Fruitcakes and Nut Cakes

Appears in
top 1000Classic Home Desserts
Classic Home Desserts

By Richard Sax

Published 1994

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Poor fruitcake. What other dessert has been so ridiculed, so scorned, so vilified? Johnny Carson used to joke that “there’s only one fruitcake—it just keeps getting passed around and around.”

Unfortunately, the jokes are right in too many cases. What could be worse than a dry cake, musty with garish candied fruit, and weeks old. In her Café Beaujolais mail-order catalog, Margaret Fox promised that in her fruitcake, she used “no green things—ever.”
It’s too bad that fruitcake has become the butt of jokes because made well, it can be delicious. Few foods are as festive, evoking days when people were “at home” receiving on holidays, and guests presented calling cards when they stopped by for a glass of Madeira or sherry or a cup of punch.