One Good Loaf: Cheating with Fruit Cake

Happy Christmas Eve everyone!!! This week for One Good Loaf I cheated . . . again.

I made fruit cake instead of bread. Again, I just had to have it, so my planned bread recipe was kicked off the menu, and I mean, c'mon, what Christmas would be complete without the stereotypical fruit cake? Although CQ makes excellent fruit cake, the fruit cake I decided to make was Mr. Fuji's grandmother's recipe that she made every year. (I just had to share this picture of her when she was a young married woman--wasn't she a cutie?)
Her fruit cake is to die for--heavy, filled with fruit and goodies, flavorful, and extremely moist.
I asked my MIL about it and she said that her mom has been making fruit cake every Christmas since she can remember, and would gift loaves of it to those in the family that liked it. Since this will be the first year that we won't be able to sit down in her kitchen to enjoy a slice, I decided to try my hand at making it.
Although it is a bit time consuming, it is easy to make and the results are well worth the time spent. The only change I made was to use 2 cups of golden raisins in place of the dates, because that's what I had in the cupboard.

Ellie's Fruit Cake

1 c. vegetable oil
1 1/3 c. sugar
1/4 c. molasses
4 eggs
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 c. orange juice
1 c. more sifted flour
2 2/3 c. (15-oz.) seedless raisins
2 c. (1 lb.) cut-up dates
2 c. (1 lb.) mixed candied fruit
1 c. nuts, broken in half

1. Heat oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 2 loaf pans (8.5"x4.5"x2.5") with brown paper.

2. Mix oil, sugar, molasses, and eggs. Beat vigorously with electric mixer for 2 minutes.

3. Sift together the 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, spices, and stir in alternately with orange juice.

4. Mix the 1 cup flour into fruit and nuts.

5. Pour batter over fruit and nut mixture, mixing thoroughly.

6. Pour into prepared pans. Place a pan of water on lower oven rack. Bake cakes 2 1/2 to 3 hours. After baking, let cakes stand 15 minutes before taking from pans. Cool thoroughly on racks before removing paper. Store by wrapping tightly in aluminum foil, place in covered jar in cool place to ripen.

* Always use amount of fruit called for in recipe.
* Fruit cake is a heavy batter, rises very little.