Culinary Capers — Fruitcake: Love it or toss it in the New Year?

By Margaret Malsam

Fruitcake has been the butt of many jokes, but some of us still love it. Others would rather toss it instead of eat it, like the Colorado folks who gather once a year for the Great Fruitcake Toss in Manitou Springs. Since 1995, Manitou Springs has hosted the sporting Great Fruitcake Toss on the first Saturday of every January. This year the 16th annual event will be on Jan. 8.

“We encourage the use of recycled fruitcakes,” said Floyd O’Neil of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce.

He said the chamber re-assembles and wraps broken pieces of old fruitcake together in cellophane and stores them each year.  Then the chamber rents these recycled fruitcakes for $2 each to the participants.

“Some of the fruitcakes may be as old as the contest,” O’Neil said.

He emphasized that it is a sporting competition and not a “hate fruitcake” event, pointing out that he knows of no place sponsoring a fruitcake toss.  The entry fee is one can of food, a non-perishable food item or a cash donation to be given to charity.

The all-time Great Fruitcake Toss record is 1,420 feet, set in January 2007 by a group of eight Boeing engineers who built the “Omega 380,” a mock artillery piece fueled by compressed air pumped by an exercise bike.

Fruitcake jokesters

Fruitcake has become a ridiculed dessert, most likely because of its long life. Its durability, however, is probably why the baked goodie was invented in the first place. Roman soldiers carried fruitcake with them during their long treks. Crusaders also brought the hearty treat along on their search for the Holy Grail. Egyptians packed the fruit-and-nut bread in the coffins of friends and relatives. They apparently felt it was the only food that could survive the journey into the afterlife.

Some blame the beginning of the ridicule of the fruitcake with the Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. He once joked, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”  After Carson’s death, the tradition continued with “The Fruitcake Lady”, Marie Rudisill.   In 2000, Rudisill authored the book, Fruitcake, and made an appearance on the show where she demonstrated how to make fruitcakes to Jay Leno and Mel Gibson.  This led to several more appearances as the Fruitcake Lady on the Tonight Show in which she showed how to prepare various baked desserts. In 2002, the “Ask the Fruitcake Lady” segments became a regular part of the Tonight Show.

Fruitcake history

Fruitcake has been around for centuries and has a history as rich as its ingredients The earliest recipe for fruitcake comes from ancient Rome and lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins. These ingredients were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added, and the name “fruitcake” was first used, from a combination of the words “fruit” and “cake,” according to Wikipedia.

Fruitcakes soon proliferated all over Europe; however, recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients. Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created  lots of candied fruit, thus making fruitcakes more affordable and popular.[

In the 18th century Europe, people began making, fruitcakes using nuts from the harvest for good luck in the following year. The cake was then saved and eaten before the harvest of the next year. Fruitcake also remained popular at Victorian Teas in England throughout the 19th century.

There are several theories about fruitcake’s ties to the holiday season. Some historians say it’s because the bread originated in the Holy Land. Others say it became popular during the holidays when English citizens passed out slices of the cake to poor women who sang Christmas carols on the streets of England in the late 1700s.

Fruitcake lovers

Personally, I like the rich flavor of the candied fruits, raisins, nuts and spices in fruitcake. When I was first married, I made traditional fruitcakes for gifts and soaked them with wine, which was terribly labor intensive. Now I prefer to use the dough cycle on my bread machine to make a simply and light yeast bread using some of these same ingredients as fruitcake. I adapted a recipe for raisin bread by adding fruitcake ingredients (see recipe). My husband says, “Why can’t we have this anytime?”

Monasteries in different parts of the country continue to bake and sell traditional fruitcakes for the holidays. According to the Assumption Abbey website, when their Trappist monks were first developing their bakery in the Missouri Ozarks, the monks sought the help of world class Chef Jean-Pierre Augé, who at one time served in the royal employment of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Assumption Abbey fruitcakes are the dark, rich, traditional style of fruitcake that are baked slowly and aged under the monks’ careful supervision. Everything, from marinating the fruit, to mixing, to baking, to packaging, to aging, to mailing is done right at the monastery by the monks.