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.

Reader's choice: which one next?

Hi - sorry I've been so tardy. For some reason I haven't been in the mood for fruitcake, lately. Maybe because it's been so cold for summer here in the Chicago area. It seems the warmer it gets, the more I want fruitcake--specifically, a Southern-style fruitcake. Yes, I know it's perverse, but there it is. That's what eating fruitcake year-round will do to you.

So I'm leaving it up to the 1.25 people left reading this blog to help me select which Southern-style fruitcake I'll try next. Which would you choose?

Sunshine Hollow Bakery -- the fruitcakes look good, but I'm sorely tempted by the Woozy cakes.
W.H.O. Women - A North Carolina charity, I'm checking to see if these are even available outside of the holiday season. UPDATE: they do ship year-round.
Sunnyland Farms - From Georgia, their special ingredient is grape juice. A sad replacement for booze in my opinion, but I'm game.
Yahoo Texas Manor Fruitcakes - This one might be on the edge of Southern and Mass-produced. A sort of mass-produced Southern cake, maybe? But look at this adorable cake--I might need to get one of those, too!
Georgia Fruitcake - I find this one very intriguing. The cake hails from Claxton, Georgia, home of the Claxton Fruitcake. How one town can support two fruitcake companies, I don't know.

See how many I still have to do? And these are only the Southern-style. Sheesh. Anyway, please vote in the comments, and write-ins will definitely be considered, as well--that's how I found the lovely Holy Spirit Monastery fruitcake. Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

Review: Robert Lambert 1-pound Dark Fruitcake

So here's the dark Robert Lambert fruitcake:

It looks about the same as the white one, but it is, of course, darker. This one looks and tastes much more like a traditional dark fruitcake--there seems to be more cherries than the light one, so when you slice it, it looks more like a traditional cake. It, just like the white one, has lots of stuff in it--figs, dates, and prunes, as well as more exotic peels, like blood orange and bergamot. It also includes both port wine and Jack Daniels.

Flavor, just as the previous one, is good and exotic, but a bit more traditional than the white fruitcake. Just as with the previous, the size of the ingredients in this loaf is a bit off-putting to me. It may be due to the small size of the loaf to begin with, but I really don't like how large the bits are. Plus, as I had mentioned in the Old Cavendish fruitcake review, I dearly love figs, dates, and prunes outside of a cake, but don't really love them inside one.

Just as with the Lambert white fruitcake, you can definitely taste the quality of the ingredients in this cake. This is a very good fruitcake: it's different, a bit exotic, and might be a great one to try if you're trying to find something different in a traditional dark fruitcake--this is a dark fruitcake that goes to 11, as Spinal Tap would say. However, because this one tastes more traditional than the white cake, I would probably purchase a monastery fruitcake over this one--you get more cake for your dollar.

Perhaps I'm jaded because I tried the white fruitcake first, but that one was really something different, and if I had to choose between purchasing one or the other, I'd definitely purchase the white fruitcake.

Review: Robert Lambert 1-pound White Fruit Cake

Look at this precious little gem.

I received the very wonderful gift of a set (white and dark) of Robert Lambert fruitcakes, for which I very much thank the sender. This is just a review of the white or lighter fruitcake – I still have the other little treasure in my fridge. It’s a beautiful fruitcake, but the price—the price. $50 for a 16 oz cake. That’s about $3 per ounce--roughly 3 times the price of most other fruitcakes I’ve reviewed. Is it worth it? Yes--once in your lifetime, it’s worth it. This fruitcake rocked my world. This could lead me down the path of seeking out higher-end fruitcake or, dare I say it, creating my own. Definitely a fruitcake for foodies.

The tiny-tiny, precious little loaf comes looking like a present from heaven, and smells divine. I undressed the cake like a lover. Here’s the cake itself:

Ingredients are all natural and the strangest ever. Dig the fruits: white raisin, dried pineapple, glacéed cherries, coconut, candied Meyer lemon peel, blood orange peel, bergamot peel, Rangpur lime peel, and Buddha’s hand citrus. The nuts? Brazil nuts, almonds, walnuts, and pecans. It is seasoned with ginger and brandy. This is what the $50 is going towards, I’d guess.

This is definitely a fruitcake for grown-ups. It contains large chunks of stringy, hairy things (the aforementioned peels, as well as the coconut). The cake batter itself is much like a good pound cake and, as is usual for a fruitcake, merely serves to bind the fruit together. The flavor? Exotically interesting, distinctive—a whole different fruitcake experience. It has a very heavy peel and ginger taste. It’s delicious and one of a kind, but a bit exhausting.

A couple years ago, my boyfriend and I went to Las Vegas and had dinner one evening at Guy Savoy, in Caesar’s Palace. It was the most fabulous dining experience of my life. The service was unobtrusively doting, the décor, fabulous, and Céline Dion’s husband was eating dinner with a group of Québécois a couple of tables away. There was someone designated to fold your napkin and put it back on the table for you if you went to the washroom. There was a little chair for my purse. And the food blew my mind. You get the idea. This fruitcake is like Guy Savoy. One time in your life you must try this fruitcake.

This is number one with a bullet, to the top of the Other category. I look forward to eating the next one.

Yes, I still exist

I am still alive!!! Just took a bit longer hiatus due to actual, you know, work stuff. But my first reviews of the new year will be so exciting . . . guess which one! Guess which one! Clues are in my last couple posts. Look for a new review soon.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to everyone. I am so relieved to no longer have any fruitcake left in my house, except one. Finally, after a long year of searching, ups and downs, happiness and futility, one final fruitcake comes to my door with a whispered "you don't need any others, baby". . . Gethsemani Farms. I will contentedly munch on that for the remainder of January, then take a blissful sabbatical until my fruitcake season starts up again--May, June, somewhere around there.

I have no fruitcake left in my house because I brought the remainders of the many cakes I reviewed this year over to my family's Christmas celebration. As I've already mentioned, just about all of my siblings and my Mom are fruitcake lovers from way back. So all the family tried the cakes I had in my freezer: Grandma's, Jane Parker Dark, Holy Spirit, and Hermitage Big Sur. Alas, there was no more Mary of Puddin Hill, for I had eaten all of that one . . . definitely my favorite Southern-style fruitcake.

It's always so interesting to get feedback from the family. For one, Grandma's got pretty good marks, after all my bitching and moaning. The reason, primarily, was that in contrast to the heavier, alcohol-rich flavors of the two monastery cakes, and the dark flavor of the Jane Parker, it was lighter, with a more approachable cake flavor. As for the brother-in-law whose mother's fruitcake reminded me of the Jane Parker cake . . . I think he liked it, but of course he still likes his mother's better.

One other thing I want to pass along--the Hermitage Big Sur cake fell apart after freezing. That one seems very alcohol-drenched and that may have had something to do with it. I may have cut the slices really thin, too (I freeze the cake in slices, not whole). It still tasted good, it was just kind of a mess.

So, the fruitcake slate is swept clean, a new year is upon us, and I look forward to more sweetness and good baking in the future. Happy New Year to all.

Review: Jane Parker 1 Pound Dark Fruitcake

Jane Parker is distributed by A&P food stores. There were A&P stores in the Chicago area when I was growing up, but there no longer are and I guess now they're only in the New York/New Jersey area. If anyone is reading this who can fill me in more about A&P and the Jane Parker fruitcake legend surrounding them, please do so in the comments.

I purchased the one-pound dark fruitcake (they call it fruit cake, with a space). It cost $20 including shipping. They seem to have worked out some type of purchasing and shipping arrangement with Amazon, as that's where you go to buy the cake. This cake wins as having the largest and most wasteful shipping box:



Hello, tiny little fruitcake. Welcome to my home! Perhaps they're implying that I should have bought more. The box that the cake comes in is nothing special, though there are some larger, ring fruitcakes available that come in pretty tins:

A bit presumptuous, don't you think, to call themselves America's Favorite? Finally, the fruitcake itself:

An aside (please skip this paragraph to continue the review): I realize that the following disclaimer is a long time coming, but here it finally is: for all of you who have stuck with me through this blog, and for anyone new or just coming upon this blog: I take lousy photos. It's not something I'm interested in, I don't own Photoshop, and I don't have tripods or lights. I'm really sorry that the best picture you have of these cakes is either a dark small photo (because I couldn't use the flash because of glare), or a shiny, glare-filled photo (because the dark photo was too blurry). I hope they're still a bit helpful.

Although this is a mass-produced fruitcake, I'm going to lump it in with the Other fruitcakes on my sidebar, because it is truly different. A couple of years ago my brother-in-law shared a couple slices of his mother's fruitcake with me. And I loved his attitude about it--he was all "this is my mom's fruitcake, it's what I grew up with, and although it might not be what you're used to, and you might not like it, I don't care." A big BRAVO to that attitude. The kind of fruitcake you love is influenced, I think, by the kind that you grew up with (maybe that's why many people don't like it, because they didn't grow up with any--pity). I'm not here to denigrate anyone's love of the fruitcake that jingles their bells. Well, on second thought, maybe I am a bit . . . but I, to paraphrase Voltaire, might not like your taste in fruitcake, but will defend to the death your right to have that taste in fruitcake.

Anyway, back to my brother-in-law. The Jane Parker fruitcake reminds me a bit of his mom's fruitcake (which was not bad in the least, just very different from what I'm used to). It's a cake, with fruit in it. As you can see from the photo above, there is a lot of cake in this fruitcake. The ingredents are not so great: they include partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, and caramel color. The dark fruitcake contains brown sugar and molasses, as well, and of course preserved fruit (which are called glaced fruit because the cake is actually made in Canada and that's what they call it--I think in the U.S. we call them candied fruit, but for some reason I call them preserved, which doesn't sound as nice but at least I'm consistent). The cake smells as if there's liquor in it, but there isn't a drop--maybe it's the fruit and spice I'm smelling, or even the molasses.

The cake has a very mild flavor--it tastes like spice cake with fruit in it. The fruit are your normal fruitcake size, not too large, not too small. This smaller cake is baked similarly to the one-pound Claxton fruitcakes, in that it was originally a larger cake that's cut into smaller loaves. The only nuts are the pecans on top, which are sort of lacquered down by an agar-corn syrup-corn starch glaze. I'm not keen on these glazes--the previous cake I reviewed had one that was more sticky and less like this one, which is a bit harder and you can sort of peel off the top like fruit leather. Sorry to be a little gross about that, but I'm not keen on glazes. It wasn't so off-putting that it kept me from eating the cake.

The flavor, as I touched upon previously, is really like a moist spice cake with fruit in it. I can see why there is a following for this fruitcake: because it's really quite different than either the heavy, boozy monastery fruitcakes, or the candy-like, nut-filled fruitcakes. It's much lighter, and if someone grew up with this as their definition of fruitcake, they might very well be appalled by the others and miss their relatively easy-going, likable cake.

This is not a cake that I would seek out. That being said, it's not unlikeable, and I won't be throwing it away. It's almost like a Christmas coffeecake--much more approachable than the other types of fruitcakes, and one to put into the "fruitcake for beginners" category I've mentioned in the past. So I've put it there--in the Other category, but notice that it's at the bottom.

If there are any Canadians reading this, I'd love to know if you know who actually makes these (they're distributed by A&P), and any other thoughts on the love (or dislike) of fruitcake in Canada. Because Canada has a closer relationship to England in some ways, there might be more of a tradition of Christmas cake.

Glögg: Liquid Fruitcake?

Have you ever had glögg? It's a Scandinavian drink, similar to a mulled wine but a bit thicker and sweeter. It contains all kinds of booze, sugar, fruit (normally raisins), almonds, spices. It's like liquid fruitcake. And perhaps (sigh) this is why a lot of people don't like it. I mean, I can understand that--a lot of people don't really drink warm alcoholic drinks, and it is mighty strong and sweet--a lot different, say, than a Miller Lite. But it is a really wonderful thing on a cold night. Cures what ails you.

A lot of people just haven't tried it. In Chicago, you can find it at Simon's in Andersonville. A couple of recipes here and here are similar to the glögg I've had--my ex-father-in-law made it with a similar recipe, and it was delicious. Skål!!