Fruitcake Memories

As today is National Fruitcake Day, I can’t help thinking about all of my family memories of the (?) delightful winter treat. Fruitcake has gotten a bad rep. Is it deserved? From my earliest memories I would say “yes.”

I first remember fruitcake from seeing and (unfortunately) tasting it at my grandparents’ house. My grandfather was a fan of fruitcake. Each Christmas he would get a big silver metal tin of the stuff and expose it to anyone who passed his rocker like some sort of demented child abductor. “Here, little girl, try a piece of my fruitcake!” And I say “demented” because it was, without a doubt the most horrible stuff I had ever seen let alone tasted. It sat in this old metal tin, sort of festering like a lump of fetid mud. The odor was beyond belief—-although it wasn’t quite as bad as the limburger cheese my grandpa kept in the refrigerator. That odor wafted throughout my grandparents’ house whenever the refrigerator door was opened. The fruitcake odor was at least confined to the environs of the fruit cake tin. Oh, and there is the total misnomer of the word “fruit.” In my grandfather’s “fruit” cake there was certainly no fruit—not that I could see. It was mostly mud (or what looked like mud). I truly don’t know why my grandfather liked this disgusting “fruitcake” or his crazy, smelly Limburger cheese. I guess I will attribute it to his time spent as a soldier in WWI. He was gassed with mustard gas and maybe anything to him was a treat after that. He was a strange old fellow, and he introduced me to fruitcake.

I would have spent my entire life with a totally negative view of the Christmas treat of fruitcake if it hadn’t been for my father. I remember very vividly one Christmas we received a package from one of my dad’s business acquaintances and it contained a box of fruitcake. “Oh no!” I remember thinking. “This stuff again! How horrible! I’m not going to eat any of it!” Luckily, this fruitcake was of a totally different ilk. Not the “mustard gas” variety that my grandpa had enjoyed, this was the real McCoy fruitcake from Germany. When we opened the tin, a wonderful aroma wafted throughout the room. At the time I didn’t know what it was but I now realize it was bourbon. Lots of bourbon. There were whole fruits, not chunks or smashed bits of leftover fruits. Beautiful lush cherries still on their stems! Large chunks of pineapple that smelled of Hawaii. Giant pecans! Brazil nuts! And lacing it all together, a boozy sauce so scrumptious that the entire room warmed up! I could not believe that this heavenly concoction was the SAME dessert as the one my grandpa had loved so many years ago.

So today when I hear that it is National Fruitcake Day, I want to take a moment to wish that your fruitcake will be the rich, boozy, delicious one I tasted so surreptitiously when my father received it one Christmas as a gift of appreciation—-not the disgusting, cringe-worthy one I saw but refused to taste as a child at my grandparents’ house. After all, there is fruitcake and there is FRUIT cake! May yours be the best!