When my sister and I were little, we would make the annual trek to Aunt Mariana and 
Uncle Doodle’s house for a holiday visit. Aunt Mariana would reach up high into her pantry and take down the fruitcake we were forced to eat each Christmas.
My sister and I would politely taste a forkful of this brown crumbly creation studded with eerily bright red and green fruits. We would take one bite and then cover the remaining bits with our napkins. Reading each other’s minds we would both think, “yes, but where’s the frosting?”
Children hate fruitcake. But many decades later, those early negative impressions were replaced by a romantic afternoon’s experience, on a rainy October day looking out over Lake Como, consuming the local fig and nut cake washed down by grappa. What a difference time (and grappa and a romantic companion) can make.
This season —after years of building a fan base on two coasts for my labor-intensive Christmas cookies—I’ve decided to wade into deeper, more mythic culinary territory. Yes, I’m making fruitcake this year. Armed with Lisa Jensen’s great-aunt’s recipe—but only as a working blueprint which I will revise into oblivion—I have built an arsenal of nuts, dried fruits, and yes, whisky.
Aunt Mariana didn’t have all the choices that I do in terms of organic dried cherries, figs, cranberries, hand-made candied orange and lemon peel, crystallized ginger. Though she did have booze. As Lisa has advised me, I will be putting together a huge menagerie of nuts, fruits, spices, butter, eggs, molasses and, yes, whisky—and making my first-ever fruitcake the day after Thanksgiving. I cannot wait!
Useful Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/nov/17/how-cook-perfect-christmas-cake
Happy baking.
Christina, You wax poetic! You conjure up visions of Shakespeare’s first scene of “Macbeth”; however, “Jim Beam”…surely such an effort warrants at least “Jack Daniels”!
Dinnylou – you know I originally wanted to use Jack Daniels, but was talked out of it by my sweetie who claimed that fruitcake didn’t need more costly liquor.
I now realize how wrong he was – and in future ceremonial dousings I will up the ante, alcohol-wise.
Thanks for your comment!
Christina
As all the good chefs proclaim: “If you wouldn’t drink it it”…
Jim Beam is real Bourbon Whiskey. Jack Daniels is real Sour Mash Whiskey. They aren’t the same thing.
It’s not a matter of one being a “better” version of the same thing, it’s two different things, entirely.
Does the fruit cake give a damn? I’ll try to answer that after I finish this fifth of Jim Beam! Wooo Hooo!
I merely meant I prefer the flavor of Jack Daniels…if you are using whiskey.
Personally, for fruitcake I prefer a good brandy…Remy Martin is nice. I bet the fruitcake would enjoy a swig of that!
Dinnylou … I’m also sure the fuitcake would enjoy Remy Martin. C’mon over. I have cigars that go well with that beverage!
Sorry Frank…I don’t drink or smoke any more…