We baked and we baked

Fruitcakes for Christmas

Last Saturday my sister from flippenblog and I set out to bake our annual batch of fruitcakes!

Fruitcakes are often served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.

The earliest recipe from Ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices and preserved fruit were added.

Fruit cakes soon proliferated all over Europe. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast, Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the ‘Butter Letter’ or Butterrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruit cakes.

Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created an excess of candied fruit, thus making fruit cakes more affordable and popular.- Wikipedia

As I said before in a previous post, Christmas in our family is not the same without a fruitcake or 2………  That being said, we managed to bake 11 of them!  ( click on the links for the recipes!)

Between mixing and waiting for the boiled fruit to cool down, we had time to admire the glorious weather and views from her balcony!

Now all we have  to do is to wait for our other sister and her husband to join us  this year for Christmas!!