In Praise of (good) Fruit Cake

I got a fruitcake

25 years ago

I use it as a door stop

Let’s hear it for home-made fruit cake, especially the dense variety that makes good door stops : )

I like fruitcake, and the local grocery store sells a variety I like- it’s dense, moist, and tasty. I like to take a slice and warm it slightly and put some butter on. Yum. But yes, it would make a high calorie backpacking snack too.

I’m in. Soaked in brandy (or Scotch) and full of all sorts of good things, from fruit to nuts. Just like California.

Compare fruitcake to most energy bars and fruitcake comes out on top. Add Brandy, and it’s way on top.

Growing up we always had fruitcake for the Holidays. My grandmother and mother both made them  wrapped  in a  towel soaked with brandy. They were heavy, dense and moist. Damn, I miss them.

Mmmm, you are making me miss my grandmother’s fruitcake! I wonder if the recipe is somewhere in my mom’s treasure trove of old recipes…we’re talking good old 1960s vintage stuff. I don’t think I liked it as a kid, but now the memory of the flavor is very appealing. Lots of fruit, nuts, and liquor, held together by sugar and butter, I think.

One of my son’s-in-law, with a Master’s in Military History, convinced a gullible friend that fruit cake was invented by the British during their bombing blitzes towards the end of the Second World War. It was supposedly used when carpet-bombing German towns and cities. It was deliberately dense enough to cause property damage but then could then be eaten by the starving citizens …

Anyone hiked in Europe and found any vintage fruit cake? …

Do you know that if you say “gullible” out-loud and really slowly, it sounds like “greens peas”?

I had a Quaker Oats fruit&nut bar in my pocket when I fell in a river.  I reinvented my great aunt’s fruitcake.

Instead of eating fruit cake read this book,

Ask the Fruitcake Lady: Everything You Would Already Know If You Had Any Sense

you will be much happier.

It was just taken for granted that my Grandmother had invented fruitcake. When we were cleaning out her house after she had passed, I found her recipe… the label from a Nonesuch brand jar of mincemeat. I have been making these every fall since the mid 1970’s but this year was a real chore as I was forced to make the candied fruit bits and cherries – couldn’t find them in the stores!
Real dense, door-stop heavy, brandy-soaked and made with just enough flour to glue the fruit together. Yum.
Trail food? What a great idea!

I’m in, heavy on the brandy. If it starts to dry out, add more brandy.

I guess I can’t see what the fuss is about.
I mean – who is not in favour of lots of good fruit cake????
Cheers

Respectfully submitted:  Collin Street Bakery

Best (store bought) Fruitcake Ever!  Just add Brandy :)

I like the recipe from the 75th anniversary edition of the Joy of Cooking, the “dark fruitcake” one. I start it in October, and after the cake cools from baking, pour a few jiggers of cognac – or yummier, Cointreau! – over the cake. I wrap it in a flour sack towel dusted with powdered sugar and into the cool dark place it goes. Every two weeks, I unwrap it and pour a couple of jiggers of booze on it. By Christmas it’s amazing! By our January cabin ski trip, it’s even better, and it has lasted into early March, still perfect, assuming there’s still some left. A small slice is plenty! I use chopped dried fruit instead of that preserved artificially colored stuff. The towel smells so good I wish I could eat that too. I’ve gained 10 pounds just sitting here thinking about it. Gotta ski for at least an hour before eating that stuff!

I make a mean white fruit cake. I don’t use all the died “fruit”, but use diced up dried fruits. Can’t make it anymore due to my son’s nut allergies. I miss it :( I even veganized it – and adapted it to cupcake size!

Granma Magnanti made an edible fruitcake. Doing some culinary research, it was really  “Christmas Eve Bread” when translated from Italian. A traditional dessert served throughout Italy.    The variation she made was found in tsouthern Italy and Sicily. The spices and dried fruit types used showed the Arabic influence of some very distant ancestors to the family’s culinary history. It was dark, rich, and slightly spicy.

Sitting around the kitchen table of our grandparents in 1980s Rhode Island, I did not know the history. Or that “fruit cake” is supposed to be awful.

I just knew it was one the many delicious things that Grandma made from scratch. And what we Anglicized to “fruit cake” was something I looked forward to every Christmas Eve.

We did not serve it with eggnog and brandy. But the preceding course of seven fishes, macaroni,  side dishes,  fruits, nuts, dried figs, pizelle, dates, grapes, cheese, and (my favorite) torrone seemed to go well with it. :)

I have her recipe in my collection. Someday I’ll make it. Probably won’t taste as good.

Just add Brandy :)

Gethsemani Farms fruitcakes come pre-loaded with Kentucky Bourbon.