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Kentucky Fruitcake

Subject: Kentucky Fruit Cake
From: Martha
Date: 4/16/2019, 1:04 PM
To: phaedrus@hungrybrowser.com

On 4/16/2019 9:17 AM, Martha wrote:

I’m looking for my grandmother’s fruitcake recipe. She lived in Bath County, KY area 
but I don’t know if it was a common recipe in the area.
The recipe used cocoa, blackberry jam, dates, figs, walnuts and candied cherries. 
It was baked slowly in an angel food cake pan with a pan of water in the oven for steaming.
Thank you!

Martha

Hi Martha,

I could not find a fruitcake or "fruit cake" recipe that matched your list of ingredients. There are dozens of similar recipes, but none with that particular combination of ingredients.

The cocoa, in particular, is a sticking point. There are very few fruitcake recipes that contain cocoa, and I found none that contained the combination of blackberry jam and cocoa and dates and figs.

There is a type of fruitcake called "black fruitcake"(for its dark color) that sometimes contains blackberry jam, but I did not find a recipe by that name that contained cocoa. There are a couple of recipes on the web that are called "Kentucky Fruit Cake", but they do not match your description.

There is a type of cake that is popular in Kentucky and that is called "Jam Cake" or Blackberry Jam Cake". It is sort of a "fruit cake", and there are a lot of recipes for it on the Internet, but I did not find any recipes for it that had cocoa, dates, figs, etc. It often contains raisins, but I found none with dates and figs. I did find a remark that at least a few Kentucky cooks added a couple of tablespoons of cocoa to this cake . See in the comments section here: Southern Jam Cake

My grandmother made them all the time, We live in ky but she would add 2 tablespoons of cocoa to hers it makes them a dark ,She would sell a lot of them also,As a kid I use to love the smell of them baking, Now every time I bake them I think of her ,She has been gone for 36 years now, But we still have her recipes,

You must realize that your grandmother's recipe may have been her own adaptation or it may have been a unique recipe handed down in her family. If so, it is quite unlikely that you will find an exact duplicate for it outside of her descendants. That's the best place to look - her descendants.

I will post this for reader input

Phaed