” fruitcakes takes no
fewer than eight pages into a Google Search, and I ended up scouring more than
twenty search pages.
So,
a fruitcake “matures” over time with periodic “feedings” of booze. The skins of
the fruits break down, releasing the tannins. The flavors of the tannins reduce
the sugary sweetness, balancing it out and creating flavor nuances. In this
sense, fruitcakes are more akin to wine maturation than puerh fermentation.
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| 97 year old Australian fruitcake. It's still good. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tusnelda/11373152845/ |
A
fruitcake does not mold, or should not mold, assuming the cake has a much
higher proportion of fruit to cake. One reason the cake should not mold is the
amount of alcohol which is preserved by wrapping the cake up in layers of
plastic and tin foil. If the cake is to be kept for long term, people wrap the
cake in muslin soaked with booze, and then cover the thing in plastic and tin
foil. Another reason the cake does not mold is because of the high sugar
content. Apparently, sugars are resistant to molds, the butter and
flour are susceptible to mold rather than the sugars.
A light bulb goes on in my head. Over time, puerh tea breaks down its cell walls
to release the bitter juices which are converted to sugar via Rhizopus yeast
which uses carbons from bacteria as food. As the tea sweetens with more and
more plant sugars, the molds present in the tea decline over time until they die off at the end of decades of fermentation. A fully fermented puerh tea
should have almost no bacteria or mold, because these are consumed by fermentation and replaced by plant sugars. Thus the puerh tea is safe to drink, and
sweet rather than bitter.
I
learned more about the nature of sugars in fruitcakes. Apparently, sugars with
their crystalline structure are very hard, and hold water. If the fruitcake is
appropriately moist, the structure of the sugars is loosened. But if the
fruitcake dries out, the sugars want to return to hard crystals. Should a
fruitcake dry out and harden, the sugars in their crystalline structure can be
induced to release water and return to a moist state. To do this, one can heat
the fruitcake in a dry low heat oven.
😲
😲
Wait...so, a dry, hard fruitcake actually returns to a moist fruitcake by heating in an oven, without adding more moisture? Apparently so, and this is because the sugars are holding the moisture.
I
start to think about the overly-humid stored puerh cakes that get dried out
like old autumn leaves. Of course vegetal matter has simple sugars, whereas a
tighter sucrose sugar has an extra carbon and a more complex crystalline
structure that holds water molecules. I did add about ¾ cup dark brown sugar to
my fruitcake.
But I wonder if added heat does more to reconstitute a dried out
puerh cake than added humidity. Not to mention the musty mildew odor that can disappear with added heat. I have that dried out humid eBay fake tea donation from July…should’ve thrown
it away, but didn’t.
Into the oven it goes.
I
am not expecting this tea to turn into something miraculous, it is a health
hazard more than anything else. However, I am curious to find out what changes,
if anything, after an oven-bake. To reconstitute a fruitcake, a scientist recommends 140F (60C) for 10 minutes. I have a
small oven to use (no way am I gonna fire up my expensive gas oven for a piece
of crap) that has a lowest temp of 150F (65C), but tends to the cold side when
using it for cooking. Close enough.
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| A rack seems like a good idea. |
After
ten minutes of bake time, I get a wafting odor of basement from the oven. I
went twelve minutes, doubting whether this is enough time for the heat to completely
penetrate the tea cake. Come to think of it, a dried out fruitcake is likely
equally dense if not more so. I am going to try the outer leaves anyway, not
the innards. I fire up the kettle.
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| Oven view. |
The
tea does not look any different in appearance after the oven, so I did not take
another photo. As for my previous testing of this tea, I used 8g and the same
Yixing pot. I threw away the first three rinses as before. I still smell some mildew
basement in the Yixing, but much less than I remember.
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| Could be worse... |
The
brew is light and actually sweet. Not that unpleasant really. I still feel just
a slight tongue numbing but if I can get past that, the tea is still a bit lively. Now the wet storage is at more of a perfect level: when a wetter stored tea has one
part woodiness and one part humidity, to me that is just the right touch.
I cannot discern whether the tea is actually made sweeter by the heating, or if the basement humidity is reduced enough to taste the sweetness which was already in the tea, but previously obscured. I do not recall seeing green in the leaves the last time, but perhaps I did not look closely enough in the sunlight to see. Maybe the cake is not quite dead.
I cannot discern whether the tea is actually made sweeter by the heating, or if the basement humidity is reduced enough to taste the sweetness which was already in the tea, but previously obscured. I do not recall seeing green in the leaves the last time, but perhaps I did not look closely enough in the sunlight to see. Maybe the cake is not quite dead.
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| I notice now the leaves still have some green. |
One
thing is certain to me now. If I have a tea with storage that I feel is a bit
too much, I will definitely put the tea in the oven for ten minutes. After all,
most rather wet teas are on the less expensive side, so I am not potentially
risking a very fine tea. I will also consider the idea of using the oven to
reduce any accidental white fuzz on tea. In fact, if tea is not yet a loss I
might rehabilitate an experiment “gone too far” by oven heating. At such a low
oven temp, I am not risking burning the tea.
So, what did I learn from fruitcake that I can apply to tea? A fruitcake is actually more akin to wine, but has a maturation process fed by moisture. High sugar content and alcohol inhibit mold, and once tannins are released from the fruit, a complex balance of flavors emerge. This too happens with aged puerh as it converts bitter tannic juices to sugars. Those of us with a craving for complexity might find a fruitcake hobby satisfying, and certainly more rewarding in the short term as we wait years for our tea to mature.
So, what did I learn from fruitcake that I can apply to tea? A fruitcake is actually more akin to wine, but has a maturation process fed by moisture. High sugar content and alcohol inhibit mold, and once tannins are released from the fruit, a complex balance of flavors emerge. This too happens with aged puerh as it converts bitter tannic juices to sugars. Those of us with a craving for complexity might find a fruitcake hobby satisfying, and certainly more rewarding in the short term as we wait years for our tea to mature.
Some interesting links:
Fruitcake chemistry
Fruitcake chemistry
Kosher Fruitcake recipe
Kerala India Fruitcake recipe
What the Hell I'm just gonna buy gluten-free from the UK.
