It’s too late – with Christmas only a few days away – to make this Caribbean black fruitcake for this year – but it isn’t too early to start on a couple of them for next Christmas …

(This is for a different sort of Christmas fruitcake, for those who didn’t like chewing on lumps of fossilized glace fruit, which was published (re-published?) in the European edition of the Stars & Stripes sometime in the mid-1980ies. I copied it out into my personal recipe book, but did not keep or recall any information on its source. A very dear friend of mine loved the resulting cake very much, and kept several wedges in her deep freeze, where it remained soft and un-frozen, due to the incredibly high alcohol content – she called it Celia’s DWI Fruitcake.)

Moisten with a little rum from a 1-quart bottle of same;
1 lb dark raisins
1 lb dried currents
1 lb pitted prunes
1 lb glace cherries
Put the rum-flavored fruit through a meat-grinder, equipped with a medium blade, and combine with remainder of the quart of rum in a glass jar or other sealable container, and allow to steep for at least two weeks or up to one year.

Cream together:
1 lb butter
1 lb brown sugar
1 lb eggs (about a dozen)
The ground and steeped fruit.

Combine in another bowl, and stir into the butter/sugar mixture

1 lb flour
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg

Add 3 oz burnt sugar (melt sugar until deeply caramelized, or nearly black, and dissolve with an equal amount of water to make a dark, thin syrup)

Grease and flour 2 10-in spring form pans, divide the batter half into each, and bake in a pre-heated 350° oven for two hours, or until cake-tester comes out clean. You may need to cover the cakes with tinfoil to prevent burning. Remove cakes, and allow to cool. Poor ½ of a 1-quart bottle of tawny port over each cake, and allow to absorb. (You may need to take a bamboo skewer and pierce cakes about an inch apart all over to facilitate absorbing of the port.) When absorbed, pour on remainder of port onto each cake, wrap tightly in plastic (not tinfoil!) and allow to age at room temperature for at least a week or even longer to let the flavor develope. The resulting cake is very heavy, and dense, rather like gingerbread, and might be considered a sort of “pound” cake, since it calls for a pound of just about everything but the spices. Drive at your own risk, after consuming a slice or two.