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Welcome to Day Two of the Five Days of Fruit Cake! There are many, many reasons why I picked today’s fruit cake for testing. The first reason is because it has the name “mystery” in the title. Whenever recipes have the word “mystery” or “surprise” in the title, I can’t help making them.

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The second reason I chose this recipe is that I found it to be very similar to the modern recipe to make cake pops! I was interested to see what a whole, molded cake would taste like.

White Mystery Fruit Cake
Author: Betty Crocker, 1958
Ingredients
  • White cake mix, prepared and cooled
  • 1 cup each of candied pineapple, lemon peel, orange peel and citron, cut up
  • 1 cup whole red cherries
  • 1 1/2 cup white seedless raisins
  • 1 cup coconut, cut up
  • 4 1/2 cups blanched almonds, cut
  • 1 box fluffy white frosting mix or 1 can fluffy white frosting
Instructions
  1. Crumble cooled cake into a very large bowl. Add fruit and frosting to crumbled cake and mix.
  2. Pack tightly into a foil-lined 10 inch tube pan or two loaf pans. Cover cake with foil and chill in refrigerator at least 24 hours. Cake should be kept refrigerated.
  3. Slice with a sharp knife.

 

White Mystery Fruitcake001 BHG Dec 1958

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At first, it seemed like this actually might work. The mixed fruit and nuts looked quite pretty.

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However, you can see my tactical error in the background of this photo.

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For some reason, I added TWO cans of frosting to this mix instead of one. I think it was because the original recipe calls for a boxed frosting mix which isn’t made anymore. I tried to find Jiffy’s white frosting mix for a substitute, but I couldn’t find that either. So, I decided just to sub canned frosting for the mix. But when I went to add the frosting, one can didn’t look like enough. And then I got to wondering how much frosting the frosting mixes actually made. In the ad it looked like quite a bit of frosting. But don’t fall into the same trap I did. One can of frosting is plenty!

But even with two cans, it still mixed up well and molded when it was chilled.

And it looked…interesting.

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“This is the ugliest looking fruitcake I’ve ever seen.”

“I think it is kind of pretty. It looks like confetti.”

“It looks like barf.”

“Don’t judge. This might taste amazing.”

Tom TastesIMG_4712

“How is it?”

“It tastes ugly, too.”

The Verdict: Not Fruit Cake

From The Tasting Notes:

This is NOT a classic fruit cake in any sense of the word, so we can just skip over whether this is a good fruit cake or not. It’s no good as a regular cake either, because it really isn’t a cake so much as a pile of goo. Maybe it would have been better if I would have only used one can of frosting, but I think it probably would have tasted the same, just been of a firmer texture. If you are looking for a truffle-like dessert, then maybe this is what you are looking for. Tastes a little bit like birthday cake ice cream with a bunch of random fruit and nuts mashed into it. The texture was pretty much like wet cake smooshed into a ball, or like a soft, grainy truffle. If you’ve ever had a cake pop, you know what I’m talking about.

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