TheBanyanTree: The Fruitcake Debate

[LaRose Karr]

The Great Fruitcake Debate by LaRose Karr

The fruitcake cookoff began around Thanksgiving of each year. Two sisters rivaled for the best tasting, best baked creation this side west of the Mississippi River.

Tantalizing smells of baking began those thirty days before the actual celebrated birth of Jesus and continued till the morning when the last present was opened and wrapping paper tossed in the air.

I never knew other families had any other traditions. I figured everyone had fruitcakes abound, peppermint cake lasting till well after Christmas and everyone was sickened by the thought of peppermint. I thought real homemade fudge made with cocoa, sugar and butter boiled to the softball stage was all that any palates could dream of, and die for at Christmas.

Now that I'm somewhat still a spring chicken I've seen many traditions in other families through the years. Some friends of ours brought potato sausage one year for breakfast on Christmas morn. This family favorite brought to their home from years of tradition handed down person by person from the old country.

But I digress . . . my mission today is to pull tidbits from thirty and forty years agoto tell you the tale of two sisters at Christmas and the great fruitcake bake-off.

As I said before it began after Thanksgiving and continued to Christmas Day. I've never thought to ask who began this fruitcake lore but I just imagine my Grandmother Mary Emma, also known as Em or Emmer, started their love of baking fruitcakes. This Christmas I intend to ask just how it all began!

The two sisters, my mother and her older sister Geneva, lived on separate farms in central Arkansas. Aunt Geneva's house was just to the east of ours and I could look across the rising farmland that separated our land and see her nice white tidy new house on the horizon.

In central Arkansas in those days snow was scarce but occasionally we got lucky and had snow for Christmas. But mainly when I looked across the field I saw stubble from harvest and some green mixed in. Arkansas does have green even in the winter.

I envied Aunt Geneva as her house was new and ours was very old. In fact, our farmhouse had seen much better days before we ever lived there. Her house was not cold and drafty either. In both houses the baking frenzy was upon the sisters. Nuts and candied fruits chopped just right, flour, sugar, baking soda and who knows what else measured with care. The mixtures were even good in the batter stage and I ought to know, I sampled plenty of times.

But what happened after the creations were taken from the ovens and the cakes carefully removed from the pans is where this real story begins. The sisters were dousers! Yes, you heard me right, dousers! My mother doused with whiskey and her sister used rum. Now my family rarely even drank, except for the homemade muscadine wine Aunt Geneva made in the summers. And I think probably unless you are a true southerner, you've not ever heard of muskedine wine or it's lovely taste and potency!  
      (a grape, Vitis rotundifolia, of the southern U.S., having dull purple, thick-skinned musky fruit and being the origin of many grape varieties.)  


But no, we were not drinkers so a trip to the liquor store would happen. This was not to be taken lightly either as we lived in a dry county. >From our house to the nearest drink establishment was at least 23 miles. Now let me interject that I never went to the liquor store but I know that the trip had to happen so that the fruitcakes would have their flavors.

In our house once the cakes were enclosed with the shiny aluminum foil, they rested securely upon either the top of the freezer located in our dining room or on the dining table. Each day or so, my mother would gingerly lift the foil and then douse! Douse! Douse! Douse! Days of dousing.

At Aunt Geneva's house the same ritual happened except with the favored drink of choice, rum. After the weeks of anticipation occured, each sister would pronounce how wonderful their fruitcakes tasted. And they were right, indeed they were grand!

Each had their own special unique qualities and the competition was as much fun as the actual eating. This year my aunt, age 83, proclaimed her sister's fruitcake was overbaked but she delighted in the fact that she received one. Aunt Geneva, an excellent cook in her time gave up baking fruitcakes many years ago. And so, if my mother's fruitcake was overbaked this year, so what? She's now three months shy of being 80. And I also heard this year she doused with Mogan David wine! What caused this great sacrilege?

I must tell the readers that my own children never experienced this great fruitcake bake-off. We live a thousand miles from my family in Colorado. Only once in all these years has my mother mailed us a fruitcake which my kids did not care for but my husband consumed every crumb! My sister and I have never had any sort of bake-off at all as I don't consider myself to be a baker. In fact, when my oldest daughter was twelve and it was obvious she loved to bake and was gifted, I turned over that chore to her and I've delightedly eaten her baking since.

Now fudge making is another story and I do whip up some good cherry almond and rocky road fudge each Christmas season. My family also loves my Christmas letters and heaven forbid if cousin Margaret who never writes anything but love Margaret and Dan on her Christmas card misses getting a newsletter. I hear about it profusely afterward. They want the newsletters! And perhaps our traditions do need to be carried on in the way we are gifted. My family loves my letters as I loved my mother and aunt's fruitcakes; and this year I've asked my daughter to bake a cheesecake for our family meal.

But you know we celebrate Christmas because of Christ's love, and the fun of sharing gifts and the quirkiness of our traditions keeps his spirit alive.

May you all experience the glory that only holiday traditions can bring!