Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
‘Tis the Season: Free the Cake!
It’s the time of year again when many Americans find themselves isolated, out of step, and even mocked and persecuted. I am one of them. This year I am stepping out of the shadows to plead for tolerance for this beleaguered minority. So here goes: My name is Suspira* and I like fruitcake.
I know. Listen to voices in the media—comedians, chatty newscasters, and even advertisers—and you’ll come away with the idea that no one likes fruitcake. In fact, no one even tries to eat them, instead making them ammunition in fruitcake tosses and other seasonal activities for fruitcake-haters. Then there’s the joke that there really is only one fruitcake that has been passed around for centuries.
Fruitcakes (that’s plural!) have been around for a millennium, at least. The ancestor of today’s fruitcake was concocted by the Romans, and the fruitcake habit was spread along with the Roman legions throughout Europe. Each nation produced its own variety, from German stollen to Italian panforte to England’s dense versions featuring marzipan and royal icing.
How can something so widespread be so generally reviled? There must be many of us, scattered throughout Western civilization, who actually enjoy fruitcake. But there’s no denying that contemporary American culture frowns on the time-honored confection.
Apparently, the innocent generosity of the “cakers” is the source of so much resentment from the “anti-cakers.” I gave a fruitcake as a gift. Once. That was when I found out that not everyone appreciates this delicacy. How was I to know? I grew up in a family of fruitcake eaters. A gooey slice of Claxton fruitcake was a staple snack during the Christmas seasons of my childhood.
I meant well. All fruitcake givers mean well. So please, America, can we let up on fruitcake? Can we start joking about jellied cranberry sauce, instead? Why are lovers of that stuff not the butt of jokes?
But, no. I mustn’t take my cue from the anti-cakers. Surely the holiday table has room for all sorts of dishes that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, such as pate or oyster dressing. Today I assert my right to enjoy this traditional Christmas cake. This year I will eat fruitcake boldly, right out in the open. That is, after I put on a hoodie and sunglasses and slip into an out-of-the-way grocery store to buy some.
*Okay, that’s my nom de Ricochet. In keeping with Fruitcake Eaters Anonymous, right?
Published in Group Writing
My father belonged to an organization that sold Claxton fruitcake for a charitable cause. We always had a good supply around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dad never had trouble selling them. I like them, but seldom come across them now. That is one of the little things I miss about those days.
You will have to fight EODDad for the last pieces. Plural. He loves it! I like ONE piece – if it’s from the Collins St Bakery in Corsicana TX. He however wants The whole cake. He has little competition in our family. I made the mistake of making some one year – while his mother was still alive and very much baking thank you very much. There must be only one proper recipe and it seems it must be made by your mother. (I think she loaded up on too much brandy.) Or ordered from Collins St Bakery. Another useless fact: I got my one and only speeding ticket – ever – in Corsicana driving between Nacogdoches and Houston late one Sunday afternoon after visiting Uncle Bob at SFA.
Growing up, I always loved fruit cake. Haven’t seen one in decades.
My wife always gets one for herself and one for her sister. They grew up with a specific brand that is available around here.
Since most have wheat flour, I’m out of the game.
“My name is Suspira and I like fruitcake” sounds like a rehab session – haha! My aunt loved fruitcake and we always had it growing up too. I hated it – especially if it was booze-laced. The candied fruit was a gag moment. Now I love it – it reminds me of the wonderful Christmases I had growing up in Pgh. The problem is I have to be gluten-free – I can’t win….
Yeah. There are ways to have gluten-free fruitcakes. Some are even off the shelf, rather than out of your own kitchen.
Italians have long made luscious cornmeal based fruit/nut cake. I’m not sweet oriented, but those recipes are not as sweet and have wonderful texture. And no brandy. Good delis carry at Christmas.
I highly recommend this as your alternative:
https://www.holycross.org/collections/food-gifts/products/panforte-fig-walnut
They’ve already sold out of fig and walnut batch for the season, but they do still have a date and pistachio one, and an almond and apricot one – all gluten free.
Every year I say I’m going to make my own fruitcake, and every year I forget until it’s practically too late.
I really disliked it as a kid, but as I tried other types I came to realize that this was mostly due to the bitterness coming from most types using too much citron.
I love fruitcake! Especially the radical variety that’s expressly forbidden by the killjoys who wrote Ricochet’s Code of Conduct.
My favorites are the dense British versions of my childhood with, yes, royal icing and marzipan. I haven’t rolled the boat out on one of those for many years, because I made the mistake of marrying into a family of fruitcake haters, and I have no-one to share with except one neighbor.
I’m also very fond of fruitcake’s boiled cousin, the Christmas pudding. Dad used to make this one (from my old copy of Farmhouse Fare (I don’t know if this recipe is in the current edition; mine is from the 1930’s or so:
Auntie Pat (97 last July, may she live forever) tells a touching story of WWII, and of the family, desperate for something really nice to eat in a time of strict rationing, where fat and sugar were almost unobtainable. While giving one of the bedrooms a good spring cleaning, a member of the family discovered, on top of the wardrobe, a Christmas pudding from a couple of years past (they dry out after the original boiling, and will keep for years. You reconstitute them by boiling again. It sounds foul, but it’s worth it!).
Anyhow, the family was so overjoyed to find this treasure, in what must have been, I suppose, about 1941 or 1942 that many of them wept, and they enjoyed their find at the next Sunday lunch.
Janet used to make marvelous fruitcakes each Christmas – or rather in October, to allow enough time for the brandy poured over the cakes to mature. My middle son Bill continued the tradition last year, and I suspect (but do not know) he has made some this year.
Perhaps we should start a new Ricochet tradition—sending round a fruitcake with each recipient taking a slice before forwarding it to the next caker. That way we few, we happy few, can have a bit of the spirited cake without imposing it on family and friends who are not as enlightened as we.
This reminds me of the Torrone cakes that were ubiquitous at Italian weddings when I was a kid; it was often the only dessert (aside from those rock hard candied almonds). I think I saw them for sale in a Jason’s deli.
Mrs Tex and her mom love fruitcakes so the extended family lets them have it all.
Jordan almonds.
I like Jordan almonds, too. I have good teeth.
I LOVE steamed pudding and will make one again this year. But no suet. Lots of oranges. And brandy cream. I’ve converted many – it’s so pretty on the plate.
I used to think there was only 1 fruitcake in the world and everyone kept passing it around
Mrs R has made me a couple of fruitcakes every Christmas. I would gladly eat more than two of them, but they probably aren’t so good for me. Last year I ate just one and she froze the other one to save for this year. I’m glad you reminded me.
Tried fruitcake when I was very young (might have ben a Claxton). Didn’t like it, and have never tried it since. I should probably give it another chance.
What I love and no one in my family will touch is mince pie. So I’ve gone without.
Yes, yes, indeed!
My names is Jules PA, and I love Fruitcake, along with a majority of my family. We make our grandmother’s recipe, bathe it for weeks, months, even years with brandy.
It is a dark, dense cake of mostly raisins and currents, nuts, citron. We’ve modernized the recipe to include dried apricots, cranberries and cherries. I think it may be 6 lbs of dried fruit and nuts for 6 loaf cakes. We each get 1/2 a cake for our family.
At Thanksgiving, we broke out one vintage cake over 2 years old, and the 2020 vintage made last January.
Served with hard sauce (butter, confectioners sugar and brandy.)
It is nostalgic, because we grew up with it.
I will serve my sentence in fruitcake jail.
@suspira, this conversation has at last opened my eyes to how many – unusual – people there are on Ricochet.
I will try very hard to never again say “I don’t believe it.”
There are similarities of flavor, depending on preparation. So if you like mince, you might like a good fruitcake too.
I could do without the brandy in most fruitcake (rum or bourbon are preferable), and definitely without the hard sauce. My mother in law makes a steamed pudding every Christmas, and hard sauce, and while I’ll eat the pudding I pass on the sauce. And there are some brandies out there to which I have very rapid and very awful reactions (one once gave me an instantaneous migraine – one of the worst in my life).
Don’t you mean “Release the Cake-en!”
Yeah, reading recipes for fruitcake showed me that there might be some flavor crossover. I guess the next step will be to find a good one in the store.
Yes! I DID mean that. (Or I would have if I’d thought of it!)
Thanks, both. I was taught that if you can’t say anything nice about fruitcake, say nothing at all.
You made me realize that there are two things I like about fruitcake.
Wheat flour, and gluten.
I’m sorry but if the cake gets to me, I’m not going to send it on!