LAST CALL: Fruitcake
Henry, Lawrence
LAST CALL ] Fruitcake P'-"T'S A "STANDING HEAD." That means a headline you can just let "stand," or stay set in type, because it gets used over and over again. "State Rep. Arrested for...
...His mom had given him advance warning of the fruitcake [sent by his aunts] back in 1962...
...Every Christmas, comedians tell "eternal fruitcake"jokes-the idea being that fruitcakes are so awful, people recycle them as gifts over and over again till someone finally throws them away...
...When my mother made her batch of fruitcakes as holiday gifts, she was doing the most she could afford to do for her relatives and friends...
...As The Joy of Cooking reminds us, "Fruitcakes are fundamentally butter cakes [i.e., no different in basic form from ginger cake, spice cake, or pound cake] with just enough batter to bind the fruit/' The Joy of Cooking's recipe for Dark Fruitcake calls for the typical Christmassy spices of nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, two and a half pounds of currants, a pound of brown sugar, and 15 eggs...
...Fruitcakes belong, as well, to a class of foods that has fallen out of favor with the modern palate, including plum pudding and mince pie...
...Not many people make them anymore, and commercial fruitcakes never taste very good...
...Arrested for DUI...
...Lawrence Henry is a writer in North Andover, Massachusetts...
...These traditional riches of eggs, fruit, and butter in a cake almost literally substituted for a king's gold...
...One came from a cookbook I got as a wedding present, the Tuckaback Circle of the Methodist Church in Sioux Falls" One of the others came from Fannie Farmer...
...That's the fruitcake in the news...
...As best [Lance Testa] can remember, he packed the cake with the rest of his belongings and shipped it home to Waukeshawhen he left the military a few years later...
...We have long forgotten her generation and the generation before, the one that soldiered through the Great Depression...
...What else could it be...
...It's unlikely that most people nowadays take the trouble to keep the cakes as moist as they should be, veritably sweating...
...As Dave Barry puts it, "Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them...
...From this background arrived the fruitcake, the poor man's gift of the Magi...
...M Y MOTHER MADE FRUITCAKES and theywere terrific...
...My family wouldn't eat it, and I would be left preserving the cakes under port-soaked cloth, taking offa slice now and then through eternity...
...Newborn Discovered in Dumpster...
...She and my Dad had no extra money through the first years of their married life...
...My roommates and friends seemed to like it, too, except for the guy who said it was just too goyische even to taste...
...Why do fruitcakes get a bad rap...
...loaves, about 12 pounds...
...The last story, dated April 18 byAP, tells how a man discovered a 40-year-old fruitcake in his mother's attic, originally sent to him when he was stationed in Alaska in the Army...
...Ageless...
...I think briefly of making a batch, and then decide not to...
...Man Rediscov~._ers Gift Fruitcake From 1962...
...She used to mail one or two to me when I was away at college, and I always kept them, carefullywrapped up in a moist towel, to take a slice off now and then...
...Heavy...
...82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006...
...In the 1930s, you simply could not buy some things in the winter: citrus fruit, pineapple, bananas...
...You might follow the Joy of Cooking instruction to "bury the liquor soaked cake in powdered sugar" for long storage...
...There is also the fruitcake as staple of seasonal comedy...
...One started from a base of ground pork, one from double-strength brewed coffee, and one from applesauce...
...Apple pies are heavy, too...
...I called Morn to ask her about the three recipes she used and where they came from...
...I just looked up the recipes myself," Morn said...
...M ORE IMPORTANT, the whole generous symbol of a fruitcake doesnt mean much these days...
...She did not, as I suspected she might, learn to cook them from her mother or from any family friend renowned as a cook...
...The recipe yield is described as "two...
Vol. 39 • July 2006 • No. 6
