50+ Lifestyles

A Childhood Memory

By Mary Schricker Gemberling

Most years I wait until after Thanksgiving before I begin to think about Christmas shopping, baking, or decorating.  But the early snowfall and cold temperatures robbed me of autumn and put me in the Christmas mode much earlier this year.  The pumpkin on my front porch just doesn’t look the same when it’s covered with snow. I can’t wait to replace the orange and rust colors with red and green. And since I love to cook, my idle hours are filled with perusing Pinterest for unique holiday appetizers and new cookie recipes. I have loaded my Christmas gift app on my phone, already watched a Hallmark Christmas movie, and decided after a hiatus of many years I am going to try to re-create my mother’s fruitcake.

For me, fruitcake evokes memories of a warm kitchen and the smell of spices in the air. It was one of my mother’s specialties that I looked forward to each year. For many years after I left home, usually in late November or early December, my mother would send me a fruitcake. I sliced it into very thin slivers so as to savor it longer, and would enjoy a small piece with my coffee in the morning.  I don’t recall when she stopped making it, but I suppose it was in the early 1990’s when Florida sunshine lured her and my dad away from the Midwest sometime in late autumn.  From time to time over the years I have tried to purchase fruitcakes but they never even came close to the delicacy I remember.

Some of you who have never tasted a fruitcake might be wondering what it really is. It is exactly as it sounds; a cake made with chopped candied or dried fruit and lots of nuts and spices. The history of fruitcake goes as far back as ancient Rome. A recipe from 2000 years ago had pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins mixed into a cake made out of barley mash. These early fruitcakes were easy to carry and since they were packed full of already preserved foods, remained edible for a long time. Over time, other ingredients, such as honey, spices and preserved fruits were added to fruitcakes. In the 16th century, the popularity of sugar led to the discovery that fruit could be preserved by soaking it in heavy concentrations of sugar. Candied fruit was imported in great quantities in the American colonies.  One of the reasons fruitcakes were treasured throughout our history was because they were an efficient way to preserve food for long journeys and bitter winters. They could be baked in the summer and used to supplement food supplies over the entire winter. The American tradition of eating fruitcake around the holidays stemmed from the British tradition when the dessert was sometimes called Christmas cake or plum cake. This fruitcake was popular in Victorian England, where it became a vital part of celebrating holidays and weddings. Both Princess Diana and Kate Middleton served fruitcakes at their weddings.

In our country, the popularity of fruitcake has waned over the years and has been the brunt of many jokes around the holiday season. The best known and most repeated is probably comedian Johnny Carson’s comment: “The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world and people keep sending it to each other.”

The good news is, at least for some of us, that the fruitcake bashing has more recently been upstaged by a sudden surge in the sales of fruitcakes by such companies as Harry and David who shipped off 100,000 fruitcakes in the 2017 holiday season.

So whether you are a fruitcake lover or have never imbibed, join young and old together on December 27th, National Fruitcake Day, and taste a piece of this delectable moist treat. I hope to be sitting with my coffee that morning tasting a childhood memory!

Mary, a former educator and Seniors Real Estate Specialist, is the author of three books, The West End Kid, A Labor of Love, and Hotel Blackhawk; A Century of Elegance.