(Previously published in Inland Empire Magazine)
The world has a love hate relationship with fruitcakes. Some people consider it a delicious, sweet treat that has a little (alcohol) edge to it. For the rest of us, it is an affront to humanity and should be delegated to the trash heap of history.
Fruitcakes held a special place in my family’s history. My father and one of my brothers were born on December 26th and their birthday cakes of choice were fruitcakes. My mother would start the process of making said cakes months in advance. She would make two for the birthdays and many more as gifts.
My mom’s fruitcakes were a traditional American style dessert. Loaf shaped, loaded with candied fruit and nuts and wrapped in a towel soaked in some kind of brown liquor, like whiskey, rum or brandy. She would store them in our front hall closest to “age.”
I myself could not gag down even the smallest piece of fruitcake. To me it was a heavy, liquor ladened brick better used for anything but food. When you opened the door to our front closet, the fumes of the aging confections could knock you on your butt. If you had a lit cigarette or an open flame, there was a chance you would blow up the house.
Fruit cakes have been around since the Roman Empire. The candied fruits were added in the middle ages when people figured out soaking the fruit in a sugar solution could preserve it for eternity. The preserved fruit looked like it was produced by a nuclear reactor. Really, are small pieces of aged cherries and pineapples supposed to glow like that? The colors can’t be found anywhere else in nature.
I never shared my feelings with any of my family but I did try to make excuses so I wouldn’t have to eat a piece. First, I would claim to have a stomach ache. Second, I had to get on my homework–no one ever bought that one. Third, I was full from all the delicious liver and onions. Again, hard to pass that one off with a straight face. I grew up in the 1950s where my parents smoked in the house and drove us around in cars without seatbelts and child seats but making us eat fruitcake may have crossed the line.
Sometimes peoples’ tastes change over the years but I still can’t get near a fruitcake. My brother still loves fruit cake but since my mom is no longer around he hasn’t had one in years. That might be a good thing. If he was still partaking, he might fail a field sobriety test at one of those holiday drunk driver checkpoints.
A fruit cake that had been around for 115 years was sampled on the Tonight Show by Jay Leno. Apparently it was still edible, that is if you consider a fruit cake edible in the first place. I am sure future archaeologists will find fossils from this era, along with a preserved fruit cake and determine that’s what caused the mass extinction of our time.
Ten Uses for a Fruitcake
1. As a Duraflame log. Because of its density and the fact that it is impregnated with alcohol, it should burn for hours.
2. Shower tiles. Slice into 4 x 4 x .25” squares. It’s naturally waterproof and the cross section cut of the candied fruit will present an interesting and colorful design pattern for your shower walls. You may need a diamond cutting blade due to the density of the fruit cake.
3. Blocks for your car. It is recommended whenever working on your car to put a block behind the rear tires. This will prevent the car from rolling and possibly causing injury. What would be better than the brick like fruit cake you received as a gift?
4. A tasty, sweet dessert to enjoy during the holiday season. Only kidding.
5. Ballast. According to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary: 1 : a heavy substance (such as rocks or water) placed in such a way as to improve stability and control (as of the draft of a ship or the buoyancy of a balloon or submarine). “Tossed several tons of ballast {aka: fruitcake} overboard.” What better describes a fruit cake.
6. A giant fruitcake Jenga game. What a great idea for a holiday party game. When inviting your guests, ask them to bring all the fruitcakes they received as gifts. Create a stack of fruitcakes and have the players try to remove a cake from the bottom, then stack it on the top without causing it to tumble. Whoever collapses the stack of fruitcakes is the loser and has to take all the cakes home with them. Good times.
7. Fumigation. A natural way to eliminate termites. First, tent the building. Second, place a large quantity of fruitcakes in the tented house. No bug in its right mind will stay in the structure. WARNING: Because of the flammability of the fruitcakes, do not expose to an open flame.
8. A way to break up with a lover. Send said lover a fruitcake as a gift. That should do the trick.
9. Furniture repair. Let’s say a leg of your coffee table is damaged. Take that fruitcake you received last Christmas and shape it into a new leg. A dab of paint and no one will know the better, and it should last for years.
10. Edging around your garden. What better way to define the edge of your garden from a walkway.
11. Tombstone. When your time comes, you can be memorialized for eternity with your vital information engraved on one of those fruitcakes that lead to the heart attack that killed you.
12. Doorstop. Enough said!
13. Fuel for the “Back to the Future” De Loren. A few fruitcake bricks in the Flux-Capacitor and Marty and the Doc Brown could go back to ancient Rome and stop whoever invented the fruit cake in the first place.
14. Anchor. While baking a fruitcake, add a steel loop bold. Tie your rope to the loop, attach the other end to your boat and you have an auxiliary anchor. Adding the loop during the baking process is more practical. After the loop later would require a concrete drill.
15. Driveway paving bricks. A practical use that will last forever with the fluorescent candied fruits providing the needed light for getting up the driveway on a dark moonless night.
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