Make your post-holiday plans now!

I was recently e-mailed regarding the Independence Fruitake Festival. This is allegedly an un-ironic celebration of the fruitcake taking place in California. I'm still a bit skeptical, but this was affirmed by Mary Roper, one of the supporters of the festival. Says Ms. Roper, "We enlist the services of our County's Superior Court Judges to judge them (our assumption is that there can be no "best" because it is so subjective), so we have different prizes like the fruitcake that traveled the farthest, the oldest, the nuttiest (determined with our nutometer), best of theme, etc.."

The festival is held in January this year (January 23, to be exact) to avoid all the crush of holiday festivities and so that people can bring their leftover fruitcakes to the festival.

What I like best are these crazy, random themes for this and previous festivals. This year's is "Food of the Pharoahs." Ms. Roper adds (and this is a sentence you don't hear too often), "Hopefully we'll have the pyramid done by January."

Has anybody else been? Heard of it?

Review: Texas Manor Fruitcake

I bought the one pound 12 ounce fruitcake from Yahoo, called the Texas Manor fruitcake, for $33.35 including shipping--the price of the fruitcake is $23.50, so $9.85 to ship from the bottom of the country to the top. Here's a photo of the tin:
Pretty simple, but I'd say rather cute, with a sort of old-timey-as-conceived-in-the-sixties feel to it.

The cake is just one of the cutest ones I've seen in a while:

A really happy-looking cake, I'd say. The cake itself is light yellow, having no molasses, brown sugar or booze in it. First ingredient? My un-favorite: raisins. However, although you can definitely taste them, they aren't quite as insufferable as I've had in other cakes. The rest of the ingredients are not too bad for a mass-produced: yes, there are colorings (what cake with preserved fruit doesn't have 'em), invert sugar, and margarine, not butter, but this is the first cake I've seen that contains buttermilk. The only fruits are three: raisins, glacéed pineapples and glacéed cherries. The nuts: pecans and walnuts.

These glacéed cherries are quite good: definitely a better quality than most, though as you can see, if you're not into those three fruits, this is not the cake for you. Because of the fruit combo, this cake tastes a bit like a pineapple upside-down cake--it's got that sweet, caramelly taste, and I'm sure the raisins only enhance that flavor. The cake to fruit ratio is quite good, with a bit of batter in there that you can taste for itself, not just as something that holds the fruit together.

Sigh. Have I become a softy? Have I, alas, just tasted too many fruitcakes, and am starting to cut some a break? Or were the mass-produced fruitcakes I had tried earlier really that bad? Because this one was really not that bad. Maybe as I try other fruitcakes, I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt. After all, last year's Grandma's fruitcake did not light up any of my lights, but my family liked it.

I guess I can finally admit that this sort of generic fruitcake does have a place in the fruitcake spectrum. Maybe after all of these years, I've found a few mass-produced fruitcakes that are not excruciatingly bad. This one was a pretty good tasting, rather sweet, standard fruitcake. Would I buy it again? Probably not: if I were to buy any fruitcakes again, they would probably be from the smaller fruitcake bakeries, like any of the monasteries and maybe even the Southern-style ones, before I'd go to one of these. I prefer to support something artisanally made, or family-made, rather than support Big Bakery.

That being said, I don't think I'm qualified to say who's a big bakery or not. Who's to say that Georgia fruitcake is not as big or bigger than Yahoo? And frankly, I've not seen any of the monastery fruitcake operations. So I have to use the quality of ingredients as a guide to what I choose.

Still, I'm going to put this one on the top of the mass-produced. Its ingredients were not terribly horrible, it had a tastefully cute tin, and the flavor was, well, it was okay--I won't be throwing this one away. The quality of the glacéed cherries certainly redeems it.

And I may be back for this cake. I just can't get over its cuteness.

A box redesign, and some confusion about monks

I just received my first catalog since about January or maybe December. You know what that means, don't you? It's almost the time when the rest of the world launches into Fruitcake Season. For me, it's just business as usual. If anything, I've been a bit tardy--I think I've had more fruitcakes reviewed by this time in previous years.

In any case, I've received my Texas Manor fruitcake, which I will review soon, but I wanted to report on the catalog I just got. It's from Holy Spirit Monastery, and it looks like they did a redesign on their packaging. I don't think I got one of their catalogs last year (I tried their cake the first time at the end of last year, and did an online purchase), but it's very nice indeed. They have a few different fruitcake size options, and also sell other items, like fudge, including one that I would love to try: "Southern Touch," which contains peaches, pecans and a touch of peach brandy....yum. In any case, if you look at my review of this cake, previously they had a rather austere but real tin. I'm just checking the catalog right now and they might have ditched the tin altogether: they say that the round cake as well as the loaf are "packed in attractive gift boxes." They are actually pretty cute boxes, but it doesn't look like they've updated their website to match their catalog, so I can't show them to you.

Here's what's weird, though: the original tin I got last December had a sticker on it proclaiming the cake to be from "Brother Basil's kitchen." When you go to the website, there is copy there describing a Brother Patrick as their master fruitcake-baker. However, my catalog disagrees, claiming that indeed Brother Augustine is the master fruitcake-maker. So who is it?

Frankly, Ragtime Cowboy Joe (yeah, I don't know him, either) could make my fruitcake--I don't care, as long as it's good. Most monasteries don't really say who, in particular, makes their cakes. It's kind of funny that Holy Spirit is trying to put a human edge on this and just succeeds in confusing me.

It don't matter. This catalog looks darn good, and also includes some pretty calendars if you're into contemplative abbey photos, as well as other foodstuffs, like apple butter and some Trappist coffee from Venezuela. I think the catalog contains a much nicer presentation of their products than their website. If you're into fruitcake, you may want to request one. I'm thinkin' I need a bit of a Southern Touch to my holiday season . . .

Next fruitcake: Texas Manor Bakery

The next one is by a Southern food conglomerate, Ya-hoo! Baking, aka M.K. Commercial Kitchens. They make the Texas Manor fruitcake, as well as this adorable cake that I was sorely tempted to purchase. Perusing their site, they have a lot of tempting looking cakes available. I wonder if they look beautiful but taste like cardboard, like many of those lovely cakes circulating in mediocre restaurants across America? I'll use the Texas Manor fruitcake as a litmus test to find out.

Review: Hermitage Big Sur (New Camoldoli) Date Nut Cake

Oh, I'm so sad. I wanted so hard to like this cake. How could a date-nut cake be bad? But it was really not at all what I was expecting, and really didn't appeal.

Similar to the Hermitage Big Sur fruitcake, this cake comes in a very simple, eco-friendly box, quite appealing in these green times:

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not actually purchase this cake; it was generously donated. Cost, though, for the 3-pound cake is $36.00, plus shipping, so I would assume for me it would have been around $39 or so.

As the fruitcake was, this cake is large and sturdy. It's really not very pretty. I realized when reviewing these photos that I may have had the cake upside down, but I'm not sure how much better it would have looked right side up:

It's a very dark cake, and I have been remiss in not noting all of the ingredients, but as with the fruitcake, it is dipped in brandy and aged. The cake actually comes wrapped in plastic to seal in the moistness.

Since the loaf itself is not super attractive, here's a shot of a slice:

Quite a few walnuts in a dark batter, and I didn't notice large chunks of date. I guess I was mentally comparing this with the date-nut bread that I create, which has a lighter batter and lovely chunks of date and nut in it. This was different: the batter was not light, and there was an overall raisin flavor that I tasted with the fruitcake. I didn't get an overall impression of "datiness."

If given a choice, I would go with the Hermitage Big Sur fruitcake over this. This is going to the bottom of the Other list. Good ingredients, but an overall murky, non date-like flavor.

Next up: New Camoldoli Hermitage Date-Nut Cake

Next up will be the Date-Nut cake from New Camoldoli. I had previously reviewed their fruitcake, which although it appears last on the monastery fruitcake list, was still much better than any of the mass-produced fruitcakes.

I love date-nut cake. I've made them myself from some really delicious California dates, so I have high hopes for this cake. Plus, it's brandy-dipped--how can that be bad?

Look for a review soon!!

Review: Georgia fruitcake and Womble’s fruitcake (2 pounds)

The Georgia fruitcake company is the second fruitcake company hailing from what is evidently the Fruitcake Center of the Universe: Claxton, Georgia. Both the Georgia fruitcake company and Claxton fruitcake have similar histories: a mysterious Italian man comes to Claxton, opens a bakery, and apprentices guys who eventually go off on their own to make fruitcakes.

With such similar histories, I am really surprised that the fruitcakes themselves are so different.

I bought four pounds worth of fruitcake in the middle of June. Yes, let me repeat, FOUR POUNDS OF FRUITCAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE. What I do for this blog. In addition, I have yet another cake (the date-nut cake from New Camoldoli Hermitage) waiting for me to review once I finish this one. So I actually have SEVEN POUNDS of fruitcake in my fridge. Luckily I am surrounded by fruitcake lovers, so was able to share some of my bounty.

On to the Georgia fruitcakes. The Georgia fruitcake company provides fruitcakes to the military. So instead of coming in a pretty tin, the fruitcakes I received were vacuum-packed into their tins, so they looked more like funny-looking cans of coffee than fruitcakes. The cans themselves are quite cute, but again, nothing fancy from a gift-giving standpoint:

I was a bit disappointed to not have that lovely “whoosh” and aroma of coffee when I opened the tins using my can opener. Here’s a photo of the cakes themselves (try to tell them apart—no difference, really, other than the poor photography):

Both cakes contain a lot of good quality preserved fruit in a very nice, cakey batter. These cakes are much more like a monastery fruitcake than the usual almost candy-like consistency of the Southern-style fruitcakes.

First thing on the ingredients list is cherries. There is a lot of red fruit in these cakes, but it’s a good quality, size, and texture. Other fruits are pineapple and raisins, but not too many of the latter. (I’ve mentioned in the past how I really don’t like too many raisins in my fruitcake. I really consider it the filler dried fruit—a raisin is to a baked good what a carrot is to frozen mixed vegetables.) Nuts include pecans, almonds, and walnuts. Like the Claxton fruitcake, it contains orange peel, but also contains lemon peel, neither of which are terribly pronounced but, I’m sure, add to the overall effect. The nut mixture, I’d say, is different than the Claxton fruitcake—the Claxton fruitcake contains more almonds, which gives the cake a different texture and less of that nutty flavor you get from walnuts and pecans. Bad things are the partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, some artificial flavoring, and sodium benzoate and sulfur dioxide as preservatives (I don’t think you can get away from some of those preservatives if you use, ahem, preserved fruit). I’m not sure why I continue to call candied fruit “preserved fruit”. It’s so unappealingly technical—yet truthful. Maybe that’s why.

The main and, it seems, only difference between the regular fruitcake and the one called “Womble’s” (named after the owner) is the addition of my favorite booze, Kentucky bourbon. So this is truly a treat and a category-spanner: a Southern fruitcake that contains booze.

The one big problem I have with these cakes? Lack of a hole. What, you say, a hole? Why would I have a problem with the lack of something that isn’t really there to begin with? Well, I’ll tell you.

I’ve just done a quick look through all of the fruitcakes I’ve reviewed. The basic shapes are either rectangular or round. The rectangular ones are very easy to slice: basically, you slice them like you’d slice a loaf of bread. I usually cut into a cold fruitcake using a serrated knife, with a sawing motion. You have to stabilize a fruitcake to cut it, because it’s hard to cut through. With a loaf, you simply hold it and start cutting off the end. With a round cake, you again need to hold it to cut, but then after you’ve cut your first slice, you need to wiggle it away from the rest of the cake. That’s where the hole comes in handy. You can get one hand in there and sort of rock the slice out. But when your cake has no hole, this is a problem. I ended up cutting very ragged slices and would often leave half of the slice behind as I tried to lever it away from the rest of the cake. Is this a huge problem? No, I guess not. But it was a niggling annoyance, and I don’t like to be pecked to death by tiny ducks. Those niggling annoyances build up, and suddenly you’re honking your horn and shaking your fist at people on the way to work (not a true story, but you know what I mean—these things add up).

A good work-around is to cut the whole cake in half. Then you can stabilize one half as you begin sawing off one end.

The fruitcake smells great and really looks and tastes much more like a monastery cake than a Southern style cake. It has more of a cake-like batter, and although it’s recommended that you chill the cake for cutting, it doesn’t stand the risk of falling apart like some Southern-styles do. The batter in these cakes is an integral part of the overall flavor of the cake, and strikes me as similar to the Gethsemani batter. That being said, both of these cakes are a bit sweeter than monastery cakes, which is pretty typical for Southern-style cakes.

So, the conclusion on these cakes: a very good, almost monastery-type cake, with the sweetness of a Southern-style cake. I’m happy to know that our armed forces are fortified by good-tasting, quality fruitcake. And I love the fact that you can get one with whisky in it. I’m going to move these to second in the Southern-style fruitcakes ratings list, but will add an asterisk to the Womble’s cake since it’s been doped with whiskey. Mary of Puddin’ Hill still tops the list because it’s got the best ingredients and is a great example of a truly delicious Southern-style fruitcake.

Next up: Georgia Fruitcake Company

The votes are in, and the next fruitcake will be from the Georgia Fruitcake company. I was thinking of getting their regular fruitcake, but one reader found another one they have that includes bourbon in the mix. So, in the interest of fair, balanced reporting, I'll get both.

Yes, that means two fruitcakes. And I definitely want to experience the fruitcakes that come vacuum-packed into a can like so much coffee. So I have four pounds of fruitcake coming my way, to be reviewed as soon as they come.

UPDATE: Just ordered them, and there's no shipping - how nice!