It’s Fruitcake Season Again!

by Julie Crawshaw

When most people think of Christmas cakes, fruitcake leaps to mind. Perhaps one of the most notable things about fruitcake is that you either love it or hate it.

Stand up comics make jokes about it. Most people groan inwardly while trying to smile when they receive it as a gift. Yet people who love fruitcake blame these responses on the baker used, not on the cake itself. Properly made, they say, fruitcake is one of the most delectable desserts in the world!

According to fruitcake aficionados, if you find yourself in the latter group, chances are you’ve never tasted a classic, correctly made fruitcake.

The fact is that fruitcake is only as good as the ingredients it contains. Unfortunately, most commercially available fruitcakes today are made with over-dried, over-sweetened and artificially colored fruit—and without the high quality brandy or whiskey and time to season that create that scrumptious, melt-in-your-mouth flavor that good fruitcake provides.

Experts say that the steps to baking delectable fruitcake begin with choosing unsweetened dried fruit, which you then steep it in high-quality brandy, bourbon or other whiskey for several days until each piece has become plump, moist and smells delicious.

Naturally, the other ingredients must be of equally high caliber—real butter, fresh eggs, etc. After the cake is baked, it should be sprinkled liberally with the same spirits before being stored in a closed container for at least a couple of weeks to give the flavors time to blend.

Very few commercially available fruitcakes are baked this way—but there’s no reason you can make a spirit-laced fruitcake yourself. Don’t worry about your guests becoming intoxicated when you make fruitcake this way. The alcohol in the fruit dissipates with cooking and the alcohol added after baking evaporates during the seasoning time, leaving only its flavor behind.

This is why using expensive liquor in making fruitcake is so important. Because there’s no alcohol left to dull your taste buds at cake-eating time, if you use cheap spirits your cake will taste like cheap booze!

Fruitcakes date back to Roman times, when creative cooks blended raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and honey into a cake with a complex blend of sweet and tart flavors. And though fruitcakes are now definitely seasonal items, there are as many different kinds as there are countries where people enjoy baking and eating them. There simply isn’t space here to provide recipes for each of the fruitcake types described below—but typing their names into your favorite search engine will net you literally hundreds of recipes from which you can choose.

In Germany, holiday fruitcake is called stollen. It’s a mixture of minced dried fruits, chopped nuts, yeast, milk, fat and flour that is really more like a sweetened bread than what most Americans consider cake.

In Scotland, holiday fruitcakes are known as Whisky Dundee cakes. This variety is particularly light an crumbly and currants, raisins and cherries are the only fruits used.

Bakers in the Philippines make a bright yellow pound cake in the British tradtion that includes macerated nuts and fruits.

Even the Japanese have a variety of Christmas cake made with fruit—a sponge cake with whipped cream frosting decorated with strawberries and topped with chocolate!