Spiced Rum Fruitcake

Simbang Gabi week. Five AM Mass on Monday. Five AM Mass on Tuesday. Five AM Mass on Wednesday. The morning dark and cold and the church candles burning and Lourdes in her pew with her rosary. I drove her on Saturdays.

I made puto bumbong this week. Brought it to Lourdes at six AM after Tuesday's Mass. She ate it. She said, "Anak, you have brought Iloilo to Anchorage again."

Lourdes is 74. She is in the kitchen. She is luminous. Angela came over Saturday with the kids. We cooked. We argued about pancit proportions — she uses more soy, I use more calamansi. We are both wrong, according to Lourdes.

I made bibingka Sunday. The pandan leaves, the coconut, the salted egg, the cheese on top. The dessert that is also a small church.

The blog post on bibingka got picked up by a Filipino-American newsletter. Traffic doubled for two days. The traffic was the surprise.

I sat at the kitchen table Sunday night with the bowl in front of me. The bowl was warm. The bowl was the prayer.

Angela texted me a photo of the kids. I texted back a heart. The exchange took thirty seconds. The thirty seconds was the keeping.

Auntie Norma called Sunday afternoon. She is now seventy-nine. She wanted a recipe. I gave it to her. She wanted to know how my week was. I told her, briefly. She told me about her week. The exchange took eighteen minutes. The eighteen minutes was the keeping.

The neighbors invited us over for a small dinner Thursday. They are an Iñupiaq family — Aana and her grandson Joe. We ate caribou stew and rice. I brought lumpia. The kitchens of Anchorage have always been the small UN. The food is the proof.

A blog reader sent me a photograph of her grandmother's wooden mortar and pestle, used since 1962. The photograph was holy. I wrote her back. The writing back is the work.

The salmon in the freezer is from August. Joseph's catch. The bag is labeled in his handwriting — "for Grace." I will use it next week.

I took inventory of the freezer Sunday. The freezer had: twelve quarts of broth, eight pounds of adobo in vacuum bags, six pounds of sinigang base, fourteen lumpia trays at fifty rolls each, three pounds of marinated beef for caldereta, and a small bag of pandan leaves Tita Nening had sent me. The inventory was the proof of preparation. The preparation was the proof of love.

I made tea late at night. The tea was the small comfort. The comfort was the marker.

The Filipino Community newsletter announced a fundraiser for typhoon relief in Samar. I committed to making three hundred lumpia. The number is the number. The number has always been the number. Three hundred is what I make. The math has stopped surprising me.

The therapy session this month was about pacing. Dr. Reeves said, "Grace. The pacing is the love for the future self." I am working on the pacing. The pacing is harder than the loving.

Lourdes called me twice this week. The first call was about a church event. The second was about a recipe variation she had remembered from her childhood. The remembering was the gift.

A reader from New Jersey wrote in about her grandmother's adobo, which used pineapple. I had never heard of pineapple in adobo. I tried it. It was strange. It was also good. The strange and the good are not opposites.

The Filipino Community newsletter announced the Saturday gathering. I will be on lumpia duty. I am always on lumpia duty.

Bibingka is the one I wrote about for the newsletter, the one that doubled the traffic, the one Lourdes would recognize from Iloilo — but what I kept reaching for all week, in the quiet after the five AM Masses and the lumpia math and the freezer inventory, was something baked and spiced and patient, something that asked to be made slowly and then let alone. This spiced rum fruitcake is not bibingka, but it carries the same intention: fruit and warmth and time, pressed together until they become something you can hold. I made it Sunday, after the bowl, after Angela’s text, and it felt like the right ending to a week that had asked everything of me.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour 30 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours (plus overnight rest) | Servings: 16

Ingredients

1 cup dark rum, divided
1 cup mixed dried fruit (raisins, currants, chopped dates, dried cranberries)
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chopped toasted pecans or walnuts
Zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

Instructions

Soak the fruit. Combine the mixed dried fruit, apricots, and figs in a bowl. Pour 3/4 cup of the rum over the fruit, stir to coat, cover tightly, and let soak at least 4 hours or overnight at room temperature. The longer it soaks, the deeper the flavor.
Preheat and prepare the pan. When ready to bake, heat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Grease a 9-inch round or loaf pan thoroughly with butter, then line the bottom with parchment paper and grease the parchment as well.
Cream the butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and brown sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 to 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add the eggs and wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the molasses, orange juice, vanilla extract, and citrus zests. The batter may look slightly curdled at this stage — that is normal.
Combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg until evenly mixed.
Bring the batter together. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture in two additions, stirring just until no dry streaks remain. Do not overmix.
Fold in fruit and nuts. Drain any excess rum from the soaked fruit and add the fruit directly to the batter along with the chopped toasted nuts. Fold gently until the fruit and nuts are evenly distributed throughout.
Bake low and slow. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake at 300°F for 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs. The low temperature keeps the cake moist and prevents the fruit from scorching.
Feed with rum. Remove the cake from the oven and immediately brush the remaining 1/4 cup rum over the hot surface. Let the cake cool completely in the pan on a wire rack, at least 1 hour.
Rest before serving. Wrap the cooled cake tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest overnight before slicing. The flavors deepen and the crumb settles. If storing longer, brush with additional rum every few days and keep wrapped at room temperature up to 2 weeks.

Nutrition (per serving)

Spiced Rum Fruitcake — The Dessert That Is Also a Small Church