Christmas in the Kitchen: Fruitcake Edition
Is there a traditional family recipe that makes an appearance on your dinner table each holiday season? The Brown family fruitcake has blessed many-a-Christmas meal over the years, and this December we wanted to give the polarising fruitcake the old college try using a traditional Canadian recipe. Join our Administrative Coordinator Pamela Dungao as she pens a delightful journey full of nostalgia, head-scratching historical research, and triumphant cakey-goodness.
“It’s always the same. A morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of the year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: ‘It’s fruitcake weather!’”
Every year, December comes and goes like a blur of never-ending plans with family and friends. Memories of it are often filled with laughter – the way I would look across the table and there would always be a cousin, an aunt, or a friend red in the face, holding their stomach from laughing too much. Between us, at the centre of many of these gatherings, there is always food. Plenty of it.
In my family, we celebrate Noche Buena. It translates to “good night” in Spanish, but it is simply Christmas Eve for many Filipinos where we feast from midnight to Christmas morning. The table would be adorned with the most delicious and richest of dishes. A plate of cured ham with pineapple glaze. A serving bowl full of beef stew cooked in tomatoes with carrots, bell peppers, and chunks of potatoes. Spring rolls and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf are presented on a platter. Noodles to celebrate a long, healthy life are served on the side and present at every celebration. All of this would be topped-off with a sweet fruit salad soaked in condensed milk and a helping of a creamy custard with caramel syrup. Always, I come out of December fuller, in both appetite and in spirit.
A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, illustrated by Beth Peck (Knopf Books, 1989)
Food is also at the centre of Truman Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory.” It is the anticipation and joy of making fruitcake that propels much of the narrative. For the narrator, Buddy, it shapes the memory of his friend, an elderly woman who is childlike in her ways, his dear pet dog named Queenie, and a childhood in the countryside that was full of wonder and comfort, no matter how scrappy. To make fruitcake marked the beginning of the holiday season. It was tradition. A ritual. They would spend the entire year making sure they have enough in their Christmas savings to buy the ingredients to make fruitcake. They gathered fallen pecans at the first sign of “fruitcake weather.” They make the trek to meet with an intimidating bootlegger for whisky who accepts fruitcake as payment instead of two dollars. After all this, they would commit four days to making thirty-one cakes to mail out.
I remember the appearance of fruitcake at many Christmases growing up. The dark and rich cake was synonymous with the holidays. They would be gifted to my parents with pride on how long the cake was soaked in brandy or rum to preserve it for weeks leading up to Christmas. Oftentimes, it would come rectangular in shape. Sometimes, it would be round. When cut into smaller pieces, as a kid, I remember the sight of the glistening speckled mosaic of candied fruit that reveals itself inside the crumble and the waft of warm spices that follows. I cringed. Growing up, it was hard to accept fruitcake when there were more delicious, kid-friendly options, like chocolate cake.
Yet, in honour of Buddy and the memory of his friend, I decided to make fruitcake. To keep with The Brown Homestead’s value of sharing historical narratives and traditions within the common Canadian household, I chose a recipe from The New Galt Cook Book, first published in 1898.
Cover of The New Galt Cook Book, edited by Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught (Toronto: McLeod & Allen, 1989) (Source: Library and Archives Canada)
The New Galt Cook Book was published as a community cookbook featuring recipes submitted by women in the surrounding areas of southwestern Ontario by way of their husband’s name (1). My, how times have changed. It was first aimed to be an ancillary tool to the housewife engaging in the art of cookery with tried and tested recipes, and became an essential in many English Canadian kitchens at the turn of the century (2). Cookbooks like these offer a glimpse of everyday domestic life in the past including what people ate and what ingredients and tools were available to them. There are twelve different fruitcake recipes listed in the “Cake” section of The New Galt Cook Book. All contain similar ingredients with varying ratios. There is always sugar, butter, flour, and dried fruit such as currants or raisins. The occasional almonds or walnuts and candied peel are omitted in other recipes and kept in some, while the use of spices would range from using just cinnamon to including nutmeg and cloves. Some listed their recipe as “Fruit Cake'' or “Plum cake,” as the term plum has been used to refer to raisins or currants since as early as 1660 (3). Others listed it with more specific occasions in mind – “Christmas Cake,” “Wedding Cake”, and even “Elsie’s Cake.”
Pages from The New Galt Cook Book, edited by Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught (Toronto: McLeod & Allen, 1989) (Source: Library and Archives Canada)
I chose a recipe from Mrs. Thomas Todd who noted the use of brandy or whisky for her recipe. One tumbler of it, to be exact. “Perfect!” I thought. I had whisky on my mind after our fall donor event which featured a whisky tasting paired with the rich history of taverns and whisky in the Niagara region. Mrs. Thomas Todd also noted the use of the following ingredients:
Two pounds raisins
Two pounds currants
One ounce mixed spice
One pound flour
One pound brown sugar
One pound butter
One dozen eggs
Two nutmegs
Half teaspoonful of soda
I sat down and started planning my way through this recipe, which is no more than a few lines long. It offered a couple of instructions: “Bake for three hours” (no specific temperature listed) and “Instead of two nutmegs and one ounce mixed spices, one tablespoon of cinnamon may be used” (Great! I love substitutions and solutions!). As a home baker, I was so used to reading recipes that had several detailed steps and instructions that required so much attention that this almost felt like a breath of fresh air. Almost, because as a home baker who has also experienced more failures than successes when putting something in the oven and crossing my fingers it comes out edible, I have learned that baking is a science. There is always a method to all the madness that ensues in the kitchen
Luckily, the section on “Cake” is prefaced with general tips and tricks on cake making including how to prevent the batter from sticking to the tin by greasing it, heating the bowl to mix the butter and sugar, and making sure that the fruitcake is cooked low and slow to prevent it from burning. Luckily too, I had gained enough knowledge on cake making from all the trials and tribulations of experiencing it through the years. I knew that the best way to go about tackling this was being mindful of how to handle the wet and dry ingredients. I also knew that because I couldn’t rely on late 1800s equivalent measurements alone and because Mrs. Thomas Todd’s recipe looks like it would yield a larger batch of fruitcake (note the absolutely bonkers use of one dozen eggs!), I measured my ingredients by weight, making sure to decrease the serving size to one loaf only.
Here are my adjustments:
225 grams of flour
1 ½ teaspoon each of ground cloves, ground nutmeg, and cinnamon to make the spice mix
¼ teaspoon of baking powder
¼ teaspoon of kosher salt
170 grams of butter (room temperature)
170 grams of brown sugar
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
75 grams each of raisins, currants, and dried cranberries
100 grams of whisky
The fruitcake before baking
I let the raisins, currants, and dried cranberries soak in whisky first before tackling the rest of the recipe. Doing this rehydrated the dried fruits and made them plumper before adding it to the cake mix. I then made sure to mix the dry ingredients together, incorporating the flour, mixed spices, baking powder, and kosher salt into one bowl before setting it aside. I proceeded to cream the butter and the sugar together before adding the rest of the wet ingredients. Eggs went in first, adding them one by one into the butter and cream mixture to incorporate fully. This was followed by mixing in the dried fruit with the leftover whisky and vanilla extract. After this, I folded the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients before baking it in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, for about 60 minutes.
As it baked, the smell of spices and the sweetness of sugar and butter began to fill and overwhelm my house. I peered through the oven window and watched as the batter rose in the loaf pan, the crust settling and browning at the top. I wondered what a cake like this might have looked like, bubbling away inside the John Brown House’s two-century-old bake oven. I kept my fingers crossed until I pulled it out of the oven an hour later, poking the centre with a toothpick only for it to come out clean (a success). I let it cool before wrapping it tightly with saran wrap and a Ziplock bag to store it in the fridge. I couldn’t taste it yet. I had to wait. Like Buddy and his friend who made their fruitcake in November to mail out by December after their fruitcakes had seasoned, I would take it out of the fridge every other day and soak it in whisky for the next week before serving it to the staff at the Homestead. A week soaking in whisky is nothing compared to what others have done to let the flavours of their cake age and mature for weeks leading up to Christmas day.
Cutting into the fruitcake and being able to share it with everyone after waiting for a week felt like opening a present!
A week later I brought the cake to the Homestead the same day we scheduled to deck the John Brown House with Christmas decorations. It felt right. We were all getting into the Christmas spirit, adorning the interior of the John Brown House with greenery, ribbons, ornaments, and candles. There was even a light flurry of snow outside. At the end of it all, I presented the cake to the staff and the volunteers. I warned them that I have never made fruitcake and that this was technically a recipe from 1898. I was reminded that a bad fruitcake is not uncommon. It is part of its reputation and its history, which is reassuring. Still, I held my breath as I cut the first slice and handed it over to someone to have the first taste. To my surprise and relief, everyone loved it! There were comments about how it was light, moist, and flavourful. They could even taste enough of the whisky that had settled in the cake crumb.
I admitted to having made a few tweaks to the original recipe, of course; like playing with the measurements, adding vanilla extract and salt, and spreading a thin layer of cream cheese frosting in hopes that it would save the flavour. A part of me suspects that these small changes made the fruitcake more palatable. After all, these additions were what I had in my baking toolkit. I made use of a KitchenAid mixer to help me mix all the ingredients together instead of scalding the bowl to soften the butter and sugar. I had access to a modern oven with all the controls to keep time and temperature consistent. I added dried cranberries simply because they were available at Walmart. I knew that including a touch of vanilla extract and salt would help to enhance flavours in baking. The act of adapting traditional, old recipes is not new to me. When my family moved to Canada from the Philippines, it was one of the only ways we were able to continue to enjoy the taste of home even as we settled into a new place, halfway across the world. We swapped ingredients with what was readily available, not unlike how fruitcake has been adapted through the centuries, in many different places.
Because of this, every iteration of the fruitcake is unique and carries its own history, with recipes adapted and traditions passed down from one generation to the next, shared between family, friends, and neighbours. Recipes of dried fruit, honey, and wine mixed in mashed barley can be found as early as ancient Rome (4). They have been compared to today’s energy bars, eaten to sustain soldiers and crusaders during long periods of travel with the use of alcohol to keep it stable (5). By the Middle Ages in Europe with the expansion of trade routes, spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves became symbols of status and wealth (6). The addition of butter and eggs, and the introduction of sugar helped make this early confection into a richer and more decadent dish suited for celebrations (7). While fruitcake proliferated all over Europe (with names such as stollen in Germany; Bolo Rei in Portugal; panforte or panettone in Italy), it eventually travelled all over the world during the age of exploration and colonization (8). It made its way into places like North America, Australia, the Caribbean, India, and in the Philippines with the arrival of European explorers and settlers, and remained there as part of its culinary heritage (9).
The fruitcake in front of the summer kitchen hearth in the John Brown House
About a week ago, I also received a copy of the Brown family’s treasured fruitcake recipe. I was so excited because the use of 12 entire eggs reminded me of Mrs. Thomas Todd’s recipe! No wonder everyone had chickens on the farm back then. This was the same fruitcake recipe used by Grandma Elma Robins Brown, who was born in the year of Canadian Confederation, to make the family Christmas cake and many of her granddaughter’s wedding cakes. We have Grandma Elma Brown’s cake pans in our collection at The Brown Homestead, pictured with the fruitcake above. Seeing it displayed with the cake, it is easy to imagine many Brown weddings and Christmas celebrations with a three-tiered fruitcake that were baked in those tins, towering over all the other dishes. It would be hard to miss. I imagine all the memories built around it too and how the smell and taste of a single slice can bring these memories back to life.
Grandma Elma Brown’s Fruit Cake recipe.
It is no wonder that at the core of Buddy’s Christmas memory is food – from making it to sharing it. Even as Buddy grows up and leaves home, his friend continues the tradition of baking fruitcakes by herself and sending him “the best of the batch.” This act reminds him of her and his home. Baking a cake, like many of the foods we get to enjoy during the holidays, is a time-consuming endeavour even with today’s technology and tools; I am sure that it would have been even more so back then (10). Fruitcake is no different. Every step of the way is intentional – from being mindful to mix the wet and dry ingredients properly to waiting patiently for the flavours to mature with liquor and time – there is so much care and energy that goes into a single dish, to be enjoyed by so many. Even The New Galt Cook Book warns its readers to “Never undertake cake unless it is you are willing to the business amount of time and labour needed to make it well.” Perhaps this is why fruitcake continues to return every Christmas. Whether you like it or not, it is a labour of love.
If you would like to listen to a reading of Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” check out Season 3, Episode 9 of our podcast, The Open Door, with special guest Jennifer Humeniuk.
Footnotes
(1) “Browse The New Galt Cook Book,” A Celebration of Canadian Cook Books, Library and Archives Canada, last modified June 28, 2005.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Darra Goldstein, eds. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 120.
(4) Jeffrey Miller, “The misunderstood fruitcake has a magnificent shelf life — and history,” PBS, accessed December 6, 2023.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, 286-287.
(8) Miller, “The misunderstood fruitcake”; Célia Pedroso, “The Origins of Bolo-Rei, or King Cake, in Lisbon,” Culinary Backstreets, accessed December 13, 2023.
(9) Mentions of fruitcake as staples in Australia, the Caribbean, and India can be found in the following resources: Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets; Mayukh Sen, “How — and Why — Did the Fruitcake Become a Slur?”, Food 52, accessed December 12, 2023; and Laura Buchar, “For Caribbean Families, Black Cake Is So Much More Than A Labour of Love,” Food Network, accessed December 12, 2023.
(10) Until the early 18th century, making fruitcake took a lot of time: butter needed to be washed and rinsed; sugar needed to be pounded and sieved; raisins de-seeded and chopped; currants sorted and dried; almonds slivered; spices grounded; eggs beaten with a wooden fork for hours until it stiffened; and the bread oven had to be prepared and heated hours earlier which still needed to be raked from ashes. Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, 286.