Gâteau aux fruits

 Photo prise par mon père, c'est un gâteau aux fruits du Mélèze. Acheté en 2020, je crois, ça date. J'ai blogué sur le sujet en 2021. Tout ça pour dire que le gâteau aux fruits l'un des desserts de Noël associé à mon enfance, mais que je ne mange plus vraiment ces temps-ci. Dans mes souvenirs, on en avait toujours au moins un par Noël, ou bien fait par mes parents, ou bien acheté. J'en ai acheté jusque dans les années 90 au moins. J'aimais surtout les grosses cerises confites au dessus du gâteau. Puis c'est devenu un dessert plus épisodique. En tout cas, il n'est plus un incontournable. Ma belle-mère, qui n'est pas forte des sucreries, en est pourtant très friande. C'est son dessert de Noël. Petit loup, lui, pas du tout. Il tient de moi: son préféré c'est la bûche de Noël je crois. Mais il en aime bien d'autres. Et vous, que pensez-vous du gâteau aux fruits? Pour, contre? Est-ce un incontournable des Fêtes chez vous?

Brique aux fruits

 Sera-ce mon dernier bille de Noël? Commes les Fêtes achèvent et sont de facto chose du passé, je crois que je vais rebloguer sur le sujet aux Rois, puis ce sera tout. Mais enfin bref, toujours est-il que mon père a reçu de son beau-frère mon oncle un authentique gâteau aux fruits du Mélèze. On dirait une brique. Il paraît que ça a un goût assez particulier et très différents des gâteaux aux fruits "ordinaires". J'avoue que je suis assez curieux.

Fruit cake/loaf

For those who have read this blog for since its beginning, you might remember the time when I was struggling to bake and caled every cake I made a "catastrophy cake". The worst result of my lack of baking skills was the dry fruit cake which recipe comes from my wife's grandmother. See the most shameful result here. Ironically enough, my wife is no big fan, least of all when I bake it. Well, as I had some raisins to get through (still have in fact), I recently baked it again, with the help of Wolfie and I actually did it really well. It is a tad burned on the sides, but nothing shameful. It went really quickly and even my wife had some and enjoyed it.

That darn wedding cake

I don't like fruit cakes anymore. I used to, there were some nice Christmas cakes that my dad used to make that tasted quite good, and some other he used to buy from some charity organisation that was absolutely lovely (and which I used to have for breakfast sometimes), but not since I got married. If you don't know it already, English people traditionally have fruit cakes for wedding cakes. For me, fruit cakes (this sort of fruit cakes anyway, not the raisin cake I bake sometimes) were one of those many Christmas desserts, not something to have all year round. My wife doesn't like them, she never did, not even the aforementioned raisin cake that is from her grandmother's recipe. And it seemed a bit heavy and not sugary enough for my taste. That said, I am a traditionalist at heart, so again my better advice, I decided with my wife to be to go with the traditional British wedding cake, bought at Marks & Spencer at a reasonable price. The wedding was a great success, we had a wonderful wedding reception at a beautiful venue, where they served us great food, I never had such a decadent chocolate marquise in my whole life (I still miss), I sang New york, New York in front of an actual audience (well, more people than a couple of drunken friends) and everything went really beautifully. Except for that darn cake, which almost nobody ate and probably nobody enjoyed. Many did not like fruit cakes, others were allergic to nuts so didn't have any (with all the marzipan covering it, this thing can be pure poison), some were simply too full to eat it after the very filling meal (and the lovely marquise) and in the end, I got stuck with the wedding cake almost intact, after struggling with my wife to cut through it for the pictures. (For my Facebook friends, I think there are some pics of me immortalising that moment. It was like cutting through thick wood). I ate the first layer almost every morning for breakfast in the first month of the wedding, then I kept the other two in the freezer. We still have them, so I started eating it again for breakfast not so long ago. I try, I really do, I hate to waste food, especially one that has that sort of symbolical significance. But I really get almost sick when I take a bite of that dry cake covered with sickeningly thick marzipan. Horrid. I posted two pictures of it here, when it was whole and nice to look at (at least it was somehow useful) and how the middle layer looks a year later. Oh, and I put a picture of the marquise, just to have a memory of it on this blog (it was that good) and to taunt my readership.

C'est un gâteau? Non, c'est un biscuit!

J'ai fait ce gâteau, d'après la même recette utilisée pour celui que j'avais fait en Bretagne. Mais j'ai négligé d'utiliser de la "self-raising flour", alors il est un peu plat. Ca ressemble plus à un biscuit ou une galette. Mais je suis sûr que ça sera mangeable demain matin pour déjeuner. Pour la petite histoire, j'ai également rajouté des pépites de chocolat à la recette originale, juste pour varier un peu.

Fruit cake

This is a fruit cake I baked myself, from a recipe of my wife's grandmother. It's basically sultana cake, but you can use other dry fruits. I am quite proud of myself. I might post the recipe one day, but I don't want this to become a food blog.