The Best Fruitcakes Come From Compton

Living in crushing times like these, you sometimes need a completely unexpected pick-me-up.

Human Passion

One of the pinnacles of human perseverance is passion.  There is nothing like being in the presence of another human describing something they are passionate about whether it be their faith, a loved one or a favorite food, etc.  One of my favorite examples of this:  one of my co-workers described to me in 2015 a sport she played with a tennis-like ball and badminton-like paddles called Pickleball.  Her eyes widened and her face went flush red as her whole demeanor changed as she described her favorite pastime.  With a similar passion, I was educated on the enduring spirit of the Holiday season’s most polarizing dessert: fruitcake. 

Fruitcake

As we are ensconced in the Holidays, there is probably one gift in the venerable and much-maligned fruitcake that you will rarely (these days) find under a Christmas tree.  Fruitcake is one of the most polarizing desserts on the planet and notwithstanding all of its cousins; i.e., Jamaican/Caribbean Black Cake, British Plum Cake, or Christmas Cake, etc. it is uniquely positioned in a very challenging place.  If you disagree then try giving one away at your next white elephant holiday celebration and see how many times it gets passed around.

The Apocalyptical Triumvirate

I have always seen fruitcakes as part of a triumvirate of entities that could survive a nuclear apocalypse.  The first two things were cockroaches and rats, but I think for them to survive the scorched post-radiated earth they would eat the leftover fruitcakes, especially those that had been used as door stops and catapult munitions!

“Fruitcake” the Movie:  Coming Soon

Despite fruitcake’s discord, over 2 million fruit cakes are sold each year (according to seriouseats.com).  This adds up to a $100 million business year-end business. Claxton, Georgia is known as the "Fruit Cake Capital of the World" because of the number of fruitcakes it produces each year. Fruitcake is also going Hollywood. Will Ferrell and Julianne Moore are in pre-production on a film called “Fruitcake” based on a 16 million-dollar Texas fruitcake bakery scandal. There is also a popular New York Times bestseller titled "Black Cake" by Charmaine Wilkerson that has been made into a streaming series on Hulu by the same name.

The Origins and Science of Fruitcake

As I researched this edition, I learned that fruitcake’s origins date back to 3000 BC in ancient Egypt.  Even the Egyptians did not eat them.  Instead they would put them in the pyramids with deceased royal dignitaries to sweeten their experience in the afterlife.  Given all of the preserved fruit and alcohol in each cake, the belief was that the cakes would last well into the afterlife of the loved ones.  Some people speculate that in the middle ages, fruitcakes were also used as a way to preserve fruit.  So the secret to a good fruitcake is consistently “feeding” the cake with alcohol as it acts as not only a preservative but also provides a moistening agent to the cake.

My First Brush with Fruitcake

My earliest childhood memory of fruitcake was hearing the words “fruit” and “cake” in it and seeing it as something “sweet” to try and only being disappointed upon seeing that “cake” with its chunks of candied fruit from the red cherries to those hideous looking green and yellow candied pineapples.  Eating a piece of fruitcake was a shock to the system as it tasted nothing like the birthday cakes I previously enjoyed.

My fruitcake aversion resulted from my exposure to bad commercially made fruitcakes.  It was always dry and sometimes overloaded with gummy candied fruit and not enough of the cake.  I despised it as much as the next person.  Fruitcake would not even receive a second glance as I would charge through the holiday dessert tray to one of my favorites like pecan pie or Santa-shaped sugar cookies.  

By adulthood, I considered myself safely a part of the fruitcake deniers group and that was until the year my Paternal Grandpa passed away.   That year my newlywed wife and I decided to pay a surprise visit to Oakland, California on Christmas Eve to visit my Mother.  After several days spent with my mother which included several festive visits with my paternal grandpa’s two brothers and their wives, One of these visits included an offering of homemade fruitcake and wine.  My mother being a fruitcake fiend loved the fruitcake.  I can’t recall if I even indulged, but my wife and I spent our last several days in a San Francisco hotel until I got word that my paternal Grandpa had died.  It was a shock.  It was also on that day my mother reminded me of our relative who offered the fruitcake and had made one for her and my mother asked me to drive back to Oakland to pick it up and bring it back to her.  I had to give her a resounding “no” as we had to pack up and end our trip early to head back home and prepare for the funeral.  From that day forward, I committed to sending my Mother a fruitcake every year on Christmas. 

The annual procurement of the Christmas fruitcake for my mother became like a sport.  I would visit various websites and read customer reviews and even as a fruitcake denier, I would try and imagine the taste of the “moist and fruity” cakes described in the reviews.  A favorite has been Gethsemani Farms.  I am not sure if it was just their reviews, marketing or that these 5lb Kentucky Bourbon fruitcakes were described as originating from the Monks of the one hundred and seventy-five-year-old Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastery deep in the heart of Kentucky.  The highlight of the season was getting word from my mother that she received her fruitcake and ultimately getting her positive approval.  Not once has one of my mail-order fruitcakes failed her.

The Best Fruitcakes Come from Compton

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2023 where I learned the true value of fruitcake while sitting in my Auntie Ann’s kitchen in Compton, California.  I credit my Auntie Ann for kindling a new sense of passion for myself in these 5 lb cakes.  Within the course of less than an hour, she taught me so much about fruitcakes from the care and “feeding” of the fruit cake with douses of Christian Brothers brandy to the storage and preserving for years, and it all started with her passion gushing out in a way that I knew somehow I had hit a passionate spot in her heart when someone at the Thanksgiving table asked me to ask her about her fruitcakes.

My two aunts in Compton are beautiful like the kaleidoscope of dew you see in a close-up photo of a sunflower at sunrise.  They are both reflective and bright and rare at the same time.  In a world sallow with war, famine, and lies, it is refreshing to know there are these two bright lights and their fruitcake passion.  My Auntie Ann is the fruitcake cook and my Auntie Janis is the official taste tester.   They both live together in an expansive California-style ranch home that was originally built and modified by Ann’s late husband.  They both have a shared passion for fruitcake. They also have shared in having loved and lost in their lives and persevered in ways most of us could not have imagined.   

The Generation Gap

On Thanksgiving, we spent over an hour after dinner and desserts debating the merits of fruitcake.  Everything from the negative comments that it could only serve as ammunition to a catapult to how fruitcake’s appreciation levels skip a generation.  That last one made me wonder.  Perhaps Gen X did not get it.  We missed the “fruitcake is dope” boat.  Wedged between the Baby Boomers and Millennials, perhaps it will be our children and grandchildren who will create a new fruitcake revival, and as much as I would love to see the recipe altered more to my liking; i.e., please finely chop the candied fruit into a fineness, I know the future is in preserving the original recipe as it is.

Side Note:

I have a hypothesis that Gen X did not miss the boat on fruitcake.  We just ended up on the wrong boat.  Our generation was the generation of processed food.  We witnessed the first moon walk as kids and while we drank Tang, the drink of the astronauts' desire.  We ate TV dinners and fast food.  We also were exposed to the first truly mass-produced fruitcakes and in my research I learned a major reason most people don’t like fruitcake is that the store-bought versions dry out due to a lack of the “feeding” once they have left the factory and the absence of a good batter to fruit ratio as shared here by this NY Times article.

"Some people put up lights and stuff, I make fruit cake"

After walking me through the intricacies of making a fruitcake from procuring the citron to mixing the batter, my Auntie Ann lamented, "Some people put up lights and stuff, I make fruit cake".  Before leaving Compton that evening she handed me a fruitcake that she hand “fed” with brandy right in front of me.  I took that fruitcake home and put it in the fridge.  I decided I would save it until Christmas and bring it to the biggest fruitcake fiend I know:  my mother.  

I packed that fruitcake in my carry-on and not surprisingly I was stopped by TSA going through airport security.  I am sure it was because that little square foil-wrapped package looked suspicious and that is even after I had asked the TSA rep at the front of the line if it was OK for me to fly with fruitcake or check it with my luggage and he replied, “fly”.  

The Passion of Fruitcake

My Auntie Ann’s fruitcake and I made it to Kansas City.  I am writing this from Kansas City following eating a piece of that delicious fruitcake.  A fruitcake that even after making the long journey was so full of flavor and notes of fruit and brandy that it ignited a certain passion within me that I had not known.  It also met rave reviews from my mother as she has been snacking on the cake every day for a week now and it has truly lifted her spirits.  I was happy to see her enjoy the cake and I was able to let my Aunties know of the success.  In the end, I am convinced fruitcake's true value is not in its durability, but it is in its ability to elicit such passion as seen in my aunties and to bridge human optimism.  If it was good enough for the souls of Egyptian kings then surely it is good enough for the rest of us.

This article would not be complete without sharing a fruitcake recipe.  Here is the L.A. Times recipe and a version from the NY Times is included in the previous linked blue hypertext above under the section titled “Side Note:”.