By 
As a child, as visions of sweet plums danced in the heads of children around the world on Christmas Eve, I dreamed of candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, candied citron, candied cherries, raisins, ginger, walnuts. chopped, chopped pecans, grated. lemon zest, brandy, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mixed into a dough made from baking powder, flour, sugar and eggs. I remember watching mom mix these ingredients together to make the perfect fruitcake!
Ever since I was a mom and found out that Christmas is really about eating, I’ve been addicted to fruitcake. To me, nothing embodied the meaning of Christmas better than the fruitcakes my mom made from scratch. This was, of course, before I knew that Christmas was really a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago. Until then, the success of my Christmas depended on whether my mother had felt like baking the cake a month before.
I often wondered why I made a cake in November and cut it a month later in December. Growing up, I eventually learned that she would dip a cloth in my wayward uncle’s whiskey that she stole while he slept, soak a cloth in whatever brandy or liquor he was consuming at the time, and insert it into the center of the cake. of fruit that was baked in a pan. The whiskey would soak into the cake, giving it a flavor that couldn’t be done any other way.
The addiction to fruitcake has not been limited to me. History tells us that in the early 1800s, fruitcake, then called plum cake, was banned throughout continental Europe. It seems the powers that be back then thought the cake was so good it had to be sinful. Since flagrant sin was prohibited, the royals stood their ground and banned fruitcake! I suspect they were right in that decision. A good fruit cake is so delicious that it’s almost a sin to enjoy it as much as I do. Fortunately it is not prohibited in Alabama.
As for the decadence of fruitcake, a rumor that has gone on for a couple of centuries reveals that Queen Victoria was given a fruitcake for her birthday one year but waited another year to eat it. She wanted to show that the elite could show restraint and good taste while enjoying such a tasty delicacy in moderation. Unfortunately, this moderation has followed it into this century, as many people decry the virtues of the noble fruitcake!
Not everyone has fallen in love with fruitcake like I have. Over the years, people have made jokes about them that haven’t really been in good taste, but good taste isn’t something that’s in abundance in our society. Bad fruitcake jokes have been around for years. Everyone has heard the phrases of this wonderful cake:
Fruit pies are good stops at the doors.
‘Fruitcakes make good weights on a grandfather clock.’
Fruit cakes make good Christmas wreaths.
Fruitcakes make a good curling stone.
‘There’s really only one fruitcake; it’s only been passed down for hundreds of years’
There is no explanation for the bad taste. These and other jokes have made fun of the amazing fruitcake.
While commercial bakeries make excellent fruitcakes, I still wish I could try one like my mom used to make when I was a kid. I’m making this my one big mission in life… to find the perfect fruitcake!