Easter Holiday Recipes

Easter is fast approaching, and our maraschino cherries and glace fruit mixes can help make your holiday feast memorable this year.

Our maraschino cherries are available for purchase from our website, and our glace fruit mixes can be purchased and shipped by calling our office at 1-800-431-0718.

Let us know if you try these recipes and how they turn out!

Hot Cross Buns with Glace Fruit

4-1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
2 packages (1/4 ounce each) fast-rising yeast
1/3 cup granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt
1 – ¼ cups milk
6 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into pieces
2 eggs
½ cup dark raisins
¾ cup (6 oz.) Leelanau Fruit Glace Fruit Mix
1 egg white
1 tablespoon water
1 cup confectioners sugar
3 to 4 teaspoons milk

Combine 2 cups of the flour, yeast, granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in large bowl. Heat milk and butter in small saucepan until butter is melted and milk registers 125 to 130 degrees; add to flour mixture mixing until smooth. Beat in eggs. Mix in enough remaining flour to make smooth dough; mix in raisins, pineapple and fruit & peel mix. Knead dough on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place dough in bowl; let rise, covered, in warm place until double in size, 30 to 45 minutes. Punch dough down.

Shape dough into 3 dozen balls; place 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheets. Let rise, loosely covered, until double in size, about 30 minutes. Beat egg white and water until foamy; brush over tops of rolls. Bake in preheated 375-degree oven until golden, about 20 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Mix confectioners sugar with enough milk to make thick glaze consistency. Drizzle a cross of frosting over the top of each roll.

Makes 3 dozen

 

Holiday Manhattan Bundt Cake with Spiked Bourbon Glaze

Manhattan Bundt cake

Cake

20 oz. Leelanau Fruit Maraschino Cherries

4 large eggs

1 tbs grated fresh orange zest

¾ c bourbon

2 tbsp sweet red vermouth

2 ½ c all-purpose flour

2c granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 ½ tsps. Salt

16 tbsp (2 sticks) salted butter, cut into chunks, softened

 Glaze

1 c powdered sugar

2 to 2 ½ tbsp. bourbon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F.
  2. Drain cherries and reserve 6 cherries for garnish; roughly chop remaining cherries.
  3. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, orange zest, ¾ c bourbon and vermouth until combined. Set aside.
  4. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed, adding butter, 1 chunk at a time.  When all butter has been incorporated, beat at medium-low speed until mixture is crumbly, about 30 seconds.
  5. With mixer on low, add egg mixture in a steady stream. Scrape down the sides of the bow, increase speed to medium-high, and beat until batter is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Stir in chopped cherries.
  6. Lightly grease of spray a nonstick Bundt pan and pour batter evenly into pan. Rap on counter to release any air bubbles.  Bake in preheated oven on a lower rack until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes.  Rotate the pan halfway through baking.  Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes.
  7. While cake is cooling, make the glaze. In a small bowl, mix together the powdered sugar and 2 tbsp bourbon until smooth.  (Start with 2 tbsp bourbon and add a little more if needed)
  8. Turn the cake out onto a cookie sheet or serving platter and drizzle with glaze while cake is still slightly warm. Garnish with reserved maraschino cherries.

Enjoy!

CHOCOLATE CHERRY CAKE

cakeThe combination of chocolate and cherries is always a delicious favorite. This is an easy recipe to whip up and topped off with an amazing chocolate frosting, it’s sure to be a Go-To recipe!

Ingredients:
1 package Devil’s Food cake mix
2 ¾ cup homemade cherry pie filling (or 1 21oz can cherry pie filling)
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon almond extract
Frosting:
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup milk
6 tablespoons butter (use real butter for best results)
1 heaping cup Dark Chocolate chips
¼ teaspoon almond extract
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 13×9” baking dish (you can make this recipe into bars by using a 15x10x1” baking pan).
In a large bowl, combine cake mix, pie filling, beaten eggs and extract. Stir until well blended. Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 for 30 – 35 minutes, (bake 25 – 30 minutes for bars) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool on wire rack while making frosting.
Frosting; in a small saucepan, combine sugar, milk and butter. Bring mixture to a boil and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips and extract until smooth. Pour and spread over warm cake. Enjoy!

Christmas in September

Chocolate doughnut decorated with Leelanau Fruit Company Maraschino Cocktail Cherries.

Chocolate doughnut decorated with Leelanau Fruit Company Maraschino Cocktail Cherries.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!

Why are we singing holiday songs in September? It’s just past Labor Day! We have over 85 days until Christmas. What’s going on here?

No, we are not trying to get a jump on the major retailers who start advertising Christmas shopping at the beginning of college football season. We are ramping up our production of Glacé fruit mixes for holiday fruitcakes! For us, it’s glacé season!

What is glacé fruit, you might ask? Well, you can click above on the wholesale tab to navigate to our glacé fruit page. For those of you who’d prefer a Cliffs Notes intro to glacé fruit, here you go:

Glacé is the French word for glazed, and refers to fruits that are preserved in a sugar syrup. Glacé fruit can be used in cakes, breads and other sweets, or used to decorate cakes. Traditionally these fruits are used during the Christmas holiday season in fruitcakes.

Glacé fruit, also known as candied fruit, has existed since the 14th century. Whole fruit, pieces, and peels of fruits are placed in heated sugar syrup. The fruit absorbs the moisture from within and the sugar syrup eventually preserves the fruit. Depending on the size and type of fruit this process can take anywhere from several days up to a month.

LFC  glacé mixes include our cherries, along with pineapple, orange and lemon peel, and turnips. These mixes will be delivered to select bakeries throughout the United States and Canada in the next couple months, who will use them as ingredients in traditional holiday fruitcakes!

Since we began producing fruitcake mixes in 2012, we have become fans of the delectable holiday treat. And no, not just because we make the mix.  Bakeries are doing incredible things with fruitcake, and let us tell you, they are delicious.

lfc booth pic

Last week, Renee and Ben traveled to Toronto, Canada, to participate in a bakery supply showcase dubbed “Christmas in September.”  This show was a great opportunity for us to interact directly with the bakers who use our glacé mixes in their bakeries.  It was a rewarding experience to hear people come up to our booth and tell us how much they love our products.

table pic

As we get closer to the holiday season, we will post a recipe for you to use our mixes and make a holiday fruitcake for yourself. Don’t want to bake? I don’t blame you! If you have a Costco store nearby, try one of their bakery fruitcakes. Chances are the fruit mix came from our Buckley plant- and it all began with a cherry!

Merry Christmas- in September!

MARBLED CHERRY PIE CAKE

Marbled Cherry Pie Cake

Ingredients:

1 Box French Vanilla cake mix

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

½ cup water

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 pint cherry pie filling

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl combine cake mix, oil, eggs, extract and water.  Once combined, beat for 2 minutes.  Pour into a greased 13”x 9” cake pan.  Drop the filling by spoonful over the batter.  Using a table knife or spoon, swirl the filling into the batter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 – 35 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Cake can be served by itself or wonderful with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream.

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Scoop pie filling onto cake batter.

Swirl the filling into the cake batter

Swirl the filling into the cake batter