Tales from the Steppes

2005-11-30

8:40 a.m.
Wednesday, November 30

Don't need a sword to cut thru flowers oh no, oh no
Whatever gets you thru your life it's alright, it's alright
- John Lennon

Last night I started making this year's batch of fruitcakes. It's ok to laugh. Really. If 15 years ago you had told me I would make and actually consume fruitcake of any ilk, I would not have believed you. But then one day I found a recipe for a cake that contained only dried fruits and nuts, soaked in alcohol, and held together by an unobjectionable cake material. What was not to like? No nasty red and green candied cherries or any other unidentified candied objects - the only candied thing in this recipe is the ginger. So every year that I can find the time, I make these cakes. By the time the holidays roll around, they will have sat in alcohol soaked cheesecloth for several weeks. This year I added dried cranberries to the mix, which is a little poncy, but may work. We will see.

Fruitcakes have always been a punchline to a joke in my house. I have never told my siblings that I make these because they would hurt themselves laughing at the vision. Every year my grandparents would send a nasty Claxton fruitcake, which would never be eaten. The fruitcakes would hang around for years, as we would feel too guilty to throw the damn thing away but were not desperate enough to ever eat it. There was one that became the family present that was passed around and hidden in cars as you tried to drive away without it. Even after my brother and sister moved away, the question of who got the fruitcake on Christmas was always a hot topic. And if you got the fruitcake, it was your sacred duty to hold on to it until the following year and suitably hide the venerable object.

Sort of like the Black Diamond bread.

Only heavier.

Sometimes, if you were the recipient, it was fun to make no mention of having gotten this present. Pretend like there was nothing unusual in the box you had just opened. Make the other people actually ask after the object.

At some point in time we added a pecan log to the mix as well, pecan logs being another object of family derision. Since all of my grandparents lived in one smallish town in southern Georgia, holidays were often spent driving. And one of the few places to stop when you are in the middle of nowhere in the South is Stuckeys, home of nasty pecan logs. Now, I like pecans. I bear no grudge against the poor nut. I like toasted pecans, pecan pie, cinnamon pecans, candied pecans on blue cheese, pecans in most incarnations. But I absolutely loathe nasty nougat rolled in pecans, left to harden on a store shelf until it becomes as unpliable as a stick of rattan and about as edible. My siblings feel the same way. So as we got older and made independent trips to see our grandparents, trips to Stuckeys became occasions to buy unspeakable objects to slip in each others stockings.

The last fruitcake survived well after the fruitcake-giving grandparents died. And then the SU got hungry one day and ate it. I think he ate the pecan log as well.

Now his father and his wife send us a small one every year. And the SU eats those as well. They are too small to send to be the "one true fruitcake" as they would not break your foot if you dropped it on yourself. But perhaps I will hunt down a suitable replacement to give to my father this year, hidden in an innocent-looking box. It is important that it be the same rectangular bar that we all know and dread. A round cake will not do. If I can find a Claxton cake, great. But that is not the most important factor. Size, shape, heft, adulterated fruit composition, plastic wrap, made in Georgia - those are the things that count here.