Le Bon Petit Chou: My Take on Christmas Fruitcake

I have never had a fruitcake...or at least not that I can recall...so I do not understand why it has such a bad rap. All I know is that the utterance "fruitcake" is more often than not followed by an "ugh", "ick", or simply a tell-all grimace. When my mom mentioned she would like me to make a fruitcake this Christmas, I appropriately replied with the classic "ugh" and a gnarly grimace. It was just a natural reaction, but with no actual reason behind it, considering my lack of fruitcake-eating-experience. TV shows, movies, and outdated jokes have clearly conditioned me to cringe at the mere mention of fruitcake. I simply could not take the risk to make a fruitcake on Christmas! What if it came out dry? What if it were as dense as...well something super dense (I can't think of a good example right now). Call me a coward, but I could not make a fruitcake with the possible disaster and disappointment looming.

As I sat at the kitchen table sipping my coffee on Christmas morning, I flipped through the Flour cookbook and stumbled upon a recipe for "Dried Fruit Focaccia". It was perfect! It had the soft, bready and fruity qualities reminiscent of a fruitcake without actually being a fruitcake. I had to make it, and luckily I had just enough time to pull it off in time for Christmas dinner.

By chance, we had just gone to Trader Joe's the day before and loaded up on dried fruits - they have the absolute best selection, in my opinion. Unfortunately the recipe called for dried cranberries, which we did not have. (I had wanted to get some at TJ's, but they only had the sweetened variety, to which I am opposed - shame on you, TJ's.) Fortunately, we had picked up some dried blueberries out of curiosity. To my delight, when I tasted one, it had a little bit of the same tartness that cranberries deliver. It was an excellent substitute.

This focaccia came out beautifully and was oh so delicious. It is the perfect sweetness. It can be eaten by itself as a snack, with something savory like an egg, chicken, or veggies, and I imagine it would even make a fantastic dessert with a little vanilla ice cream or whipped cream...hmmm I might have to go try that now actually!

Golden raisins, Thompsin raisins, and dried blueberries - ready to be soaked in warm water.

The soaking liquid from the dried fruits, post-soak...isn't it amazingly colored!?

Plumped up and drained - ready to go into the dough!

The rest of the components of the dough...yummmy honey and orange zest included.

A wonderfully fruity olive oil from Turkey - the perfect complement to this focaccia.

Time to incorporate the plumped up dried fruit.

A little bit of kneading needed (heehee a pun!).

The dough has come together beautifully!

Time to rise for a few hours...patience time for Fred.

Doubled in bulk!

Ready to be shaped into a rectangle...Mimi cat stays close to supervise.

How does one transfer a very delicate 12" by 15" rectangle of dough to a baking sheet? This was an unforseen challenge. Mimi was no help - she remained in lounge position.

Success! You've just got to be assertive and quick...and it's good to maintain a good sense of humor during this process.

Action shot: dimpling time with assistant Caro. We started off following the Flour book's directions - use all ten fingers to make deep dimples in the dough (although C posed the question: since there are two of us, do we both use both hands or both only use one hand? Good question. I have no intelligent answer. We decided twenty fingers was better than ten in dimpling.).