Fruitcake Day

What the day is

Fruitcake Day is observed on December 27, just after Christmas, when the cakes that were given or baked for the season are still around. It celebrates fruitcake, a dense, spiced cake studded with candied fruit and nuts, and it is often marked with good-natured jokes about how long a fruitcake can last.

The jokes are well-worn. Fruitcake has a reputation as the gift nobody wants, and comedians have long treated it as an object passed from household to household. The better cakes deserve more credit than that.

Origin and background

Fruitcake is old. Ancient Roman cooks made a dense mixture of pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins, and medieval European bakers added honey, spices and dried fruit from the trade routes. The ingredients were expensive, so the cake was reserved for feasts, and because sugar and alcohol preserve it, it kept for months. The British Christmas cake and the Dundee cake are close relatives.

In the United States fruitcake became a mail-order specialty in the early twentieth century. Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, began shipping them in the 1890s, and the Claxton Bakery in Claxton, Georgia, which has been baking them since 1910, calls itself the fruitcake capital of the world. The cakes are traditionally soaked or brushed with brandy or rum and aged for weeks, which deepens the flavor.

Properly made and stored, a fruitcake can last a surprisingly long time, though stories of ones that are decades old are best treated as curiosities rather than recommendations.

How to take part

• Taste a good fruitcake, preferably a bakery one with real fruit and nuts, before judging the whole category.
• Bake one at home, using candied peel and dried fruit soaked in juice or spirits.
• Slice it thin and serve it with tea, cheese or a spoonful of cream.
• Try a lighter version, such as a white fruitcake or a Dundee cake topped with almonds.
• If you really cannot stand it, join a fruitcake toss, a mildly violent tradition that exists in several towns.