Fruitcake, forever

Fruitcake has long been disparaged, the punchline in many jokes. Laugh if you will. I like fruitcake. And I love the memories that fruitcake evokes. Bear with me.

This is Sunday evening and that is an appropriate time to write this story, because it has its roots on Sunday afternoons in Boone, usually the Sunday after Thanksgiving if memory serves me.

Once a year for every year I can recall in my childhood and youth, my family worked together to make fruitcake. It was usually on a Sunday afternoon after church and a home-cooked meal. We each had our jobs to do. Mother made the cake batter. Daddy shelled the nuts (if that hadn’t already been done) and cut out brown paper bags to line the pans. He did this in the living room while watching football games. My sister Linda and I opened the containers of candied fruit, poured them into our Grandma Dixon’s big wooden bowl, and stirred to dredge them in flour (so the fruit would not sink to the bottom of the cakes as they baked). We probably chopped or cut the dates and nuts. I remember grimacing as the golden raisins were added. ( I didn’t say I like everything about fruitcake! And there is another story, for another day, about me and raisins and cookies….) Little brother Bill… well, he was there, but I cannot for the life of me remember what his jobs in the fruitcake baking, but he-to this day- rejoices when I bring him fruitcake, so he gets a pass. He was/is the baby and the only boy, so are we surprised by this?  (This is our fruitcake family in a picture taken around fruitcake-making time, in 1970 or so.)

When I say we made fruitcake, I don’t mean that we made “a fruitcake.” That would make it ridiculous to think that it took five (or four!) of us to carry out the task. Oh, no! By the end of the day, we had at least a couple of large round tube pan cakes, plus several loaves, and perhaps a few other assorted sizes.

I don’t remember that Mother ever skipped “real”fruitcake. There was a period of time– in the ’70s– when we experimented with Refrigerator Fruitcake, a concoction that used graham cracker or vanilla wafer crumbs in place of the batter and required only refrigeration and not baking. I believe Linda came across this recipe. My main recollection is that miniature marshmallows were involved (and they get soggy when damp!), and it really was not fruitcake as it was meant to be. It wasn’t awful; it just was’t fruitcake.

We also toyed with fruitcake cookies, which were the same basic recipe as the “real’ thing, just dropped onto a sheet pan and baked. Not bad, but not the same.

So, time passes. Mother never made another fruitcake after 1984. I had an infant then and two more after that. Fruitcake didn’t seem that important. Maybe what brought it back to mind was when a friend gave me an ornament  that was meant to be laughed about and then passed on (per the note that was attached). This artificial fruitcake was the spitting image of the fruitcakes of my childhood! I adored it. I assured the friend who gave it to me that I appreciated it more than she could know but that I would not be passing it on, per the legends of fruitcakes!

And then I discovered the Costco fruitcake. (No, they are not paying me for this but perhaps they should!) Again so very much like the fruitcake of my childhood. It is the fruitcake pictured at the beginning of this post. Scant batter, just enough to hold it all together. Studded with candied fruits of all sorts, including I suppose the mysterious citron of my past. Lots of nuts as well. And the top gloriously decorated with candied cherries and nuts. And it is GOOD.

I just checked the label. The first ingredient– FIRST– is cherries. Never mind that they might have been bleached, dyed, sugared, whatever-ed… cherries are the most predominant ingredient. Y’all– it is fruit cake! (For the record, pineapple, pecans, and walnut are the next three ingredients. Fruit, folks; fruit!) And it looks like my mama’s fruitcake!

But times change, and we grow and learn. So last year I did some investigating into other recipes for fruitcake. And I came across one that sounded like a nice alternative to what I have known and loved for decades.

Same basic pound-cake like batter. But this time (and yes, I tweaked it a bit because it you know me at all, you know I rarely really follow a recipe.) I cut, chopped, or diced a lot of different dried (but not candied) fruits. One thing I added was some lovely organic dried figs, in honor of my beloved Ocracoke. I soaked the fruit in brandy (something Mother might have done in the last years of her baking, when she and Daddy would drive to Blowing Rock and buy brandy– cherry, I think– to soak the fruitcakes after the baking was done.) and I chopped pecans and walnuts that I bought already shelled (Daddy was no longer around to do that part!). And then I waited.

 

 

 

The results were almost perfect! And the cake was delicious. Different but in a good way. I think Mother would approve of the new version. While still not exactly a diet food, it is definitely healthier in lots of ways. And while it didn’t have the family participation, it was still made with lots of love. (Nobody else was home when this happened!)

So I tried it again this year… and well, let’s just say the immediate results were not as good. I now understand why lining the pans with brown paper was a good idea. I don’t recall that Mother’s fruitcakes ever stuck to the pans. ( And this is not selective memory. There were other cakes that did not turn out so well. Case in point: the Easter Basket cake Mother and I created that ended up making the trip to my Dixon grandparents’ house in Shelby in a big old dishpan! Still tasted great, but it wasn’t pretty! No pictures were taken!) Lesson learned. Will forever more line the pans, however “nonstick” they might claim to be. This is what happened this year. But let me tell you, lest you wonder: crumbs taste just as good as slices! And then I had a thought… how about a trifle? So I whipped up a brandy-laced creme anglaise (pudding, if you will!) and whipped some cream, and I created a fruitcake trifle that would make the Biltmore House and other la-di-da establishments envious!  (Hint: crystallized ginger makes almost anything taste good!)

So, you may ask, what is the point of this post? Am I trying to sell you on fruitcake? No, not really. Although I do suggest you give it another chance. (And now that I am retired, maybe I should consider making my new-and-improved fruitcake and selling it! Alternate sources of income are always welcome.)

The point of this post is the importance of tradition. And memories. And family. Yes, I remember the taste of that fruitcake. And how pretty they were. But most of all, as long as I have breath, I will remember my Daddy sitting in his chair in the living room cracking nuts and carefully cutting brown grocery bags to line the pans. I will see Mother cracking eggs, creaming butter and sugar, measuring flour. I will remember me and Linda stirring the fruits with the flour. And Bill… remind, me again Bill (he was Billy then) – what you did. And I will remember it all coming together to form those beautiful cakes. To be savored and shared.

Family. Fruitcake. Forever.