I love those end-of-season food sales. I used to grab all the <50%> peanut brittle Walmart had, dunk it in melted dark chocolate chocolate and let it set. I once showed up as they were marking all that stuff down, and I got them to do the peanut brittle as I waited so I could load up on all of it. A couple of years ago I decided that I didn't need all that sugar, and I've not bought it since. Regarding fruitcake...it there any food more maligned?
Mince pie would be a likely candidate, in my opinion, for being maligned, @John Brunner . You can hardly even find a mince pie anymore, or mincemeat to make one, and it was a holiday staple back in the 50’s when I was a kid. Now, most people hate it, if they have ever even tried some, and many have only heard about it and never even eaten a slice of mincemeat pie. My English Mother-in-law used to bake the best mince tarts in the whole wide world !
The same goes for my English mother. I had forgotten about mince meat. I'll have to look through her recipe cards to see if I can find it. And making a Yorkshire Pudding is still on my bucket list. I just don't make roasts all that often, and you really need the fresh drippings to do Yorkshire pudding right.
Peanut brittle in dark chocolate? Be still, my soul! How could you do this to me, John.......now that I've finished the last of the Christmas candy and have determined to embark on my 365,412th diet?!?
Don't tell anyone, but I'm on my way to Walmart to "do some shopping." I promise to only buy one pak.
There's fruitcake and then there'd fruitcake. Some I hate. But some come with recognizable fruit and nuts with a rum overtone like Grandma's (trademark) Fruitcake that I really like.
I've eaten fruitcake, and, despite its reputation, I didn't hate it. It's not something I'd go out and buy because not hating something doesn't mean that I like it, but the fruitcake I've tried was okay enough that I suspect there are people who can make fruitcake that I'd actually like.
So I went to Walmart. The girl who was marking stuff down told me that all the peanut brittle was gone before Christmas. As The Fixx might say..."Saved by Zero." They had a bunch of fruitcake left. I was gonna pick one up since Yvonne planted that seed, but when I scanned the bar code in the Walmart app (because it was not priced) I saw the fruitcake was User Rated 1.5 stars out of 5. (Probably the high winds rendered it useless as a door stop.) So I passed. In deference to my age and avoiding another attack of diverticulitis, I did walk out of there were 2 boxes of Kelloggs All Bran Buds. 12 grams of insoluble fiber and 5 grams of soluble. Intestinal fortitude, my butt. Merry darned Christmas to me.
My MIL sends us a fruitcake from the Collin Street Bakery each Christmas. My husband loves fruitcake so the cake doesn't last very long. He also loves fruitcake cookies but I haven't made those in years. Does anyone here make stollen? I saw an easy recipe for stollen online and I'm going to order some dried fruit to try it. I think it's more "bread-y" than "cake-y".
My dad used to get schtollen (your spelling is fine, it is how he pronounced it) I did not care for it. It IS bready more than cakey.
I drove to Charlottesville for dinner (and to get out of the house), so while I was there I went to a larger grocery store to see what they might have for dessert. Lo and Behold, they had mince pie!!! (It does not say "mince meat.") It tastes OK, but the filling in my mother's mince meat pie was solid and substantial. This has the consistency of thick apple butter with some bits in it. It tastes OK, but it's not what I wanted. I should have at least looked in the frozen section.
I'm going to try this one, Mary... https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/our-easiest-stollen-recipe . It only has 1/2 cup of sugar so it won't be very sweet. I want to hear about your gramma's delcol; I've never heard of that.
I find that grocery store bakery pies are lacking. My husband picked up a pumpkin pie a few days ago and it's nasty.
There is a pie place in town here that is very well known (Floozie's.) They are pricey but good. When local non-profits have fund raisers, a pie from Floozie's is the de-facto door prize. I just went on their website...there is no mince meat pie listed. Perhaps I should see if I can get one custom-made. Or maybe I need to start looking at recipes. I might take a second spin-through my mothers recipe box. Some number of her recipes are transcribed from the Hershey's cocoa tin or the back of the Nestle's chocolate chips (and quite a few don't even have the name of the friggin' recipe on them), so I'm surprised I could not find one for mince meat pie. Even if it was from a cookbook, it seems she would have transcribed it to a card.
The powdered sugar on the schtollen helps sweeten it a little. They call those little prune pastries by a lot of names. It is a very bad for you butter/cream cheese pastry. The hard part is finding the prune butter. My grandmother used to get it in jars. The last time I found it it was in small cans and I bought all the store had. (I am a prepper ; ) I soften an 8 oz package of cream cheese and 2 sticks of butter, mix in 2 cups of flour till smooth. Divide into two balls of dough and wrap in plastic wrap and put in fridge to chill. Then roll out the dough, (flouring the rolling surface )cut into 2 1/2 ish inch squares, put a dollup of prune butter into the center, cross two opposite corners of the square over the prune butter and bake at 400 till slightly golden. You can halve the recipe to try it. My daughter made it this year and did very well. One year I made the prune butter with our own dried plums, added a little water and put in the blender. It worked in a pinch.