Fruitcakes used to be as common as Christmas trees in December. But
they seem to have gone out of culinary style. I still get one every
year from a friend of
mine in Pennsylvania, but he is a die-hard traditionalist who refuses
to quit making
them. He's down to making only two a year now...one for himself and one for me.
I look forward to its arrival...it weighs a ton because he loads it
with rum. If you slice one piece you can usually squeeze out a jigger
of rum. Now that's what I call
fruitcake.
My friend wraps the cake in cheesecloth and selects a nice tin to mail
it in. The cheesecloth takes on a rusty look and I keep thinking it is
The Shroud of Turin...
I keep expecting an image of Jesus to appear. Or at least the Virgin Mary who
was supposedly a great fan of fruitcakes.
Scientist thought they found a large fruitcake in King Tut's Tomb, but
it turnned out
to be a jelly doughnut.
My father's church sold fruitcakes every year for years and years.
Claxton Fruitcakes. He was suppose to sell the cakes to raise money
but instead he
would buy 5 boxes of them and then he gave them away to people intead of
selling them. If you were his son, like I was, you would get at least
l0 of these
babies. They were shaped like big sticks of butter. I tried my best
to offer pieces or even whole cakes to people, but no one bit. I
could eat one a month so I took
to freezing them and breaking them out as the year progressed. They
could have used a little rum but since it was a Methodist church that
was selling them, rum was a no-no. One summer I used one as fishing
bait. The fish didn't bite.
At Christmas I used to buy two round fruitcakes...one large and one
small. I would
put them on a cake plate, small on top of the other one. Then I would
drizzle white
icing over them and put a large red candle in the center hole. It
made a magnificent centerpiece for the Christmas dessert table,
although no one ever cut
into the cakes. I got the cakes at the dime store...and whatever
happened to the
dime stores?? Well, they have Dollar Stores now so maybe they sell fruitcakes.
I should have signed up for The Great Fruitcake Toss they have every January in
Colorado. Those people know how to get rid of unwanted fruitcakes...throw them
over to Utah.
One of the best teleplays I ever saw was based on Truman Capote's story of
making fruitcakes every year with his crazy cousin. They would make one and
send to the President of the United States. They had to collect nuts and shell
them; get the waxed fruit; go to some old Indian to get some booze to soak the
cake in. Then they would wait to get a thank you letter from the
President. Sweet
story.
I know companies are still making fruitcakes...Assumption Abbey is one
of the most famous. And Collins Street Bakery in Texas makes a nutty
one that's really delicious And Dancing Deer makes a "harvest" cake
that's a more contempory type of fruitcake. But as long as my friend
Charlie from Pennsylvania keeps making them, I am set in the fruitcake
department. And in the rum department as
well.
