Fruit Cake,

it’s not such a bad thing.

This holiday treat often gets a bad rap, but Sally Cappon tells a tale of a fruitcake beloved by generations



By SALLY CAPPON

confess. I like fruitcake.

Actually, I love fruitcake.

Christmas fruitcake was a late bloomer for me. Growing up in the Upper Midwest, I never tasted fruitcake. Stollen, yes. My mother, being English, made plum pudding, steaming it in coffee cans covered with waxed paper in a giant pot. I never really cared for the sticky stuff except for the dollop of buttery hard sauce in which she put a tad of brandy, which she stuck on top. But she said eating plum pudding would bring good luck in the New Year, so why risk it?

Fruitcake and I didn’t get on speaking terms until I moved to Florida.

Well, technically that’s not quite true. There was a family tale about one Christmas when my grandmother in Duluth, who believed she was the world’s greatest baker and told people so, embarked on the great fruitcake experiment. She bought a commercial oven she put in a spare bedroom and turned out tons of fruitcake and found a store to sell it. Unfortunately, the store sent it back when customers returned it as inedible. Since I lived hundreds of miles away, I never tasted it. Later I saw one of her fruitcakes — a dark, ugly hunk filled with raisins.

Talk about a turnoff.

Moving to Florida, I found that people actually liked fruitcake.

Around Cape Canaveral, fruitcake was the Christmas bread of choice. Rectangles of the cakes were stacked on bank counters as fundraisers for charities. It was sold in supermarkets. There were forms to order the delicacy from some fruitcake mecca in Texas.

I even found some people actually MADE fruitcake.

I got lucky. The best fruitcake I ever tasted was made by my Satellite Beach neighbor, Helen King.

Helen’s son Grady and my son Jim were best friends. Helen came from Alabama and was justly known for her Southern cooking. Jim came home exclaiming about all the great food he got at Mrs. King’s. Grady Senior had a bass boat and he’d go to Lake Hell ‘n Blazes out toward the Glades and bring home a catch that Helen would cook up. She could do a mean ham, baked homemade pound cake and made macaroni and cheese from scratch.

Each year, while I was still thinking Halloween costumes, she made up a big batch of fruitcake. One year she invited me to watch. She got out a big roasting pan like you use for 22-pound turkeys, and started cutting up tons of candied pineapple, cherries and pecans she piled in the pan.

Use plenty of fruit and nuts, she admonished me. Too many people use too little.

Dusting the fruit with a couple cups of flour, she let it sit while she beat up the batter, starting with a pound of butter and 10 eggs. This was a major production — 10 pounds of cake she baked in four coffee cans and two loaf pans.

It’s best to make and bake the cake ahead and store it to get the full flavor, she said. You can wrap it in cheesecloth soaked in brandy, wine or fruit juice. (Since Helen didn’t drink, she never used brandy.)

She gave me the best present of all — her Alabama recipe.

It has become an annual standard in our house, though I cut Helen’s recipe in half to make the batter do-able in a large mixing bowl.

My kids love it.

Moving to Santa Barbara, I made a sad discovery. People here hate fruitcake. While I make a lot of mini-loaves, I’m very careful whom I give it to.

Last night I asked a son in Los Angeles what I could bring down to his house for Christmas.

Fruitcake, he said.

“We love your fruitcake.’’

Make that Grady’s mom’s fruitcake.

Straight from Alabama.

Please e-mail your favorite recipes or column suggestions to Sally at scappon@scbeacon.com