author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

It's that time of year again! FROOTCAKE TIME. As we speak, the concoction is in the oven being converted from jewel-studded goop to jewel-studded yummmm. Well, the raw goop is yummmm too, but it doesn't have nearly the same shelf life. Still, looking forward to cleaning out the mixing bowl, 'cause that'll be the last taste I get until Solstice.

After a one year hiatus, I have returned to the most excellent recipe received some years ago from fellow long-time Misc.Writing netizen Wendy Chatley Green, whose own annual fruitcake warnings in the newsgroup prompted me to beg shamelessly for instructions. I went astray last year, I admit it. But the temptation was understandable. When in the course of blog controversy a regular doesn't simply call an ill-mannered comments troll a fruitcake but instead hands them a recipe, well, that's just too cute not to try. The recipe, sadly, was dry, not as tasty, and suffered furthermore by my not having cheesecloth on hand to wrap the cake in during its three-week boozing period. Tea towels, sadly, make inadequate booze delivery systems.

Anyway, this year's fruit-a-licious ingredients are...

• 12 oz. papaya spears
• 12 oz. candied ginger
• 9 oz. dried blueberries
• 9 oz. dried strawberries
• 12 oz. dates
• 9 oz. Buddha's hand citron
• 8 oz. slivered almonds

Which is a little bit more fruit than the recipe called for. For some reason I persisted in thinking I only had 9 ounces of ginger, such that it added up to 60 ounces dried and candied fruit and half a pound of nuts. Oh well. No fruitcake ever failed due to an overabundance of candied ginger, I think.

On Buddha's hand citron: It's the tentacular yellow thing in the picture. It's basically like a lemon, only it's nothing but rind. The recipe wanted it candied, but in the excitement of actually getting my hands on one, I forgot. So I just sliced up half a pound of it real thin and let it soak with the dried fruit in the brandy. There's a lot of citron left over. I shall probably candy that later on this week.

I'm now out of brandy and forgot to get more, so I'll either pass by a liquor store this evening (I can do that; Colorado finally repealed its Puritanical "No Liquor Sales on The Lord's Day Of Rest" stupidity; now if only it would allow real liquor sales in supermarkets it might be as enlightened as Louisiana, she said ironically) or just use a mixture of rum, bourbon, and Amaretto.

So there's the fruitcake.

You'll notice it's November 30th. This is fairly late for me to be baking fruitcake, but as long as I do it during November, it gets its minimum three weeks of boozing time, so what's to complain about?

You might also notice that my NaNoWriMo word count isn't yet 50K. That's all right. After I turn off the oven, I'm going to Denny's with some other local participants for a Mad Dash To The Finish Line! I think I'll actually manage to reach "The End" tonight in addition to the word count goal. I just need to bridge the story's current "where we last left our heroes" position with where the "candy bar scenes" I snarfed two weeks ago pick up. Then I need to write some sort of denouement.

More later (i.e. when I "win"!). For now, I have a mixing bowl to clean. Yummmm.