Review: Mary of Puddin Hill Pecan Fruitcake

I bought the 1.5 pound pecan fruitcake for $23.95 plus shipping and handling, which ended up being $30.90. Here’s the box it comes in:




Here’s the loaf: it comes in a pan that looks like the type that they can bake it in; it’s cardboard (although silver on the outside and nice looking, as cardboard goes). They also have larger cakes; the 2- and 3-pound cakes come in tins.



One of the best things about this cake is that it comes with its own storage bag and twist tie. What a great idea! Fruitcake is not something most people eat at one sitting (no, me neither), and I think that including this bag shows some nice knowledge of the customer and concern for the quality of their fruitcake.

I purchased the pecan fruitcake, but they also have variations with walnuts, apricots, and other combinations. The very first ingredient on their list is pecans, followed by dates, pineapples, cherries, sugar, wheat, eggs, and baking powder. That’s it. By the way, the pineapples are processed with turmeric—that could be why several fruitcakes have turmeric listed. Not sure. But a very fine ingredients list, I must say, and I really feel it is reflected in the quality and flavor of this cake.

I am not a big fan of Southern style fruitcakes, because I like my alcohol. As usual, this one doesn’t include it. But the flavor of this cake is really nice. First, you have to like nuts, because that really is almost all it is. The cake batter is actually very difficult to find, and in effect the cake is very candy-like in consistency, almost praline-like because of the abundance of pecans. The chunks of fruit (including my favorite, the date) add a little novelty to the heavy nut flavor. This cake has a very clean, fresh, home-made flavor. It’s not goopy; doesn’t taste carmelized; even the candied fruit tastes fresh and is neither hard nor gluey. There are no off flavors. Make no mistake, this is plenty sweet, though.

This goes right to the top of my Southern fruitcake list. It truly stands out because of the quality of the ingredients, the freshness, and the flavor. The cost is certainly justified—have you seen how much nuts cost lately?

Reviewing this one makes me feel a little bad about the Collin Street fruitcake review I did when I was just starting out and didn’t know my Southern style fruitcakes from any other kind. Until recently, they were at the top of my list of Southern style fruitcakes, but they really deserve to be dethroned by this one. It’s a goody.

UPDATE: Since this review, Mary of Puddin Hill has shut down operations. See updates here (read the comments, too).

New, improved sidebar!

A very slight change, I know, but I hope it will make ratings and reviews more clear to the fruitcake-buying public. My list of fruitcakes eaten and rated had become rather long and ungainly: that's a lot of calories, my friends, I have consumed, saving the overwhelmed fruitcake-buyer from unwise purchases. So I've broken up the list into four separate lists, based on the categories I've come up with to define, in general terms, the fruitcakes I review. I'll give a brief overview of each here, but also see this post for more information.

• Monastery fruitcakes: fruitcakes made exclusively by Catholic religious orders (Trappists, Benedictines, etc). My personal favorite, these are usually made with a minimum of artificial ingredients and have a rich flavor due to lots of preserved fruit and alcohol in the batter. They also might use darker sweeteners like brown sugar.


• Southern-style fruitcakes: these almost never contain alcohol and focus a lot on nuts, like walnuts or pecans. They tend to be from bakeries in the US South, like Texas or Georgia. You might see just a few more shortcut ingredients like margarine, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives, but not a lot. These often are almost candy-like, with batter being used primarily to hold all the ingredients together. As of this post, the number one spot is not filled in: that's because I have a new number one in this category, Mary of Puddin Hill, which I will review very soon. After I eat more of it.


• "Other" fruitcakes: Notice that the fruitcakes there are not numbered. That's because I'm not really comparing them to one another. These are one-offs, and I'd recommend them for people not that into fruitcake. They have slightly non-traditional flavorings or ingredients (like a bit of cinnamon in the Harry and David cake, and dried fruit in the Cavendish), which might make them a bit more accessible to those not into the more hardcore fruitcakes above. So far, I have two on the list, and I liked them both. I'll need to review another one like this soon.


• Mass-produced fruitcakes: Avoid all of these. OK, I'll say a bit more. I fear that these are the ones that give fruitcake a bad name. Most of these come very nicely packaged, with beautiful tins, etc. But these also have the worst ingredient lists: stocked full of high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, preservatives, turnips (no, really), and other unpleasantness. And it shows in their flavor: too sweet, strange textures, just really nasty. And remember, I like fruitcake.

So, there you go. I hope these lists makes things a bit more clear.

I certainly didn't know when I first began this folly that there were actually different types of fruitcake. Ah, how naive I was then--three years younger, and a few pounds thinner.

And to answer another common question: no, I'm never going to make my own fruitcake. Why should I, when so many other people already have?

Review: Grandma’s Bake Shoppe Original Fruit & Nut Cake

. . . aka Krema Products, aka Beatrice Bakery, aka Big Baking Conglomerate. Thanks to my commenters for help figuring out who, exactly, Grandma is. I purchased this two-pound fruitcake from The Sisters Sweet Shoppe in Dublin, Ohio, but I suspect that the Sisters are a way to put a down-home, authentic feel to a mass-produced product. The product came shipped in a box from “The Sister’s Sweet Shoppe/Grandma’s/Krema/Crazy R[I think this is Crazy Richards],” so they don’t even know who they are. One of my commenters mentioned that Beatrice bakery, which is also on my list, sells a fruitcake that is identical to this product, down to the ingredients list. Thanks Anonymous, I can cross another one off my list. Anonymous actually wrote a great, informative post, so I’ll include it here:

"Grandma's was my introduction to better (than Claxton or Jane Parker) fruitcake, back during Christmas of '75. Three spirits! Just like Dickens' tale. The two-pounder came in a lovely gilt, embossed box, and the aroma greeted you the moment you lifted the lid. This cake has come from everywhere. In the beginning I received it as a corporate gift, and then I ordered it from Figi's. I think it has been marketed under more than one label. Two years ago I ordered a cake from Butterfield Farms, and I declare it was a Grandma's, just repackaged. (I emailed my suspicion, but got no response.) For a brief period in the '80's the Grandma's producer, at that time Beatrice Foods in Nebraska, offered a very nice Amaretto version, delivered in an exquisite black, end-opening tin. But shortly thereafter, somebody in management decided fruitcakes were passé', and began marketing the basic product under the name "fruit and nut bar." Later still, it was back to "fruit and nut cake." And in a very plain green cardstock box, with a cellophane window. Our local purveyor of fancy Christmas foods stocked them near the front door, where the sunlight dried them out, and it was then that I realized how much syrup must be used in the production process. For several years my cakes had crunchy bits of crystallized sugar in them. By the turn of the millennium, I discovered your all-time favorite monk-made delight from Kentucky, and have tried other monastery cakes since (at your recommendation). For nostalgia's sake, I haven't forsaken Grandma's, but compared with better fruitcake it tastes very candy-like to me today. Much like our local favorite Southern Supreme, except with the spirits. Stay hopeful as you try this one, but not too . . ."

I agree with you, A. Anyway, the cake cost $25.95, with free UPS shipping. It comes in a very pretty tin:

That’s probably the best thing I can say about this fruitcake. As mass-produced fruitcakes go, it ranks at the top of the pack, but there are a whole bunch of other fruitcakes I would recommend before this one.

The cake itself is extremely light-colored, one of the lightest colored cakes I’ve come across (maybe it has something to do with ordering it in July, but I don’t think so):

Raisins, cherries, and pineapple are the fruits, while walnuts, pecans, and almonds are the nuts. It also contains three liquors: brandy, rum, and bourbon. With all of the aforementioned ingredients, one would think this one has a chance of tasting good. Well, the ingredients previously mentioned are offset by corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, many preservatives, and our buddy, turmeric. The cake has an uncooked batter flavor to it—very sweet. In any case, it still doesn’t taste all that great. The texture of the cake itself was similar to the Gethsemani Farms cake, and compared to the previous Hermitage Big Sur fruitcake, it was much lighter. I liked the texture, but texture alone can not redeem a fruitcake. I think that the three liquors gives this cake a slight edge up on the mass-produced fruitcakes that don’t contain any alcohol, but it still just doesn’t taste good.

At least there are no turnips.

Cute little Swiss fruitcakes

So I was recently in Switzerland and stumbled upon a couple of fruity baked things. One is called Läckerli Früchtebrot, and it's an older brother to these cookies that I had mentioned previously. It really was a loaf-shaped incarnation of the cookies, a bit moister but tasting the same. The loaf was very thinly sliced, and contained the same things as the cookies, including the Kirsch. It was quite delicious--I love Läckerli, so to have it in a bit moister fruitcake format was a wonderful thing.

While in Switzerland, I went with a friend to a small town called Sent in the Graubünden area. It's a beautiful area, with high mountains, steep valleys, cows and goats, and in the town of Sent, a local specialty called Bündner Birnbrot. This really wasn't a cake so much as a bread, as its name suggests (the brot part). It was a yeast bread, but it was chock full of dried fruit and fruitcake spices, as well as whole hazelnuts, which was really cool. The closest thing I could liken it to was either the batter in a stollen (minus any fillings and powdered sugar), or a closer resemblance was the Ami de Fromage bread at Red Hen here in Chicago. Man, Red Hen has to have the worst web site for such a successful operation. I guess their reputation precedes them and they don't really need a good website.

So, it's 84 degrees here, and that gets me thinking about only one thing: fruitcake. Time for the next one. Since I've just done a monastery one, let's move on to a mass-produced one. The next one will be Grandma's fruitcake, chosen because Grandma (aka the Krema group, the baking conglomerate that creates them) hails from Dublin, OH, close to Delaware, home of the Little Brown Jug. Check it out--the most interesting county fair ever. According to the Krema site, there are three different types of liquor in the fruitcake--so they've got that going for them. Here's hoping (against hope) that this cake doesn't disappoint.

(Also, check out these chicks from the Krema site--I mean, look at them. I'm speechless).