Pecan Fruitcake {The Best Fruitcake Ever!

Mama’s pecan fruitcake is a dense, soft cake studded with pecans, dates, and candied cherries. It’s the best fruitcake ever!

Poor fruitcake. It has such a bad rap. People either love it or hate it.

Forget all the bad things you have ever thought about fruitcakes. If you don’t like fruitcake, you have never had my mama’s pecan fruitcake at Christmas. This fruitcake will change your mind about how you feel about fruitcake and will literally make you eat your words. Mama’s pecan fruitcake is a dense, soft cake studded with pecans, dates, and candied cherries.

It’s the best fruitcake ever! I know this because David turned his nose up when I told him I would make a fruitcake this year. For the past two or three years, I was a little disappointed when mama hadn’t made any fruitcake when I went home for Christmas. I understood why she stopped making it, the recipe makes a lot of cake, and it would just end up in the freezer.

After another year of not having fruitcake, I decided to get her recipe to try my hand at making one. I went to the store and bought all of the ingredients needed to make this fruitcake memory come to life again.

While David was off hunting, I was at home in the kitchen making pecan fruitcake. I noticed the recipe called for a large “tube pan,” I called mama to see if she thought I could use a bundt pan. It’s the only pan I have that even closely resembles a tube pan. She said she thought it would work, so I set out to make the pecan fruitcake.

The house smelled like Christmas!

Ingredients Needed to Make This Fruitcake

• Unsalted Butter – a whole pound!
• Granulated Sugar
• Eggs
• All-Purpose Flour
• Baking Powder
• Salt
• Vanilla Extract
• Chopped Pecans 
• Chopped, pitted Dates
• Green Candied Cherries
• Red Candied Cherries

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How To Make Pecan Fruitcake

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. Grease a large tube or bundt pan,** with butter and sprinkle with flour or line with parchment or wax paper; set aside.
3. Using a mixer, cream together the butter, sugar. Add the eggs one at a time blending well after each addition. Add in the vanilla and mix well.
4. Sprinkle 1 cup of flour over the chopped fruit; toss to coat well. Sift the remaining flour, baking powder through a sieve to combine into a small bowl.
5. Add about 1 cup of the flour mixture to the egg mixture, mixing well between each addition.
6. Turn off the mixer; add fruits and pecans, and stir with a heavy-duty spoon.
7. Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 2 ½ hours or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

Tips for Making Pecan Fruitcake

• *Use a handheld chopper or knife to chop the pecans and fruit. A food processor tends to chop too fine.
• **The bundt pan worked great and because I have a thick black pan, I was able to shave off 30 minutes from the allotted baking time.
• I found that the batter was extremely thick and dense and ended up working the fruits and nuts in with my hands.

Not convinced that this is the best fruitcake ever?  Look at this picture I shared on Instagram:

David cannot stop eating it while drinking coffee in the morning. He loves it and has talked about it every day since.

Still not convinced?

I also took some slices to work to share with coworkers. I placed it on the table in the kitchen. By quitting time, one slice was gone, and after 3 days, it was gone!

Now, do you believe me? Try it!

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