Cakes Pull Monks Out of Isolation

On this autumn morning, when the chapel bell tolls, a moonlit mist shrouds the monks’ cloister in the thick woods of the Ozarks. Just before the “Great Silence” ends, at 3:15 a.m., Brother Gabriel Friend slips on a white habit and heads to prayer services in a chapel that hints of incense. A few hours later, in a bakery smelling of rum and sweet pineapple, Friend and the other brothers throw aprons over their everyday robes.

They are working against a pressing deadline now, these fruitcake bakers for Williams-Sonoma Inc. At Assumption Abbey, one of the most secluded Trappist monasteries in the world, the 20 monks cannot afford to entirely shut out the intrusions of society. Not with 28,000 two-pound fruitcakes to sell by Christmas and no other major means of support.

At monasteries nationwide, monks are hunkering down in bakeries and business offices to meet the holiday demand--yes, demand--for fruitcake.

Like other small specialty businesses, the monasteries are trying to keep pace with competitors, including bakeries that produce 2 million to 4 million pounds of fruitcake annually. The way monks do business depends on a delicate balance between traditional monastic life--marked by silence and separation from the world--and the realities of making a living. Contemplation and solitude must make room for toll-free phone lines and high-speed modems.

How monks got their start in fruitcakes is uncertain. Monasteries traditionally have big ovens for baking bread. Monks say fruitcakes are easy to make and store, and they age well. And while doing such simple tasks--mixing, weighing and pouring batter--the brothers can free their minds for prayer and Scripture reflection. Plus the demand is seasonal, so the phones go crazy only a few weeks a year.

“A big part of our monastic life is two words, fuga mundi, getting away from the world,” said Father Jerome Machar at the Abbey of the Genesee in Piffard, N.Y. He oversees the monastery’s bakery, which cranks out as many as 50,000 loaves of bread a week and 20,000 fruitcakes a year. “Well, has the Internet and e-mail, and even telephone, breached the wall? We don’t know yet. We’re constantly trying to keep that notion of separateness and yet not be obtuse. All the monasteries are asking that same question: How much is right, and what’s too much?”

In the U.S. Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, all 12 Trappist monasteries for men have Web pages and e-mail; four of them sell fruitcake. One Kentucky monastery does a $3.2-million business in cheese, fudge and fruitcake, and has 20 computers for 75 brothers. In Berryville, Va., with orders of two or more, Holy Cross Abbey throws in a free mouse pad advertising https://www.monasteryfruitcake.org. (Holy Cross once found that its Web page had been linked to an unauthorized home page for fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) On the Internet, one Michigan monastery sells a 3.5-pound millennium fruitcake for $80, plus shipping.

In southwest Missouri, the monks use an exclusive recipe donated by Jean-Pierre Auge, a former pastry chef to the duke and duchess of Windsor. A United Parcel Service van makes daily pickups at the monastery, 20 miles from the nearest town. Delivery trucks drop off cases of butter and burgundy wine. Holiday shoppers knock on the guest house door. Every year, the cakes sell out with no advertising.

This year the monks are baking six days a week, instead of the usual five, for 11 months. For the first time, they are taking Internet orders, https://www.trappistmonks.com. They will make about 5,000 more cakes this year than usual, partly because San Francisco-based Williams-Sonoma has increased its order, although the monastery sells most of its cakes--at $24 each--directly to individuals (prices are higher through other outlets). The monks range in age from 21 to 76, and they all work in the bakery except for senior brothers who are in bad health and one officially designated as a hermit priest who lives in the woods.

The bakery is noisy with the thud of emptied walnut boxes thrown on the floor and the whir of electric mixers twirling through 130-pound vats of batter. On this morning, Friend and the crew hustle to place 125 cakes into a 300-degree oven. Two hours later, the cakes come out, smelling like Christmas. Friend, 49, does not forget why he is here. Over each cake, he says a prayer.

‘It Smells Like Heaven’

“Let’s go, Kevin!” Friend yells to a 21-year-old monk, clapping his hands twice. They have only a couple of hours to mix and pour the thick batter into round tins. The currants, citron and other fruit are soaked in burgundy wine. The dark cake is rich, dense and moist, with a lingering kick-of-rum taste.

Friend hates fruitcake and doesn’t eat it. But “wait until you smell it when it comes out of the oven,” he says. “It smells like heaven.”

He grumbles about strict state health regulations that require him to scrunch a hairnet over his 9-inch graying goatee.

“It’s like they’re living in the Dark Ages,” he complains. A big name like Williams-Sonoma doesn’t rattle him. He had never heard of the gourmet chain before.

Friend is a talker, a former Wyoming railroad conductor who earned $100,000 a year. He is tall and balding with round, gold-rimmed glasses. Today, he scoots around in Adidas shoes with a George Thorogood T-shirt under his robe. Five years ago, he owned fast cars and rented limousines in Los Angeles to go to NBA championship games. One day, he read an article in Time magazine about the contemplative life of a Trappist monk. He knew his life was going to change.

In 1950, a group of Trappist monks from an Iowa monastery founded Assumption Abbey on 3,400 acres of donated land. Trappists are members of an order founded in France in 1098 by a group of Benedictine monks. They seek a life of solitude and silence to deepen their relationship with God.

Days are punctuated by community prayer, about seven times a day, totaling five hours or so. In between, they work four to six hours a day. The monks no longer observe a strict silence, although conversation is still prohibited or limited at certain times.

The order was once known as one of the most rigid in the church, said Father Theodore Koster, who has lived at the abbey since 1954. Brothers once slept in a communal room on straw mattresses, communicated mostly with hand gestures and avoided contact with the outside world. But in the mid-1960s, following the reforms of Vatican II, the doors to the monasteries began to creak open.

“It got rid of the sort of them-and-us attitudes,” said Koster, 74, a former finance company clerk. “We seek quiet and peace in a physical setting, but that doesn’t mean we have to detach ourselves from the cares and concerns and needs of the whole church and the whole world.”

Assumption Abbey’s monks tried farming and producing concrete blocks before hitting on fruitcake in 1988. Monks at other monasteries assured them that the fruitcake market was so big that they wouldn’t have to worry about competing against one another. Now the Missouri monks have a joke: “If you liked our cement blocks, you’ll love our fruitcake.”

In the early days, wearing his robe, Koster traveled to Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis on sales calls to gourmet shops and buyers. A buyer from Neiman Marcus twice ordered several cases, and then Koster never heard from him again. Koster saw the travel as a way to connect with a world that he no longer viewed as separate. The monks strive for balance in their lives, but no more so than others, he says.

“I find [that] people living in the world and supporting a family are living much more heroic lives than most monks I know,” Koster said. “It really is amazing what people go through . . . family relationships, illness, children going astray. . . . Each has its own call.”

In some orders, monks work in schools, parishes and hospitals, and live outside their abbeys in apartments or church quarters. But in the United States, the 416 Trappist monks are among those who live by the 6th century Rule of St. Benedict, by the labor of their hands on monastery grounds.

The monks do know that much of the world turns up its nose at fruitcake. An Oregon monk has a button that says: “Get Even, Give Fruitcake.” But according to industry estimates, fruitcake sales are up, and in 1998, surpassed $100 million for the first time. Monasteries face stiff competition from giants such as 104-year-old Collin Street Bakery in Texas, which produces 4 million pounds annually.

Still, monasteries such as the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Ky., regularly turn away customers and unplug their fax machine by Christmas week, when they run out of cakes. But with a trend toward healthier, lighter sweets, it is hard to say how long monks will find a market for fruitcake, said Will Keller, owner of Monasterygreetings.com. His Web site offers more than 150 products made by religious communities, including fruitcake, raspberry bagel spread and French lavender water. So far, he said, fruitcake is holding its own during the holiday season.

Sometimes, people call the monks with more on their minds than a cake soaked in 120-proof brandy, said Brother Patrick Corkrean of Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey in Lafayette, Ore. Once, when Corkrean, 48, was younger and less patient, he cut a caller off mid-woe, mindful that he had 5,000 fruitcakes to sell. “Madame,” he told her, “it’s your address I’m interested in, not your family history.”

For others, the draw is monk-made fruitcake. “I guess we do have a special mystique,” Corkrean said. “People do get a buzz from us.”

On the shore of Lake Superior, in Eagle Harbor, Mich., a community of four monks sells sweets, including the $80 millennium fruitcake. The price is high, but the Holy Transfiguration Skete is trying to raise about $650,000 for a construction project that will include a 1,100-square-foot church, said Father Basil, who doesn’t use a surname. Also, the cake includes more expensive ingredients, including Jack Daniels whiskey, and comes in a walnut box. Yes, he acknowledged, the monks observe a life of poverty and give up luxury goods--but sell a pricey product. “I don’t think there’s really a disharmony there,” he said. “We’re not saying everyone should live a life of poverty.”

A Remote Setting in the Ozarks

In the still of the Ozarks, you can hear the faraway tap of a woodpecker and the whistle of a hidden blue jay. Deer, armadillos and eagles have the run of the place, if the monks’ two dogs don’t chase them off. A creek runs through the five-square-mile property, shaded by hickory trees and dogwoods. A hill overlooking Charlie Hollow is studded with 15 unmarked white crosses. Someday, the monks will be buried there in their habits, each in a pine casket made by his brothers.

They live and work as one. In the bakery, everyone has an equal stake in the business. There is no jostling for better pay or positions; the bakery’s $150,000 in annual profits is pooled. (A few small investments and a guest house bring in a little additional income). The monastery doles out money for personal expenses, such as shoes. No one misses community prayers for work assignments, which include laundry or other tasks.

The monks’ life is rooted in simplicity. They bake their own bread and grow their own vegetables. On special occasions, such as Christmas, they eat fruitcake. In the cloister, they eat simple vegetarian meals in silence, while listening to a spiritual reading. They rarely leave the grounds.

In the next few years, the monks want to raise more than $1 million for a new cloister and an infirmary. One monk has Alzheimer’s disease. Another is fighting a brain tumor. No question, they could do more business or launch other lines, said Father Mark Scott, who heads Assumption Abbey. But they do not want to hire outside workers or automate the baking process. “It’s something that’s made with care,” says Scott, 52. “It’s sort of a symbol of our life.”

He does not think about business at day’s end, about how he started his work day by topping dozens of fruitcakes with four pecan halves, two red cherries and two green ones.

At 7:40 p.m., the last service begins in the chapel, with the lights off. The stained-glass windows, which glowed in moss green and ruby red during the day, are dark once more.

Scott has a final task before the Great Silence envelops the cloister again. In the darkness, he sprinkles holy water over the brothers and guests, a blessing for each one.