" The REAL Thing "…It has been a looong while! - Treat from my
daughter! Matured all Butter Fruit Cake laced with Cognac from Marks & Spencer, Oxford Street, London!
daughter! Matured all Butter Fruit Cake laced with Cognac from Marks & Spencer, Oxford Street, London!
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I love fruitcake!!! (LOL you are what you eat). This post reminds me that I need to get my ingredients together for this year’s. Looks like the high temps will be in the teens for a good part of the week. Yup, it’s time.
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Cool gift! The mature refers to the alcohol content? I was thinking it might be a he fruit, maybe aged or fermented, or maybe mature butter? 
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I’d guess mature like a mature cheddar.
My aunt makes Christmas pudding every year, and first the fruit is aged / steeped in booze for a while, and then the cake is made months before and “aged” until Christmas. ((Though the Christmas pud is made with suet not butter)
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Yes, you’re right. Whilst booze is a standard ingredient in Christmas cake (otherwise known a as “rich fruit cake” in British recipes), it’s the period that it rests between making and eating.
Traditionally, Christmas cake is made on “Stir Up Sunday” - the last Sunday before Advent. But, of course, commercial versions, like the one Charles has received, are made earlier. They are cakes that will keep - Charles’ example until 16 March 2024 (but it will be eaten long before).
I usually buy a Christmas cake but have made it three or four times over the years. All except the last time, I’ve used Delia Smith’s recipe from her Christmas book, published in 1990 (and I made it that year). I made one in 2020, using Nigel Slater’s recipe. Both are good. I don’t cover the cakes with marzipan or icing which, although traditional, aren’t to my taste.
Christmas cake is not my thing, but I do partake of hard sauce 
I had to Google what hard sauce is. Britons know it as brandy (or rum) butter. I’ve never tasted it. In this house, brandy sauce accompanies Christmas pudding, although only when it’s just the two of us (other family members prefer custard).
My aunt calls it either interchangeably, though more often hard sauce (she’s English, maybe it’s regional or family based). No custard with the pudding, only this deliciousness.
We have Brandy Butter on our Mince Tarts!
more than 50 years back . . . was introduced to Cross&Blackwell “Hard Sauce”
(apparently ) not sold in USA/?anywhere anymore?
so I make my own.
to go with my grandmother’s fruit cake - kabillions of ingredients - dried fruit macerated in booze , , , which I bake in October for Christmas to Easter feasting.
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My niece’s husband (a teetotaler) overindulged in my sister’s Christmas cake, and wondered why he fell asleep and woke up with a headache, until he was told that my sister always loaded the cake with rum and brandy.
I’m also a teetotaler - but make exceptions for things like this cake.
By the by, I occasionally drink alcohol free wine. It must contain other chemicals that are in in normal wine as, if I over indulge, I can wake up with all the symptoms of a hangover. All of the pain, with none of the pleasure.
Charles, Toque et Tablier fruit cakes are the best I’ve found in Canada.
I buy them at the One of a Kind Show at the Exhibition Grounds (Toronto). https://toqueettablier.ca/
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