Fruitcake: Friend or Foe

No fruitcake for me, thanks.

It’s wet (or it’s dusty dry).

It tastes of raw brandy (or burnt molasses).

It’s full of sticky green things (and gummy red things).

And most of all, at a time when light is right, fruitcake is terminally, lethally heavy.

But it’s one of those ritual foods that you have to have if you’re going to celebrate the holiday properly. Christmas without fruitcake would be like Thanksgiving without turkey, Passover without matzos or Halloween without tricks or treats.

Cakes made with preserved fruit have been a Christmas tradition at least since the Middle Ages, says food historian William Woys Weaver, author of “The Christmas Cook” (HarperCollins). The dark cakes we now make with molasses or burnt sugar probably were once made with meat, as winter blood puddings were; the golden fruitcakes popular in the South come from the English tradition of yeast-risen “great cakes” served at weddings and on feast days.

“The much-maligned fruitcake is one of our oldest Christmas culinary traditions,” says Weaver, who said he makes one that gets bathed in a bottle of Champagne. “It murmurs to itself for half a year until it comes out singing.”

Why is fruitcake much maligned? Why is it the food that everyone loves to hate?

They call it “a dark brick that could be used as a doorstop” (Jessica Harris, author of “Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons,” Ballantine).

They say “it’s formed by hydraulic presses until it has the atomic weight of uranium” (Robert F. Capon, author of “The Supper of the Lamb,” Farrar Strauss).

They say it’s “so full of cheap brandy that it tastes like lighter fluid” (Mimi Sheraton, author of “Visions of Sugarplums,” Perennial Library).

And that “learning to like fruitcake is like learning to like haggis. You have to cultivate a taste for it, and I think you probably have to be over 49 to do that” (Marion Cunningham, author of “The Fannie Farmer Baking Book,” Knopf).

Representatives of the fruitcake industry and its companion, the candied-fruit industry, acknowledge their product has a bad reputation. They say it is because commercial cakes made with cheap fruit have ruined our idea of how good fruitcake can be.

“Fruitcake gets a bad rap because so much of what’s sold is really not good,” says Bob McNutt, vice president of the Collins Street Bakery in Corsicana, Tex., which has been making pecan fruitcakes for 95 years. “It’s like cars. You can buy one off the used-car lot for $100 or pay $300,000 for one.” McNutt, who sells cakes to the Aga Khan and Princess Caroline of Monaco, was recently happy to learn that Queen Elizabeth II always travels with a fruitcake, which she eats with her afternoon tea.

But it has gotten so that people who like fruitcake are embarrassed to admit it.

“I must be the last person in America who loves fruitcake,” says comedian Joan Rivers. “I have all my friends send me theirs when they get them as gifts. I eat them for breakfast.”

“I’m one of the few people who actually likes fruitcake,” says novelist and Gourmet columnist Laurie Colwin, “especially the English ones like plum puddings. But I’ll even eat the commercial cakes with the big globs of candied fruit suspended in a little batter, because I’m not discriminating.”

Every fall, Colwin makes a traditional English cake with glaceed and fresh fruit, nuts and ginger seasoned with marmalade, brandy, vanilla, Sherry and six different spices. It sleeps for a month under a sheet of marzipan and a layer of royal icing because, said Colwin, “You can’t possibly eat it right away: It has to age and mellow out. But when it does, it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever had.”

Calvin Trillin would not agree. The writer for New Yorker magazine has become the world’s best-known fruitcake-hater. He is the one who started a rumor that there’s only one fruitcake in the world, which is passed on as a Christmas gift from person to person every year. And he’s the one who claims to have seen a study that said fruitcake is literally indigestible--”like a doorknob.”

Trillin says that there is a family in Michigan that owns an antique fruitcake. Every year they bring it out and put it on the table, then pack it away again until the next Christmas. “It’s somewhere between an icon and a centerpiece, and the nice thing is that nobody ever has to eat it.”

But most people are neither as enthusiastic as Colwin nor as curmudgeonly as Trillin. They will tell you they do not like fruitcake. But then they will admit they like some kinds; or they like the idea of it. And so they fiddle with a recipe until they come up with the one rule for making fruitcake they swear will change your mind on the subject forever.

Jim Dodge, author of “The American Baker” (Simon & Schuster) loves his fruitcake. It’s “a cake of textures,” full of chopped nuts and fruit that he candies himself by simmering strips of orange and lemon peel in sugar syrup. Dodge blames cheap candied fruit for fruitcake’s bad reputation. “They taste like chemicals and feel like plastic and have no fruit taste to them at all.”

Nick Malgieri, author of “Great Italian Desserts” (Little, Brown), loves his fruitcake too. He bakes an old-fashioned English fruitcake in a sheet pan, so everyone gets a thin, 1 1/2-inch square about the size of a brownie. Malgieri discovered this method when he was teaching a class on baking for Christmas and didn’t have the two hours it took to bake the cake in a tube pan. “What makes it so good,” he says, “is that it’s ready to eat right away, without months of ripening. And you get a very small piece, which is all most people can manage anyway, because the cake is so rich.”

One of the few people with a good word to say about fruitcake’s weight is Irena Chalmers, whose “Sharing Christmas” will be published next year by William Morrow. There’s a reason why fruitcake is heavy, said Chalmers. It helps your balance during the tipsy holiday season. “When spirits go to your head, having some heavy fruitcake in your tummy keeps your feet firmly planted on the ground.”

Here are three uncommon fruitcake recipes. The cupcakes are from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Cake Bible” (Morrow); they do not need to mellow but are ready to eat as soon as they cool. The pineapple fruitcake is from “The Fannie Farmer Baking Book” by Marion Cunningham. And the southern nut cake is mine, a gift from a North Carolinian who taught me the proper way to eat it was in very thin slices with china cups of jasmine tea.

ROSE BERANBAUM’S FRUITCAKE CUPCAKES

1/2 cup mixed candied fruit

2 tablespoons candied citron

1/4 cup currants

1/4 cup pecans

1/4 cup plus 8 teaspoons dark rum

1/2 cup unsifted cake flour

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup dark-brown sugar, packed

1 egg

1/4 cup molasses

2 tablespoons milk

At least 24 hours ahead, mince mixed candied fruit and citron and place in bowl. Add currants, pecans and 1/4 cup rum. Cover and let soak at room temperature.

Stir together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Cream butter and brown sugar in small mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with molasses and milk. Add candied fruit with soaking rum (batter will curdle slightly).

Scrape batter into 8 cupcake molds that are either buttered and floured or filled with paper liners. Bake at 325 degrees about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle each cupcake with 1 teaspoon rum. Cool 5 minutes, then remove from pan and store at room temperature. Makes 8 cupcakes.

MARION CUNNINGHAM’S WHITE FRUITCAKE

2 1/2 cups cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup candied cherries

2 1/2 cups golden raisins

1 cup canned pineapple chunks, drained

1 cup coarsely chopped blanched almonds

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

10 tablespoons butter

1 cup sugar

5 eggs

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons grated orange zest

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

Grease 2 (8x4-inch) loaf pans. Line with wax paper and grease paper.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in large mixing bowl. Add cherries, raisins, pineapple, almonds and walnuts and toss to coat with flour.

Cream butter and sugar in mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Add dry ingredients, alternating with eggs in 3 stages, beating vigorously after each addition. Add almond extract, vanilla, orange and lemon zests and stir until thoroughly blended.

Pour into prepared pans, filling to top. Bake at 275 degrees about 2 hours. Remove from oven and let cool in pans 30 minutes. Turn out onto rack, peel off paper and let cool. Wrap well and store in airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Makes 16 servings.

GOLDEN FRUIT AND NUT CAKE

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 (1-pound) box golden raisins

4 cups chopped pecans

1 pound butter

2 cups sugar

6 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon baking soda mixed with 1 tablespoon warm water

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons Cointreau

Dash cream of tartar

Mix flour and salt in bowl. Add raisins and pecans and toss to coat well.

Cream butter and sugar in mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks and beat well. Add baking soda, dissolved in water and 1/4 cup Cointreau. Add flour mixture. (Batter will be heavy and hard to mix.)

Beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until stiff but not dry. Fold into batter and spoon into 10-inch tube pan that has been buttered, lined with wax paper and buttered again. Smooth top and bake at 300 degrees 2 hours.

Cool in pan 20 minutes. Turn out of pan, peel off paper and turn upright on cooling rack. Drizzle on last 3 tablespoons Cointreau. Cool completely. Wrap tightly with foil or plastic wrap and store in refrigerator. Makes 16 to 20 servings.