Vintage Recipe – Holiday Fruit Cake

I have a confession to make. I have never, not once in my life, eaten a single, solitary bite of fruitcake.

I have no explanation for this. Is it because my Maman doesn’t like it and therefore never made or bought it? Is it because of fruitcake’s longstanding reputation as the King of Holiday Food Jokes? Is it simply because I’ve seen it in the shops in all of its dark brown, slightly gelatinous looking glory and felt no desire at all to try it? Likely all of the above. 

Regardless of the reasoning, I have managed to make it to the start of my fifth decade on this Earth without a crumb of the Christmastime legend passing my lips. 

So when I was perusing my 1944 Good Housekeeping cookbook for Christmas recipes, I nearly skipped right past today’s recipe without giving it a second glance. “Fruitcake,” I mused, YUCK”. But then I stopped and actually read the recipe. (Novel idea, I know.)  And much to my shock, thought “That doesn’t sound THAT bad. Actually, it sounds rather nice.” The recipe looked easy enough and relatively inexpensive, to boot. So I decided to give it a go. 

Right off the bat, however, I faced a completely unexpected hurdle – finding the necessary candied fruit. I never considered that as fruitcake has become more and more of a joke, it had fallen hopelessly out of favour with the younger crowd and that finding the ingredients to make this old-fashioned dessert would be difficult. Thankfully, one of the grocery chains in my area was stocked with an assortment of brightly colored (and potentially radioactive) vittles that may or may not have actually been fruit at some point. 

In addition to believing the conjecture that fruitcake is inedible, for some reason I also assumed it was very difficult to make. Ordinarily, when making recipes for this blog I keep track of how long I spend preparing the dish. This time, however, I chose simply to enjoy the process and not keep tabs of the minute hand. My sense is that it took about 45 minutes to gather and prep all of the ingredients. A little time consuming? Yes. But difficult? Absolutely not. 

So I chopped and I diced and I mixed and I poured. And then, of course, I licked the mixing bowl and became thoroughly befuddled by the entirely light and slightly sweet batter. “Hmmm”, I thought to myself, “That doesn’t taste bad at all.” Off it went into the oven for an hour and half, slowly scenting the air and creating a bakery-like atmosphere. The Mister returned home while it was baking and commented on how nice it smelled. He asked what it was. I told him fruitcake. He was suitably crestfallen and seemed a tad fearful for his tastebuds. 

After letting it cool and removing it from the pan (I used a metal pan), I admit I was a bit concerned. The exterior was…hard. As in hard tack hard. So hard, in fact, I was slightly concerned my bread knife would not be up to the task of sawing through it. I considered, briefly, dispatching the Mister to his shed to retrieve a saw. But alas, I put all my muscle behind my Sabatier serrated knife and managed to hack off three pieces. The inside, thankfully, was moist and tender. I will not lie. I assumed those three pieces would be the only three we would eat. I assumed the cake would dry out even more upon sitting and the Mister would refuse to use one of his power tools to cut it, for fear of breaking his beloved tool. 

Nonetheless, I plated three pieces and served the Mister and my Maman. Never one to beat around the bush, the Mister commented “well, it doesn’t look like those nasty fruitcakes you see at the store” to which my Maman heartily agreed. We cheers’d and all dug in with our forks…only to have the cake completely fall to crumbs. Oh dear. So we put down our cutlery and dug in like savages with our bare hands. And were all shocked that it was, in fact, good. Actually, it was better than good. It was downright delicious. The Mister and my Maman both agreed – the cake itself was lightly flavoured and tasty, the fruit was complimentary but not overpowering and – perhaps most importantly – it had absolutely zero resemblance to the rubbish found in the shops. I commented that I’d never had fruitcake before, to which the Mister replied “I had one piece one time and never again” and pulled a face. 

I asked round the table how many stars out of 10? 7, said the mister. 8, said Maman. Then I asked “Would you actually want me to make this again next Christmas?” And, much to my shock, they both agreed. Perhaps the best testimony is what happened next. The Mister got up and sawed off another slice. And with that I knew it was a winner.

The recipe states that the cake keeps well. I was a little nervous given the rather brick-like resemblance, but I enveloped it in plastic and hoped for the best. And keep it did. I heartily enjoyed the cake daily for tea time over the next week and only at day 9 did it even start to seem a little dry and stale. Not too sweet and not heavy, this holiday fruitcake was the perfect tea time treat and a lovely antidote to the modern tastes for overly sugared deserts.

Overall, I was tickled with how this turned out. I highly recommend you put aside your negative notions and give it a go – you will not be disappointed.

Bon appetit!