Name: Candied Holiday Fruitcake
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 150 min
Total time: 180 min
Ingredients: 3 cups chopped pecans; 16 oz candied pineapple (chopped); 8 oz candied cherries (halved); 4 oz candied orange peel; 1 ¾ cups plus 3 tblsp. all-purpose flour; 1 cup butter (room temperature); 1 cup sugar; 5 eggs; 1 tbsp vanilla extract; ½ tsp baking powder; Pinch of salt; Powdered sugar (optional)

4.8 from 5 votes

This light, golden, and buttery Candied Holiday Fruitcake filled with fruits and nuts is delicious from the first bite to the last.

Cook Time 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time 3 hours

Jump to Recipe

A slice of candied holiday fruitcake on a plate with remaining cake in background.

This recipe will change your mind about fruitcakes! This light, golden, and buttery Candied Holiday Fruitcake filled with fruits and nuts is delicious from the first bite to the last.

Fruitcake. That most maligned of holiday desserts. The butt of hundreds of holiday jokes.

Theories abound about fruitcake. Some people say there's really only one and it gets passed from person to person. Other people swear it's best used as the filler for potholes. And, honestly, there are some fruitcake recipes that are deserving of that treatment.

Still others adore its rich, dark candied texture. People seem to be of two minds about fruitcake - they either love it or they don't. Not much ambivalence with fruitcake.

Fruitcake Has a Long, Long History

Did you know that fruitcake has been around for hundreds of years? In the Middle Ages honey, spices, and dried fruits were added to bread dough for special occasions. Fruitcake was once even protected by laws that restricted its consumption to celebrations such as Christmas and weddings.

Most traditional recipes that have come down to modern cooks contain loads of candied citron, raisins, either dark brown sugar or molasses and a healthy dose of rum or brandy. They're dense, heavy, dark and rich. They're also loaded with booze. Maybe that's part of the appeal for those in the fruitcake lovers camp.

A Lighter Version of Fruitcake

This fruitcake has many of the same ingredients as the traditional, but instead of dark and dense, it's light in color, texture, and taste. It's what southerners call a "blonde fruitcake." It's loaded with candied pineapple, cherries and orange peel (no citron!), and pecans. And the cake is light in color, rich and buttery.

Handwritten recipe card in the foreground with candied fruit in the background.

I've been making this fruitcake (with a few personal tweaks by me) every year since I first saw the recipe in the November 1991 issue of Bon Appetit. I really need to re-write that recipe card before I forget what it says in all the places that are spattered with butter and vanilla.

This is one of the treats that BeeBop looks forward to every Christmas and every crumb is consumed by the end of the holidays. For several years I sent one to work with him near Christmas and it became a standing request from the guys he worked with starting about November first each year. It's really that good.

If you haven't made a fruitcake for the holidays yet, I highly recommend this one.

How to Make Candied Holiday Fruitcake

I always like to show you the photos and step-by-step instructions for my recipes to help you picture how to make them in your own kitchen. If you just want to print out a copy, you can skip to the bottom of the post where you'll find the recipe card.

Prepare the Pan and Fruits

Position an oven rack in the lowest third of your oven and preheat to 250°. Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan and set it aside.

Chopped candied pineapple in a measuring cup.

Chop the candied pineapple into about ⅓ inch pieces. Cut the cherries in half.

Large mixing bowl holding all the prepared fruit and nuts for the recipe.

In a large bowl, mix the pecans and fruit with 3 tblsp of flour.

Mix the Batter

Photo collage showing the bowl of a stand mixer with the process for mixing the eggs, sugar, and butter.

In another large bowl, cream the butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Flour in a sifter held over a mixing bowl.

Sift 1 ¾ cups flour with baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the batter and stir until blended.

Mixing bowl containing the batter mixed with the fruits and nuts.

Mix the fruit and nuts into the batter. Just a note - at this point the batter becomes heavy weightwise. It gets pretty hard to turn it all around and mix it well, but just keep pulling the wet batter up from the bottom of your bowl and mixing until everything is well combined.

Finished fruitcake batter in the prepared pan.

Put the batter into your prepared pan. This is not really a pourable batter. I use a wooden spoon to put big blobs of batter into the pan. When all of the batter is in the pan, smooth the top.

Bake Until Golden Brown

Cooked fruitcake in the baking pan sitting on a cooling rack.

Bake until golden brown and a tester inserted halfway between the outside and tube of the pan comes out clean, about 2 ½ hours. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes.

Baked fruitcake removed from the pan sitting on a rack to cool.

Turn out onto a rack and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar (optional).

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A slice of candied holiday fruitcake on a plate with remaining cake in background. Text overlay for pinning.

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