Timing is everything

About an hour from now I will be putting dark fruitcakes into the oven.

The Joy of Cooking recipe that I'm using calls for baking a ten-inch tube pan at 300 F for 3 1/2 hours, noting that it may appear done at 2 1/2 but that that should ignored, exept for tenting foil over it if it gets too dark on top.

I don't want to use a tube pan. I want to use small loaf pans, 8 x 4 x 2 inches.

How long should I bake them for?

And yes, I should have asked a week ago.

Still 3 1/2 hours. The depth and width of the bread will be about the same as in the tube pan -- thinking of the center hole of the tube pan as equivalent to one edge of the loaf pan.

May be too late now, but I just looked at my favorite recipe (which I haven't made in years) and it says 2-3 hours, depending on pan size.

I looked up a bunch of recipes on Google Books. As a rule of thumb, the ones that gave both tube pan and loaf pan directions seemed to bake tube pans about 1/3 longer than loaf pans. (e.g. 3 hours in a tube pan; 2 hours in a loaf pan).

After posting, I was thinking along Midwesterner's lines. If anything, the cross section of these loaves is a little bigger than that of a tube pan cake. On the other hand, the heat is coming at these things from the ends of the loaf pan too.

But nutrax gives me food for thought. Now I'm thinking maybe 2 1/2 hours, or a bit more. They've been in about half that. The kitchen smells great.

Have you ever thought about how silly it is that American recipes almost always start by telling you to preheat the oven? If I had done that first, it would have been preheating for more than two hours while I chopped nuts and fruit etc.

I've seen "energy saving tips" along the lines of "don't bother to preheat if you are cooking something low & slow."

That too.

The took the full 3 1/2 hours and didn't need the foil tent. Not burnt or dry. To be wrapped in brandy-soaked cheeseclothand foil tomorrow.

Did you need my address Vinny? I'll look forward to my first ever fruit cake arriving soon.

That's a great recipe, I've been using it for years.

About an hour from now

I missed the window of opportunity.

However, mine eyes read wrong! Vinny seeks help! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

lola, I don't think so. Whatever survives the holidays will get wrapped up and saved for next year. I'm thinking of trying to get on a schedule of making suet puddings in even-numbered years and saving one for the following year (as I did in 2008 and 2010) and fruitcakes in odd-numbered years and saving half. But we'll see if there is still fruitcake by Epiphany.

If you get tempted to try a commercial fruitcake, get a good one. There's a lot of bad fruitcake out there which I think is the source of the fruitcake jokes.

lola I trust this is not another vocative for 'Tony' :) I assume it denotes LOL again - but not on google, it doesn't! I've made a diary note to PM ye on 6 Jan, Vinny :)

P.S. By which time I expect the prayers of Nutrax to have worked and I'll have returned to the fold. Bah; humbug!

Does it matter?What does it matter? Does anyone actually eat them anyway? (From a non-fruitcake eater)

I would try one if Vinny made it. I'm not rushing out to the stores on Black Friday to stock up though, that's for sure.

I have said before that my theory is that people who say they don't like fruitcake haven't had the good stuff.

It's very expensive to make a fruitcake that's worth eating, so there is a lot of crap about. These guys make a good one, but they don't give it away.