My holiday favorite

The first treats of the holiday season have started to appear on market shelves—pomegranates, clementines, candy canes, and my favorite: the fruitcake.

“I can’t believe you like that,” my friend Carol says as we go through the aisles of the “Big M” in Deposit, NY. We are killing time while our daughters take ballet lessons on Friday evenings.

“I love it,” I say. “I am a fruitcake,” I say.

Carol mutters something. “We all are sometimes,” she says. (Carol is always kind.)

But my tastes do run toward the nutty (eclectic is the preferred term) when considering fruitcakes. I’ve tried all kinds from rum soaked, pecan crusted delights from Trappist monasteries to dollar-store loaves dense with citron, dubious ingredients like guar gum, and enough preservatives to rival eternity or at least a canned corned beef. I try them all. Some are better than others.

Last year I eyed an Entenmann’s cake throughout the holidays with the hope that after Christmas its $9 price (well above the means of my weekly grocery list) would be reduced. In April it was still there, and even a hopeful suggestion to the man restocking the bread failed to bring down the price.

For many years my mother baked a fruitcake each November that she sent to relatives and friends. It was a tasty, dark cake that was months in the making since she candied all her own fruit, including peaches, pears and orange peel. As a little kid I remember helping by cutting slivers of orange peel with safety scissors.

In my mother’s last years we made the cake at my house. It was always a big production, but by that time it had become a bit of a drudgery—something that couldn’t be let go even when she couldn’t peel the fruit or remember to buy walnuts.

One of the last years, an aunt even sent an ominous note. “We got the fruitcake,” it stated. “That is a tradition that must end.”

Still, I have the recipe my mother wrote out in indelible marker on a piece of heavy, old cardboard. It is labeled “triple fruit cake” and is as stained as any often used cookbook. It is also as beautiful and frame-worthy as an antique needlepoint sampler.

One memorable year the post office, in a show of petty power, refused to mail her packaged cakes under the incorrect assumption that they were made with alcohol and couldn’t be legally mailed. My mother went off in a huff to the UPS. “Prohibition is over,” she fumed.

According to culinary history, the ancient Egyptians made fruitcakes to place on the tombs of loved ones. In Roman times, fruitcake became popular as a portable and long-lasting food for soldiers and sailors.

All this lore adds to the running joke of the everlasting fruitcake perhaps started by former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson when he famously said “The worst gift is the fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

Remarkably, by the 18th century, fruitcake was outlawed in Europe where it was considered “sinfully rich.” This fruitcake temperance movement didn’t last long, of course, and the law was revoked—especially since fruitcake had become a fixture of the British afternoon tea hour.

We all laugh, but you know you’d like it if you tried it. Between English Christmas Cake, Panettone of Milan, German Stollen or a rich rum and raisin confection from Bahamas, there is a fruitcake out there for you. The possibilities are endless!