Its National Fruitcake Day!

This is easy and tasty! Give it a try!

* 14 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
* 8 ounces chopped sugar rolled dates
* 16 ounces pecan pieces
* 8 ounces candied cherries
* 8 ounces diced candied pineapple
* 2 (14 ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk

Change Measurements: US | Metric

Directions:

Prep Time: 20 mins

Total Time: 1 1/2 hrs

1. Place coconut, dates, and pecan pieces in a very large (7 quart or larger) bowl. With your hands break up chunks of dates & coconut, and stir those 3 ingredients together.
2. Add the cherries, pineapple, and sweetened condensed milk. Stir thoroughly. (I wear non-powdered surgical gloves, and stir it with my hands because the mixture is very stiff.).
3. Let set at room temperature while you prepare the pans. Spray 2 - 9"x5" loaf pans with Pam. Line the pans with waxed (or parchment) paper. (We cut parchment paper in 4 1/4"x 16 1/4" strips for this. You want the paper to come up past the short sides of the pans after the mixture is packed into the pans.) Now spray the paper (after you've pressed it into the pans) with Pam.
4. Stir the ingredients well again.Divide the ingredients equally between the 2 loaf pans.
5. Pack VERY TIGHTLY and smoothly into the pans. (I wet my hands & press, pack down, & smooth top, using both hands. Wetting your hands keeps them from sticking to "batter".).
6. Place the pans on the middle rack of the oven and bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour, or until lightly browned. (If the cakes have baked for an hour, or look a little brown around the edges, take them out of the oven & lift edges of paper a little to see if sides look brown enough. If they're brown on sides, but not on top, you may broil the tops for a few minutes-watch carefully.).
7. Remove cakes from oven and let cool for 10 minutes in the pans.
8. Gently lift the edges of the paper a couple of times on each side - kind of a rocking motion. (Sometimes I have to run a sharp knife down the edges of the pan.) Turn pans upside down onto a paper-lined cookie sheet. Lift pans from the cakes. Remove paper from bottom of cakes IMMEDIATELY.
9. Let cool completely. Place in a large container (don't wrap yet) and refrigerate overnight.
10. Turn cake upside down to slice. After slicing, wrap in waxed (or parchment) paper, then in heavy duty aluminum foil.
11. May be refrigerated up to 3 months or frozen up to 1 year.

Cooking apps!

1
How to cook everything mobile

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is a mammoth cookbook filled with easy-to-follow recipes and interesting information about food and cooking techniques. The cookbook is now available in app form, and it’s just as handy—only much, much lighter. The app lets you browse 2,000 recipes and also features Bittman’s own picks. Users can vote on their favorite recipes, and the most popular ones appear in the app in a featured recipes section. If you want to search through the recipes, you can do so by cooking term, ingredient, technique, flavor and recipe type. All recipes are marked by their type: fast, make-ahead, vegetarian and essential. (I’m a fast- and make-ahead-recipe person myself.) When you are reading the recipes, you’ll be given an overview, a list of ingredients and the steps to follow. Many recipes also feature variations so you can spice things up if you like. Recipes can be saved to a favorites list or added directly to a shopping list. This list can be sorted alphabetically or by aisle, which is a great extra feature in a cooking app. How to Cook Everything is a great all-around cooking resource and a must-have for my iPhone.

2
Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner
With the Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner you can search through thousands of recipes from the allrecipes.com website. The app lets you perform a traditional search and you can filter your results to show specific types of recipes (vegan, no wheat, low fat, etc.)…



3
Betty Crocker Mobile Cookboook
I received my Betty Crocker cookbook when I got married almost 15 years ago and I still turn to it frequently for tried and true recipes. The Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook is free and gives you more than 9000 recipes, all loaded onto your iPhone which means you won't need to search an external website…



4
Kitchen Calculator Pro
Kitchen Calculator Pro converts different units of measurement. It's billed for use in the kitchen but could also be used in many other ways. It allows you to choose both the unit you're beginning with and the one you want to convert to…



5
Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List
Epicurious comes from the website Epicurious.com and features some of their most popular recipes. The recipes are pooled from magazines, cookbooks, chefs and restaurants. You can browse through the recipe collections to get ideas or you can perform a search. The collections are fantastic…


6
Serving Sizer Pro
Serving Sizer Pro Recipe Converter lets you store recipes and then convert their serving sizes so you can easily feed a larger or smaller group. It's a great app if you're cooking for one or thirty. The app has you enter in the entire recipe and then convert everything all at once…



7
Cooking Thermometer
Cooking Thermometer is an extremely simple app that provides a reference for cooking temperatures. You simply pick your type of food and how well you want that food cooked. Cooking Thermometer will then tell you the internal temperature that will show your food is done…



8
Urbanspoon
Urbanspoon is a faithful app that will help you discover new restaurants in your area. It takes your iPhone's location and creates a wheel that displays nearby cities, types of cuisine and dollar signs representing the restaurants' price ranges. You can spin the different parts of the wheel and line them up…


9
Crock-Pot Slow Cooker Recipe Finder
I happen to believe that slow cookers are one of the best inventions ever created. Ever. My Crock Pot saves my day at least once a week or more. On the evenings when we have sports practices or activities I like to have a meal that cooks on it's own and stays warm while we all come and go…


10
Woman's Day Cooking Assistant
The Woman's Day Cooking Assistant app brings you recipes from the editors of the Woman's Day Magazine. It's one of the magazine's that I enjoy looking at while I'm standing in the supermarket line. The app has a list of featured articles about food with accompanying recipes…

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM OREGON

The state of Oregon will play mortgage superhero to 5,000 state residents in 2011, paying one year of each person's mortgage. Via the Oregon Homeownership Stabilization Initiative's Mortgage Payment Assistance Program, struggling homeowners who earn approximately $74,000 a year for a family of four and are unemployed or have lost 25 percent of their income can enter a lottery. The state expects 20,000 to 30,000 homeowners to apply online.


The state will pay 12 months of the winners' mortgages, up to $20,000.

http://www.oregonhomeownerhelp.org/

**FYI: Winners must pay back the money, though the state will forgive 20 percent of the loan for each year the winners remain in their houses.

WIN TOBY MAC TICKETS!!!

This Thursday Dec. 2nd and Friday Dec. 3rd you can win Toby Mac tickets in the first two rows!! Email your name and phone number to tim@1041thefish.com and be ready for my call at around 7:10 am on Thursday and Friday. If you answer "104 point one wants me to go to Toby Mac!" YOU WIN!! 2nd row on Thursday and FRONT ROW on Friday!

Thanks for listening and Merry Christmas from the Family Friendly Morning Show!