Pain d’Epices

I was sort of a unique child for many reasons – for example, I loved order, rules, lists and going to bed early. I also enjoyed fruitcake, the kind that came in a tin from ancient, distant relatives. The kind that’s widely known to be the gift you get for people you hate, the kind that’s spawned countless jokes about the same cake returning year after year, the kind that’s launched lists of “things to do with a fruitcake besides eat it” (use it as a doorstop) all over the internet. Knowing full well I am defending what has come to be the most hated Christmas gift in the world, I set out this year to revive the holiday fruitcake.

I was inspired to take on this thankless task as I was thumbing through my copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume II. Near the end, at the beginning of the dessert section, was a recipe for pain d’epices. Now, this technically translates as “spice bread” and is often known as “honey bread” but anyone with eyes could see that with 8 oz. of glaceed fruit, some holiday spices and dark rum, this was, for all intents and purposes, a fruitcake in disguise. I decided then and there to bake this and make people love it.

The process of making this holiday “spice bread” begins at the grocery store, when you need to buy a pound of rye flour, a pound of honey and some glaceed fruit. I would recommend sticking to lemon and orange fruit here (the green and red will not curry any favors with friends), and, if you can, try to find candied peel rather than the traditional glaceed fruit that comes in containers that may have been packed in 1973. I happened to have some candied orange peel in my pantry that smelled a little musty but probably okay, and I resorted to a container of yellow glaceed fruit from the bowels of the  baking aisle that was literally covered in a centimeter of dust. I rinsed all the fruit very thoroughly in boiling water before proceeding.

The next step is pulling out your KitchenAid, which you will definitely need because the volume of fruitcake this recipe creates is quite large, and the batter is, unsurprisingly, very sticky and dense. It’s also a rather pallid grey color because of the rye flour, though it looks ever-so-slightly more appetizing after you add the spices. All of this is to say that the process up until this point will reinforce everything you think you know about fruitcake, and you will wonder why you are making this recipe and question whether you are wasting your time. To add insult to injury, the raw batter does not taste good.

But once you carefully pour the batter into loaf pans (with quite a bit of effort) and stick them into the oven, your home will fill with the scent of the holidays. The recipe explicitly says not to open the oven door for the first 45 minutes, which adds a bit of intrigue to the entire process. Once your toothpick comes out clean, you will shut off the oven and admire what you have created: two deeply golden, richly spiced fruitcakes that look good enough to eat. Except you can’t eat them, because Julia says you need to cool them and then let them rest in the fridge for at least two days to “develop the flavor.”

Two days later, after so much lead-up, you’ll be really hankering for some fruitcake. At this point, you can feel free to cut yourself a thick slice, admiring the moist, dense interior with just a speckling of dried fruit. You can enjoy this plain- it’s great with a cup of tea- or, as I prefer to eat my fruitcake these days, with a thick smear of butter and a light sprinkle of sea salt. It’s frankly become something I look forward to eating after dinner every day. Let’s just say that you’d be lucky to receive a loaf of fruitcake from me this holiday season…but you probably won’t, because there will not be any left.