Dunno. I think EBay said it went UPS. It would be interesting to look at the tracking info on the UPS site. I guess those fruitcakes could have come from a legacy Walmart order and this all has nothing to do with the EBay non-compliant/fraudulent seller issues, but Yvonne says she cannot find any such Walmart order and thinks Walmart sent it gratis because of her prior complaint. I'd like to see the UPS info for that tracking number. And if it is one of the fraudulent card scams, I wonder if the EBay order status will go from "Not Shipped" to "Delivered" after they see that Walmart has delivered, since there would be no tracking info for the seller to reference.
Something just occurred to me @Nancy Hart. Do you know how old this recipe is? The low temperature has me thinking that perhaps it is an adaptation of an old boiled Christmas pudding from many years ago. Just a thought. Butter perhaps was substituted for suet.
It was the winner (or was it 2nd place? ) of a recipe contest sponsored by the Tampa Tribune in 1952, submitted by Lucille Harvey. Of course, she may not have just made it up. Maybe it was passed down to her for generations. The temp does seem exceptionally low, doesn't it?
I have tasted fruitcake that I thought was okay, and I've tasted some that was horrific; well, maybe horrific is an exaggeration, but it's fair to say that I haven't had any that I thought was great.
A couple of reasons for using the low temperature might be that the sugary fruit will dry out or even burn at higher temps. Also low oven temp would prevent the cake from browning, which may be one reason it's called "white" fruit cake.
Our Wedding Day Fruitcake was amazing. A three tier full of red/white/pink roses in icing. No almond paste (special request as neither of us likes that stuff) and wonderful huge church bell on top that played the wedding March. That bell, a free gift from our baker as I'd been a student of cake baking and decorating from his bakery. The mechanism lasted five full years. It was very special and delicious. As Charles was from the UK, his cakes were similar to the ones served in Buckingham Palace. Delectable... We managed to keep our second tier for our daughter's christening. Unfortunately, due to a power shortage, we finally lost the remaining cake circa 1993. It had been in our chest freezer and was still edible. Unfortunately, we found the power outage to the whole house on a return from a business trip of 3 weeks. The spoilage was so extensive, we had to even get rid of our old and trusted chest freezer. On our 25th wedding anniversary, we bought an anniversary fruitcake from M&S. Glad to say, we enjoyed it all over two days. Split into 8 portions and there was 4 of us at the time. Yummy! Finally, I still have an heirloom recipe for a Christmas Fruitcake Loaf. Due to the costs of the fruits and nuts required for the cake, my last baking venture was end of 1990. It was $25 approx for just those ingredients, just not worth the money anymore. Add up the glace cherries in green and red, the other dried fruits plus 5 different nuts and you'll understand why it isn't worthwhile anymore. For the holidays now, we head to M&S and get a loaf iced bar mini fruitcake and it's perfect!
Up until last 2 years we baked several fruitcakes every year, one went to Jakes mother who gave me the recipe about 40 years ago and his brother who loves them, rest went to a couple grands. A couple we freeze and eat during the year. I say the secret is in soaking the ingredients. I use brandy. Jakes mom and brother passed away in 2016 his brother couple years ago so we stopped making them. We made these about 5 years ago last time we made fruit cake.