It’s all about the cake
Fruitcake. What does this word make you think of? Maybe you think of the phrase “nutty as a fruitcake.” Maybe you think of the old “Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” when fruitcakes would show up unannounced in decorative boxes or just plain cardboard boxes.
Let’s face it. The fruitcake has been a butt of jokes for years.
Truth is, the fruitcake had its origin some 2,000 years ago and never disappeared. It started out with the Romans probably and made its way up through the ages becoming more sophisticated as it moved up through time.
More fruit was added and spices, honey and later sugar. I read that it was banned in England in the 17th or 18th century because with the sugar and spices, it may just taste too good. Yeah. I had to read that twice.
I can remember my mother and father partaking of this type of cake during the holidays. It somehow became a treat of the holidays and was called Christmas cake by some. Mom and Dad would eat the cake with a cup of coffee. No, they didn’t make it, but they bought it from a bakery in Claxton, Georgia.
I had never eaten homemade from scratch fruitcake until I met Bill Brooks, who became my husband. His mother, the late great Evelyn Hatcher Brooks Causby, I soon learned was right up there at the top as one of the best cooks ever. I remember quite well the first meal I ever ate that she prepared. It was a smoked pork butt and ... oh goodness, my mouth is watering as I write this.
Along with this wonderful melt in your mouth roast, she had fried green tomatoes, little deep-fried cornmeal fritters, cream style corn, fresh out of the garden sliced red tomatoes, sliced onions, homemade dill pickles and little lady finger peas. Honestly, folks, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Mother (I called her that from the time Bill and I married until she passed. I couldn’t call her Evelyn or Mrs. Causby) asked me where I could possibly be putting all the food I ate. I weighed about 100 pounds.
The Christmas after Bill and I married, I watched Mother make her homemade from scratch fruitcake. I was fascinated. As an aside, you need to know that I love good fruitcake. She bought green and red cherries, pineapple, orange rinds, raisins, honey, brown sugar and other ingredients. She always said that the most important ingredient was the bourbon or brandy. I laughed at that and we did find time to formally toast our endeavors.
She’d wrap the cake in a cheese cloth soaked in bourbon or brandy, maybe even rum some years, and put it in a tin to set up for a few weeks before Christmas. Every so often, she’d open the tin and add a bit more of the brew. I have to tell you that her fruitcake was the most delicious fruitcake ever.
She’d give everyone a chunk of it to freeze. It was wonderful to cut a piece in July and sit on the porch with coffee in hand and eat it. I always heard bells. When Mother passed away we didn’t have a recipe for her fruitcake. Bill and I started buying Claxton’s before Thanksgiving and would have a cup of coffee and fruitcake almost every night until the holidays were over. We had talked about trying our hand at making one, but it wasn’t until this year that we actually did.
Looking online, I found a recipe for old-fashioned fruitcake from Alabama. Since Mother was from Alabama and the ingredients sounded a lot like what she used, we decided to follow it. Let me tell ya, fruitcake ingredients are not cheap, but I just knew it would be worth it.
Bill chopped up the pecans and dredged all the fruit and nuts in flour. By the time all the other ingredients were blended, our biggest stainless-steel bowl was full. I thought to myself that this was a huge amount of mixture for one cake! Then I read the recipe again. I thought that an eight-pound cake would be pretty heavy, but in truth, I hadn’t read the recipe correctly. It said it made eight pounds of fruitcake mixture.
I thought to myself, “Good grief, our grandson Hatcher weighed eight pounds when he was born!”
We filled the initial tube pan, made a dozen fruitcake cupcakes, and had enough for a loaf pan. I was a little leery of how the main cake would turn out, but by golly, it came out of the pan easily and is now soaking in brandy, in a nice tin waiting for the holidays.
I think Mother would approve.