Every holiday season, recipe developer Lynn Wells used to meet family friend Jo Horne to make Jo’s aunt’s fruitcake recipe. Horne, a Burlington home cook, spent all year shopping for ingredients, including a whole coconut, which she’d open using a carpentry table vice. “It’s the only fruitcake I love,” Lynn says.
Yield: 12 to 16 servings.
4 cups all-purpose flour
2¼ cups granulated sugar
1 stick salted butter
1 cup sweet wine, such as cream sherry, or apple juice
1½ teaspoons lemon extract
4 large eggs
3 cups walnuts, chopped
1 (8-ounce) jar cherries, drained
1½ cups unsweetened shredded coconut
4 ounces citron
8 ounces dried pineapple, chopped
1 pound golden raisins
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 (12-ounce) jar pineapple preserves or orange marmalade
Preheat oven to 275°. Grease a 9-inch Bundt pan or two 6-inch Bundt pans with cooking spray.
Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl until well incorporated. Press cake mixture evenly into the pan. Place Bundt pan into a broiler pan filled with 4 cups of water. Bake for 3 hours.
Note: Recipe yields 1 large 8-pound cake or 2 small 4-pound cakes.
print it
North Carolina is known for many things, but nothing more important this week than the qualities of endurance, resilience, and hope.
By day, this adventure park in the Triad is a fall festival to die for. By night, the undead come alive for Halloween tricks. Welcome to one man’s vision of year-round merrymaking.
North Carolina’s border dances across the mountains as it traces four different states. Life here can be more remote, but good neighbors are never far away.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stands out among America’s national parks: Unfurling across six Appalachian mountain chains, it connects dozens of rural communities and binds together generations of families through shared memories.
