Pecan Christmas Loaf

There are Christmas cake lovers and haters (see Christmas Cake and a Silly Song), but everyone is sure to like Pecan Christmas Loaf. It’s more like a quick or tea bread than a dense fruit cake, with a bit of red and green candied fruit to give it a seasonal look and taste. My cousin gave me a sample last year and I liked it so much I decided I would try it myself this Christmas.

I’m not sure where or who she got the recipe from, but like many old recipes on index cards, back when people had Recipe Boxes, this one seems somewhat vague. It doesn’t seem like there is enough flour for 2 loaves, but plenty of eggs and butter?

As I only wanted to make one loaf, I decided to cut the ingredients in half and then further adapted the flour according to my Date-Nut Loaf recipe, and a recipe I found online for Pecan Christmas Cake. When I googled most of the recipes were for Butter Pecan Cake, which called for even more butter.

Ingredients for One Loaf:

2 eggs, 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1 1/2 cups of pecan pieces, 1/2 cup of dried candied/glazed red and green cherries/fruit mix, 1 1/2 cups of flour with the salt and baking powder already in it, and 1/2 cup of crushed pineapple bits with some liquid.

Mix the 2 eggs, 1/4 cup of melted butter, 5ml (1tsp) of vanilla and 3/4 cup of sugar together.

Add the 1 1/2 cup of pecan pieces and the 1/2 cup of green and red dried fruit mix, and the 1/2 cup of crushed pineapple. Next time I might add 2 cups of the pecan pieces which is what the recipe called for but as I bought my ingredients at the bulk barn I didn’t buy quite enough. I cut back on the dried fruit too, as I don’t like too much of that, and I hate those green cherries, but you can adjust as you wish to make it more like fruit cake. The bulk food store didn’t have any candied pineapple bits, nor did the grocery store, maybe they don’t make it anymore, (although they all seem to have large dried chunks), but I remember my mother adding a whole can of Dole crushed pineapple to her much bigger Christmas cake recipe, so I substituted that. I had to use a bit more of the juice as the batter was too dry.

You can adjust the pineapple/flour to get the consistency you want. See this is how you get vague recipe cards – an experienced cook doesn’t measure, they guestimate!

I always use a glass loaf tin so I can see if I am burning the bottom. The recipe card says oven at low setting 300-325 and bake for 1 1/4 – 1 1/2 – 2hours – how’s that for general vagueness? Everyone’s oven is different, but nothing would ever cook in the middle at that low a temperature in my new oven. I regret keeping it, it’s such a temperamental thing. If I’ve used it the day before, it cooks faster. If it’s sat unused all week, it takes forever. I set it at 350, although I had it at 375 for the first 15 minutes, and it took about an hour. It was perfectly done in the middle, if a bit dark on the edges. I use the regular bake setting, not the convection one, as nothing browns with it.

It was a fairly small loaf, so I wish I had made two, as my cousin tells me it freezes well. I fed some to the snow shoveler right hot out of the oven!

Nice for Christmas Day brunch or with a cup of tea on a cold winter’s night…..but why do I always get the piece with the green cherries?

28 thoughts on “Pecan Christmas Loaf”

    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      Yes….it seems to have to recalibrate the oven temperature after a period of disuse. I really should get the Maytag people in to check it as the warranty is on until May. I mentioned it to the sales lady at the Maytag store back in the summer that I wasn’t happy with it, and she said I had 30 days to return it no questions asked, but I let it lapse. Add that to my Jan. list….

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  4. Linda Schaub says:
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    Linda Schaub's avatar

    It looks delicious Joni and I laughed at your comment of how your piece is full of green candied cherries. I am not a baker and I’d hate to think how a Christmas cake I baked would come out. My mom never made Christmas cake. We’d get a small bar of fruitcake from the grocery store as I’d have a piece or two and that was it. We used to get a Christmas stollen every year from a German restaurant. He had been the pastry chef at a big Detroit hotel for years until buying the restaurant, so we’d order Christmas stollen from him. It was a consistency similar to yours, with candied fruit and powdered sugar on top. My mom made little shortbread cookies every Christmas and before she put them in the oven, she took the fork each way to make a crosshatch design and in the center was a half of a green or red cherry.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      I like to bake….but cooking not so much….but I like to eat so it’s a tradeoff…..lots of work and dirty dishes in return for a nice meal and leftovers so you don’t have to the next day!

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      • Linda Schaub says:
        Linda Schaub's avatar

        I have only baked once or twice and I burned the cookies and they were slice and bake cookies, so I really don’t use the oven and the older the stove gets, the more I think I don’t think it would be safe to use the oven, but I do make crockpot meals and they are good for three meals which is nice. Yes, the dirty dishes and mess – hours in the kitchen for preparing, cleaning up. There is no room for a dishwasher in this house either, so I’m the dishwasher.

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    • Joni says:
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      I will email you over the weekend…..today was bitterly cold again, and so windy the empty blue box(recycling) blew all the way down the street. I’m waiting for the mild spell next week.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Linda Schaub says:
        Linda Schaub's avatar

        Take your time Joni – no hurry. I know it was a long e-mail I wrote. It is so bitter cold here and I’ve been doing short loads of laundry, running the taps, cupboard doors open and it is still cold in the house. I scurried out to run the car for about 25 minutes and was happy to make it in and out without dealing with ice or snow or getting blown away. They had called for a flash freeze overnight. Yesterday was downright balmy. I did not even try my Plan “B” for making my walking goal like I have done in the past … in the past, once it got down to the wire, it might have been snowy so the parking lot was cleared and salted, but not this Arctic blast, nor was it icy or 40 mph winds. The weather is not normal and I don’t think it ever will be again. It will be mild for Christmas … but then it’s a holiday so the gutter guy won’t come. He is still installing permanent Christmas lights (I follow him on Facebook and have since before I first contacted him in the Spring) and posts that he still has openings, but told me he suspended his gutter cleaning until the weather is better.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      I hope you are okay Anne? Have you been away or travelling? I’ve noticed you haven’t been posting, but it is a busy time of year so many people aren’t. The flu seems to be rampant here right now so I’m grateful my Christmas busyness is done and I can stay inside and not go anywhere.

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  7. Dave says:
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    Dave's avatar

    We have a a recipe box, gifted from my mother-in-law, who was quite the cook. She took the time to handwrite her favorites and fill up the box. It’s a wonderful, nostalgic resource when we’re looking for something original (although we’ve discovered some ingredients are now canned in amounts slightly smaller than the standards of generations past. Talk about wasted food!)

    I’d forgotten about the green cherries. They were somewhere in my childhood; likely a garnish for a holiday dish. I remember them tasting different than maraschino cherries, and now I’m wondering what kind of chemical bath they took to turn green (ick). The Christmas loaf sounds good EXCEPT for the pineapple bits. Most people would pass on the candied fruit, but it’s more the pineapple that makes me pause. I love pineapple, only fresh instead of baked.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      Most of the recipes I have inherited are like the pecan loaf – lacking in details! You can leave the pineapple out…..I only put it in and 1/2 cup as I needed more liquid (my mother used to add a bit of orange juice if the batter was too dry) and because I couldn’t find candied pineapple bits, although there are some in the dried fruit mix, it is mostly red and green cherries and papaya also I think was in some of the mixes. Good point, I wonder how you do dye cherries green? It’s probably a Christmas job for the Grinch! I might make it the rest of the year again and leave out the dried fruit and add raisins and a few dates instead. I liked the pecans better than walnuts.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      It probably has a decades long shelf life so the grocery stores may keep it on the shelf for years to come. I will check in mid-July. Although now that fruit cake is not as popular I have noticed it is relegated to a very tiny portion of a top shelf where no one would ever see it unless they were looking for it. I don’t know about the Bulk Barn, as I try never to go in there, for hygiene purposes…all those open bins and shared scoopers cancel out any any savings which might ensue.

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