Recipe - Buttermilk Pecan Fruitcake

4 One half cup Flour
2 teaspoon Baking powder
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Salt
3 cup Pears, dried, chopped
2 cup Pecans, chopped
1 cup Butter
3 cup Sugar
4 Eggs
2 teaspoon Vanilla
2 cup Buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400; grease and flour 4 loaf pans. Separate eggs. Mix
flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add pears and pecans; stir
again. Set aside. In large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks,
one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and beat
again. Alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk, blending well after
each addition.

With clean dry beaters, beat egg whites until they stand in firm, glossy,
moist peaks. Fold 1/3 egg whites into batter to lighten it, then fold in
remaining whites. Fill each pan 2/3 of batter.

Reduce oven heat to 350. Bake 65 minutes, until tester inserted in center
of each cake comes out clean. Ten minutes before cakes are done, rotate
pans back to front to cakes on each rack brown evenly. Let cakes cool five
minutes on wire racks, then turn out and finish cooling right side up on
wire racks.

Before serving, decorate top of fruitcakes with whole nuts and mixed
candied fruit peel.

Source: _The Christmas Kitchen_ by Lorraine Bodger, sent by Nina Wichman
(WYF.4.LYF) to Sylvia Steiger (THE.STEIGERS on GEnie, 71511,2253 on CI$)
for the October 1992 cookbook swap