Black Cake

I have been making this cake for at least 20 years. I use one dozen eggs per pound of butter. Don’t bother with baking powder - the large number of eggs suffice. I recommend cutting the prunes (or any larger fruit) into small slivers with kitchen shears and leaving raisins/currants (smaller pieces of fruit) whole. This greatly helps cake’s consistency. Lastly, I bake the cake at 350 F for 35 to 40 mins, and the cake comes out delicious and moist. No need to bake at a low temp for hours.

this is similar to a recipe that I have made for years and friends beg me for some.

I marinate the fruit that I have ground up in the Cuisinart, with 1 bottle of dark rum and I bottle of Kosher wine for 6 months!

You can buy burnt sugar essence which is the key for the flavour and the black color of the cake. I hyave never used bitters and have no plans to start.

But this is a really fantastic cake and a must try.

Being born and raised in Trinidad, where the best black cake comes from, (with apologies to other islands :) ) I grew up watching my mother make this cake, and making it myself. Traditionally, we used dark rum and cherry brandy and the fruit was soaked in enough to cover it for several months. You can leave some just chopped and some minced. We did not add Angostura bitters, and used bottled browning. Too much work to burn sugar! You can add 1 teaspoon of allspice and 1teaspoon mixed essence 1/2

We in the Caribbean add a bottle of Guinness Milk Stout which is also bitter to the ground up fruit. We also add all spice, nutmeg and mace to the ground fruit which is set up for up to a year. We mix port with rum and pour into holes punched in the cake when it is hot. If the fruit is only set up for two days, then it needs to be steamed in a little water or fruit juice and cooled before making.

Black cake always makes me think of Laurie Colwin & her essay in Home Cooking.

This cake is amazing. I'm Jamaican and it is absolutely fabulous. I used browning instead of caramel and 'veganized' it with earth balance sticks instead of butter and flax meal 'eggs' NO ONE knew the difference, I soaked the fruit for a month and I put enough rum to cover up all the fruit. After it comes out of the oven I'm very generous with the rum as the heat of the cake soaks it up quickly. The more rum the longer you can keep it. It can be frozen as well.

2/2 Cake must be cooked low and slow. Thinner cakes take less time. We put an open container of water in the oven to keep it moist. When cooked, poke holes and pour a capful of rum over the cake. Do this several times until cool. Store in airtight tin and add rum weekly. They last a long time. Unless eaten.

In Barbados, these cakes are used for weddings as well, topped by hard icing and silver dragees. My grandmother would leave the fruit soaked in rum for at least 3 months in dark rum, Mount Gay from Barbados. There's no need for a food processor. If you go to a Caribbean store, you get the fruit peel already chopped into tiny pieces. You must pour port wine over the cake after it's baked. Only eat in small pieces, this cake is very rich!!

This is a very good cake, though a bit "jammy". In future, I think would leave some of the smaller fruit whole. Also, I'm not a big fan of raisins, so I substituted dried cranberries, blueberries, dates, and apricots.

Though it takes planning ahead, it is well worth the trouble. Vacuum-sealed (gently!), it keeps a very long time.

i havent made this yet, but i see no reason why the soaking rum/brandy can't be used on the cakes when they come out of the oven and for moistening the fruit paste, if needed... also, why is the recipe for 4 cakes?? is there a traditional reason? i'm cutting it down and making 1....

I made this about 10 days ago, knowing that fruitcake might be as hard to dole out as zucchini. Without a stand mixer, it was somewhat difficult, but I prevailed. I followed the recipe with two exceptions: I did use burnt sugar or bitters. The fruitcake lovers who have tried this to date are unanimous: It is wonderful. Rich, moist, and dense with fruit. Next year I'll use he bitters.

This is very similar to the Black Cake in Laurie Colwin's "He Cooking." have made it a few times. She said that it had to be iced, so I did, with confectioner's sugar and egg white. It is good--she recommended marinating the fruit for weeks in the wine. This is a rich cake for a cold winter's night. The alcohol does bake out of it.

Browning is a cross between caramel and molasses. It's the burned sugar part. I bought the browning at Fairways the caribbean section.

My family is from the Caymans...pretty close to Jamaica...:) and I have never found a recipe for heavy cake....God, I love that....No one makes it any more and the aunties who made it are now all gone....and never left the recipes.... :(

Kirsch IS cherry brandy, isn't it?