Hear us out! In this holiday episode, Anna & Lia slice into that much maligned Christmas staple, fruitcake - and hopefully change your mind about it. Lia takes us to the small-town Texas bakery that pumps out 30,000 fruitcakes a day (!) and a medieval fruitcake toss competition in Colorado. We also hear how literary legend Truman Capote made fruitcake a sacred food in his Alabama hometown, and how his aunt became “The Fruitcake Lady” with her own bizarre segment on The Tonight Show. In the Deep Dish, Anna tells us about the fascinating journey of fruitcake from crusader energy bar to royal wedding cake, and shares the different versions from all over the world - including a particularly traumatic experience she had with the Irish kind, Plum Pudding. But Listeners, there's one Fruitcake Mystery we need your help solving: WTF are those green things?!
Connect with us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram & Twitter, join our Facebook Group, and check out our webpage.
Explore more from the show:
Listen to Truman Capote's beautiful reading of A Christmas Memory
Watch our favorite Tonight Show guest, the Fruitcake Lady, give people very interesting advice
Watch this clip of the great fruitcake toss and the amazing inventions that accompany it
Find episode transcripts here.
Hear us out! In this holiday episode, Anna & Lia slice into that much maligned Christmas staple, fruitcake - and hopefully change your mind about it. Lia takes us to the small-town Texas bakery that pumps out 30,000 fruitcakes a day (!) and a medieval fruitcake toss competition in Colorado. We also hear how literary legend Truman Capote made fruitcake a sacred food in his Alabama hometown, and how his aunt became “The Fruitcake Lady” with her own bizarre segment on The Tonight Show. In the Deep Dish, Anna tells us about the fascinating journey of fruitcake from crusader energy bar to royal wedding cake, and shares the different versions from all over the world - including a particularly traumatic experience she had with the Irish kind, Plum Pudding. But Listeners, there's one Fruitcake Mystery we need your help solving: WTF are those green things?!
Connect with us at @FoodDayPod on Instagram & Twitter, join our Facebook Group, and check out our webpage.
Explore more from the show:
Listen to Truman Capote's beautiful reading of A Christmas Memory
Watch our favorite Tonight Show guest, the Fruitcake Lady, give people very interesting advice
Watch this clip of the great fruitcake toss and the amazing inventions that accompany it
Find episode transcripts here.
ANNA 00:03
Hi Everyone! From YumDay and Van Valin Productions, this is “Every Day is a Food Day”
ANNA 00:25
I’m your host, Anna Van Valin.
LIA 00:26
And I’m your other host, Lia Ballentine. On “Every Day is a Food Day,” we celebrate food stories, from our calendars to our kitchens.
ANNA 00:34
It’s the holidays, so it’s time to talk about that controversial Christmas standby: Fruitcake!
LIA 00:42
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Help other listeners find the show by sharing, rating, and reviewing.
ANNA 00:49
Food stories are people stories, so we want to hear from you! Join our online community by connecting with us on Instagram and Twitter @FoodDayPod, and join our Facebook group.
LIA 00:57
And for more info and resources, check out the show notes and visit us at yumday.co/podcast.
ANNA 01:11
Happy Holidays, Lia!
LIA 01:12
Happy Holidays, Anna!
ANNA 01:14
Happy Holidays, Listeners! You did it. We did it. We made it to the end of 2020.
LIA 01:19
We made it.
ANNA 01:22
We are so happy to all be together. And a special hello and welcome to all the people that connected with us online. On all our social media. We're building the most lovely little community.
LIA 01:33
Is so nice to see all these new likes and follows and people commenting. So Sweet!
ANNA 01:40
We want to hear your food stories too. It's great. This is an interactive thing, and if you haven't joined us, please do. Now I sound like a cult leader. JOIN US. I just mean like I just mean follow us on Instagram, People. There's no, There's no Kool-aid. There's no white tennis shoes.
LIA 01:58
No sashes that you have to wear.
ANNA 02:01
But I will kiss you on the mouth, every last one of you. (kiss noise) I'll see you at volleyball.
LIA 02:09
Yeah.
ANNA 02:10
That as a reference to the VOW, If you haven't watched it.
LIA 02:11
Yeah, in addition to food, we're really into cults.
ANNA 02:16
Murder shows, cult shows.
LIA 02:20
What if we do like a food/true-crime podcast? I mean, we kind of got it into the true crime. You know category with the Maple Syrup Heist.
ANNA 02:28
With the heist. Yeah, I think we're going to cover more and more food crimes. A bunch of food criminals.
BOTH 02:37
Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, duh.
ANNA 02:43
Please don't leave us. What kind of traditional holiday foods does your family do?
LIA 02:47
Oh Gosh. Well, we always have, in our Filipino family. I mean tons of food. Pancit, which is the noodle dish I talked about in our first episodes is, you know, like a must-have and one of the reasons we have noodle dishes like during Christmas and New Years is noodles are a symbol of long life. So you want to make sure that you're eating, getting your noodles in Long life, prosperity. But there's always just so much food during the Holidays in general, and I feel like being, you know, Filipino and then growing up in Filipino communities, you're just constantly eating at somebody else's house like every hour, just alright. Hop in the minivan and now we're going to this other aunt and uncle's house. And they're all always your aunts and uncles, right? Everyone's your cousin. And then you just sit there and eat, and then you go to the next person's house, and then you sit there and you eat.
ANNA 03:44
So at the end of the day, do you hate noodles or you're just like, yes, actually I'm in heaven. Noodles all day, every day.
LIA 03:48
They are actually really good. The leftover noodles. They're so good, I'll eat them cold, straight out of the refrigerator.
ANNA 03:55
Mmhmm. I bet. Cool, Yeah in Buffalo we eat our Christmas wings.
LIA 03:58
Oh, what makes a wing a Christmas wing?
ANNA 04:00
We eat it at Christmas. It's like a regular wing, but you eat at Christmas instead of eating at times other than Christmas. So it's your Christmas wings.
LIA 04:09
Well, that does make it special.
ANNA 04:16
So today, we're gonna talk about fruitcake. Lia, why did you wanna talk about fruitcake?
LIA 04:22
Fruitcake is just so weird and kind of fascinating to me because to me, it's not really very fruity, and I don't think of it as being cakey. I think of it more as like a brick. Maybe it's because the fruit cakes that I've had in life have always been some kind of, I don't know, like a gift that somebody picked up from the convenience store on their way to this obligatory Christmas party and they had to give you something, so they're like, here's a fruitcake. But when I was looking at food holidays, there is a National Fruitcake day, so apparently, enough people like it or think it's significant enough to create an entire food holiday around it.
ANNA 05:08
Well, that's something I wanna talk about later, which is that fruitcake has this sort of reputation as being just this simple, kind of yucky thing that's kind of a joke, but it's sort of a perennial staple, but it actually has this incredible history. Every culture has one. It is a long and storied food product and... Yes, super weird. So I'm really excited to talk about this today.
LIA 05:34
Me too, and maybe we don't get to talk about fruitcake enough, so I'm glad that we can do it and share more fruit cake stories.
ANNA 05:40
I'm just excited to talk about fruit cake in a positive light. Not just a negative butt of a joke, but let's really give some respect to this food: Fruit cake. I guess I just personally, I have a lot of empathy for outcasts, which extends to vilified food.
LIA 05:57
Yeah. So fruitcake, there's a National Fruitcake Day. It is on December 27th. So just a few days after Christmas, we get National Fruitcake Day. Now, the origin of the celebration itself is unknown, but you know, again, Google has indexed it. It's on a lot of internet holiday calendars, and that tells me it's for real. But I mean, whether you wanna say that, Okay, December 27th is actually a fruit cake day, you can't deny that December is pretty much fruit cake season. This is the time of year where you're gonna see fruitcake. If you don't know what fruit cake is, that's on you.
ANNA 06:43
You need a basic education in order to appreciate the show... Okay, we're not here for that.
LIA 06:47
Yeah, I'm not gonna waste my time. No, I'll tell you what fruitcake is, it's a dense cake, it's made with dried candied fruits, nuts, spices, it's really heavy. But a proper fruitcake, the traditional recipe, means that this cake has actually been soaked in alcohol over time. So real fruit cake takes work.
ANNA 07:08
Yeah, that's one of the things that was so fascinating to me is the process of making this thing. It takes time. It takes care. It takes booze. So much booze.
LIA 07:19
A lot of booze.
ANNA 07:21
Yeah, and it's actually a really delicate process, but don't take my word for it. Listen, Paul Hollywood.
CLIP 07:28
Great British Bake Off
Paul Hollywood: “The fruitcake, for me is one of the basics of baking. Pick a great sponge base, fill it with fruit. But it’s about the consistency of the batter. Too thin, all the fruit will drop down to the bottom. Too thick, they all stay at the top. Get the balance right, and it will bake beautifully.”
LIA 07:43
Fruitcake started being mass-produced in the early 1900s, and in the US in 1913 was when you could first order fruit cake by mail. And now today, during the month of December, you can pretty much find fruit cakes everywhere. So last year, I actually picked up a fruit cake from Cost Plus World Market to celebrate Fruit Cake Day, and you know it tasted, it tasted okay. But I did kind of just eat around the fruits...
ANNA 08:12
Oh no. Just the cake part?
LIA 08:15
Yeah, I just ate the cakey part and it was good, it was all right, but it was a disservice to myself because there are places in America that are known for making real traditional fruit cakes, and I live just south of one of them.
ANNA 08:31
Really?
LIA 08:32
Yeah, so I live in Austin, Texas, and one day when I was driving up to Dallas, I passed... What is the Collin Street Bakery? The Collin Street Bakery is a family-owned and operated bakery in Corsicana, Texas, which you might have heard of that city... In the Netflix docu-series, Cheer.
ANNA 08:52
Yes!
LIA 08:53
But yeah, I don't live that far away from one of the places that makes the most fruit cakes in America.
ANNA 09:01
Have you had one?
LIA 09:02
I've not had one, but I have, they make these to order, and I can order it online. Yeah, so I'm thinking I might have to get a fruit cake delivery.
ANNA 09:14
Yeah, get a real fruitcake and report back.
LIA 09:17
I will...
ANNA 09:19
Wait, Collin Street Bakery? Didn't he have a scandal? I read about that. /A fruitcake scandal.
LIA 09:24
/ Yes they did. A fruitcake scandal.
ANNA 09:25
Oh my God, to tell me about it. I'm so excited. /Speaking of food criminals...
LIA 09:35
So Collin Street Bakery. /Yeah. They're out there, guys. Well, what happened at the Collin Street Bakery was that a former executive, I think it was the finance person, the corporate controller for the bakery embezzled approximately 16 million dollars from the company.
ANNA 09:52
What? How does a friggin bakery make 16 million dollars? Well, how does a freaking bakery not notice that they lose 16 million dollars?
LIA 09:59
Well, this tells me that Collin Street Bakery was really rolling in the dough /to not notice the $16 million...
ANNA 10:07
/Oh Lia, oh Lia. I’m going to let that one slide.
LIA 10:10
Yeah, so the Collin Street Bakery, does make pretty good revenue, it produces about a million fruit cakes a year during the holiday season. Yeah, during the holidays, they bake, I think around 30000 fruit takes a day, and it's such an important company in the community during the holidays, they have to hire in several hundred extra people to help with this production. So obviously, Collin Street Bakery is doing pretty good, and I guess the Corporate Controller saw that and decided to take advantage of the dollars just rolling into the bakery, and he and his wife embezzled $16 million, and they were doing things like flying around in private jets, and I think they said they had purchased over 38 vehicles during the time they worked there... Yes.
ANNA 11:03
What? For the two of them?
LIA 11:04
Oh yeah.
ANNA 11:06
Way to fly below the radar guys. But they got caught.
LIA 11:11
But they got caught. They got caught. They got caught. I read a great um, motion by the detectives about this guy who was trying to kind of hide all of the stuff that you know, he bought with the stolen money, and it said... it said that he was trying to cover up the fruits of the crime.
ANNA 11:32
See everyone loves a pun. Even lawyers. Even the FBI.
LIA 11:37
The FBI. Yeah. But you know what's crazy is I read that they're gonna make a movie out of this...
ANNA 11:42
Oh, really? That sounds like a great movie.
LIA 11:45
Yeah, starring Will Ferrell and Laura Dern.
ANNA 11:48
Yes. Oh my God, a thousand times, yes. I'll be in the front row of my living room, obviously, 'cause we can't gather in groups. That's not funny.
LIA 11:59
So I really want that... That movie to come out.
ANNA 12:01
That's so sad though, I mean they're a successful bakery, but still, they're not like Wonder Bread, they're not Little Debbie's, they're not some massive corporation, they're just like a one town shop.
LIA 12:11
Yeah, it's like a family-owned and family-operated bakery, and so the people are stealing from the family that runs this and they have been making fruit cakes since 1896. Yeah, so they use the same recipe, the same old world recipe from Germany. That's in my shopping cart.
ANNA 12:28
I love it. Report back.
LIA 12:30
I will. So if you love fruit cake, that's a great place to get fruitcake, if you hate fruit cake, and someone gave it to you, there is a day for you. Alright. After the holidays are over and you're like, What am I gonna do with this fruitcake cake that I don't wanna eat? On January 3rd, there is a National Fruitcake Toss Day.
ANNA 12:57
Oh my God, yes, I think I've seen pictures of this. Fruitcake toss, it's like in Colorado.
LIA 13:03
The first fruitcake toss day was held in Manitou Springs, Colorado on January 3, 1996. So for over 20 years, this town has held a fruit cake toss festival sometime during the month of January, and during this time, you can show up and compete in several fruit cake to events in hand tossing or distance competition for tossing for accuracy, speed, and balance. And if you wanna team up with your engineer friends, there is a distance competition for teams who have built robotic mechanical slingshot catapult type contractions to toss their fruitcakes.
ANNA 13:48
Oh my god. I wanna make a fruit cake trebuchet.
LIA 13:52
I know it sounds amazing. Here's a clip of the fruitcake toss where some guys show off the thing they made, which they called the Terminator.
ANNA 14:02
Terminator...It was that or Robocop.
CLIP 14:05
Fruitcake Toss
Speaker 1: “Fruitcakes were the center of attention at memorial park in Manitou Springs today. The Carpe-Survese team made up of 5 close friends, made the Fruitcake Terminator, as they call it, to send fruitcakes flying as far as the eye can see.
Speaker 2: “It will go further than the limits that they got set up here though.”
Speaker 3: “3...2...1… (launch noise).”
LIA 14:26
Yeah, so there's a festival where you can toss your unwanted fruit cakes, and if you don't have your own cake to toss, but you wanna be a part of this, you can actually rent a cake.
ANNA 14:34
You can't buy one? you have to give it back?
LIA 14:37
You gotta give it back. Now, I don't know what happens where these rented cakes or where all the cakes go in general.
ANNA 14:43
You know that they've been using the same cakes for to 24 years.
LIA 14:47
I think they do just collect them and then those are the ones that get regifted.
ANNA 14:51
Can I rent the 2002 model? That year had a lot of lift.
LIA 14:57
Yeah, 2003 super aerodynamic.
ANNA 14:59
Super aerodynamic. Yeah, tried a different pan, had a little bit of a conical nose on it...
LIA 15:06
Yeah, somebody to smash it down. I wonder if there's rules, you can't smash your cake to make it more aerodynamic.
ANNA 15:12
It has to stay in loaf form...
LIA 15:17
I have to check-in.
ANNA 15:18
I hope there’s fruitcake inspectors that are like, they're not looking to see that it's actually just like a hollow thing with a fruitcake exterior.
LIA15:27
Two pounds. It’s almost like a maple syrup situation. Woah, this doesn't feel like one.
ANNA 15:35
It's filled with creek water. It's a callback, people.
LIA 15:40
So even though this is a pretty funny event, it does do some good for the community because the cost to compete in any of these contests is a donation of non-perishable goods to a local food bank. Just, yeah, just don't donate the fruit cake because nobody wants that.
ANNA 15:55
You can keep the fruitcake.
LIA 15:57
So the fruitcake toss in Colorado, it’s a real thing. But if you love fruitcake, there is actually a little town in Alabama where fruitcake is kind of sacred. There is a place called Monroeville, Alabama and it's a small town, with probably less than 6,000 residents. But you know what, it’s kind of famous for being home to 2 legendary literary figures, Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Yeah, you might have heard of them.
ANNA 16:21
Might have heard of the, yeah.
LIA 16:23
Now, these two were childhood friends, and apparently, when they were really young, they used to go to the Monroe County Courthouse to listen in on the trials. And that courthouse ended up becoming a very prominent place in their writing, so it inspired the Courthouse in To Kill A Mockingbird. And it's featured in Truman's short story, a Christmas Memory.
ANNA 16:40
I read the short story. It's so sweet. It's a tearjerker. It’s so, it's so lyrical and beautiful and lovely. Highly recommend A Christmas Memory, by Truman Capote.
LIA 16:54
It is such a sweet story about this young boy making fruitcakes with his much older distant cousin, which is basically the story of Truman and his cousin, Sook.
ANNA 17:07
I love it. In this story, every year, there's a day in November where his cousin looks out the window and says, “It's fruitcake weather.”
LIA 17:16
I know, I love that. And so in the story, it starts out with this proclamation that fruitcake weather is here, and it's time for this young boy to help out his cousin with the baking of 30 fruitcakes, and they talk about their favorite parts of making the fruit cakes, buying the ingredients and you know what happened, they didn't have enough money to buy the ingredients, they would save up all year for this fruit cake fund, just so they could get the fruits and nuts and spices and flour, and the whiskey, to make the proper fruit cake.
ANNA 17:49
Which was illegal.
LIA 17:51
Yeah, it was illegal. So they did have to get it from a friendly old bootlegger... So in 2008, Monroeville decided to hold its very first fruitcake festival to celebrate this interesting connection between the town, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, and fruitcake. And as part of the festival, there’s a reading of the story, A Christmas Memory, at the Monroe County Courthouse. And I actually found this recording of Truman reading the story himself.
CLIP 18:17
“A Christmas Memory”
Capote: “Her face is remarkable. Not unlike Lincoln’s. Craggy like that. And tinted by sun and wind. But it is delicate too. Finely boned. And her eyes are sherry colored and timid. “Oh my” she explained, her breath smoking the windowpane. It’s fruitcake weather. The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am 7. She is 60 something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together well as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives. And though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me buddy. In memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other buddy died in the 1880s when he was still a child. She is still a child.”
LIA 19:20
But here's where the Truman Capote fruitcake connection, Monroe County thing gets even more interesting to me and goes like way beyond the short story. So Anna, have you ever heard of the Fruitcake Lady?
ANNA 19:33
Yes, she wrote a fruit cake cookbook, but then she became like a late-night, like a random late-night star?
LIA 19:44
So the fruitcake lady, Marie Rudasill, first appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno when she was like 89 or 90 years old, and she was invited to the show to talk about her cookbook, which was called “Fruitcake: Memories of Truman and Sook.” So yeah, so Marie, the Fruitcake Lady was actually Truman Capote's aunt. She helped raise him. So the Fruitcake Lady wrote a book about fruitcake. But even earlier in her cookbook writing career, she had actually written a cookbook called Sook’s Cookbook. Which was a collection of memories and recipes form the deep south that was published in 1989. And in it, she featured, actually a ton of recipes that she pulled from her family farm journal. And it was so wonderful because it wasn’t just a cookbook, but it was a capture of the stories of the people at that time and their family and things that brought them together.
ANNA 20:39
Food stories are people stories.
LIA 20:42
And it captured the culture so well that the Southern Foodways Alliance calls it an important contribution to southern cooking, and in 2001, Marie Rudasil, fruitcake lady, received a lifetime achievement award from the Alliance for her food writing.
ANNA 20:55
Wow!
LIA 21:56
And so she had written this book and was invited to appear on the Tonight Show to talk about it, and during that segment, she actually taught Jay Leno and Mel Gibson how to make a fruitcake.
ANNA 21:07
It was probably what the 90s?
LIA 21:09
It was the year 2000 when she showed up.
ANNA 21:13
So, when Mel Gibson was still an acceptable member of society.
LIA 21:16
When he was still acceptable, yeah. But I guess she was just so entertaining and kind of like raunchy and sassy and fun, that Jay Leno invited her back to have her own segment. Ask the Fruitcake lady.
ANNA 21:32
Like Fruitcake questions?
LIA 21:35
Um, No.
CLIP 21:38
The Fruitcake Lady
Zach Hi, I’m Zack. I’m from Haymond, Louisiana and my question is, why do women get so offended when I check them out.
Fruitcake Lady Well I mean, you know, there are certain things like, maybe you just stare at them like an idiot. And you just look like a damn idiot, you know? I mean there’s all kinds of ways to look at people. So you must do it in a very obnoxious way.
Rick Hi, I’m Rick from Bowing, Texas. My wife is fat, but how can I get her to lose weight?
Fruitcake Lady What… What are you… I mean… Men like you are so demanding. If you don’t like her the way she is, and you think she’s obese, why don’t you set the example and lose weight yourself? That’s a thing for you to do. If you want somebody else to change, change first yourself.
ANNA 22:38
Fruitcake lady! She’s so intense. She’s amazing. I mean, not all that advice was bad. And she was like a 100. She was like in her late 90s.
LIA 22:50
And she didn't have a filter either.
ANNA 22:54
She doesn't have to have one at that point.
LIA 22:56
That's true, I can't wait until I'm 100 because I'm just gonna say whatever I want.
ANNA 22:59
I barely have a filter now.
LIA 23:05
It's awesome.
ANNA 23:07
Makes for great podcast! Fruitcake feels like, the word, I kept coming back to fruitcake was iconic. Right, it is so embedded in all these traditions and holidays and communities and things like that.
LIA 23:19
That's a good word for it.
ANNA 23:21
Iconic, it's also just fun to say. Fruitcake. Iconic. Cool, Lia. That was so interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us.
LIA 23:31
You're welcome.
ANNA 23:33
Alright, should we get even deeper into fruitcake?
LIA 23:37
Yeah, let's do it.
ANNA 23:38
Coming up in the deep dish, we’ll continue to slice into this iconic food. We’re going to take a world tour of fruitcakes across the globe, cover its history from pre-historic protein bar to royal wedding cake, and finally, I make a very doughy proposal. So when we started talking about fruit cake, I was kind of like, What am I gonna talk about? Fruitcake doesn't seem that interesting... Right, this is my impression of fruitcake. It seemed pretty simple. It was cake with fruit, it's quite dense, it's all that stuff on top, which... Do you know what the green things are? Can anyone tell me what the green things are? There's like candy cherries, there's maybe some pineapple, but then there's these neon green things that are a secret fruit, they only put on fruitcake. I can't identify them. Listeners, please help. It's also just considered a Christmas food, I only remember having it near Christmas, and also that it's kind of a joke. So I was like, Alright, what am I gonna talk about with fruitcake? But as I started to dig around, do a little bit of research about fruitcake, my impression was not the whole story, right? It got a little bit more complicated. First of all, like our friend wine, it's friggin old. It has this bizarre history that goes back to ancient times. Yeah, it's also ubiquitous, every culture has a version of fruit cake. And it's not a simple food at all like you said, it takes a really long time and care to make a fruit cake. It is elaborate. It's time-consuming, it is alcoholic as h***. And the final product is not just a simple fruit in cake, I read that a traditional fruitcake has the same density as mahogany.
LIA 25:38
That's crazy.
ANNA 25:39
Isn’t that crazy? So if you can't afford like a mahogany desk, just make yourself like 50 fruitcakes, stack them all on top of each other, it will last as long. So this juxtaposition started coming out that I actually thought was really interesting, which is basically: people kinda hate this thing, it's kind of a joke, but it's also, as we said, iconic. So that's what I wanted to dig into with you today, Lia.
LIA 26:06
Yeah
ANNA 26:07
Let's start with the actual food itself. Let's talk about the process. A traditionally made fruit cake takes about a year to make. Traditionally, you would start a Christmas fruit cake the Christmas before you wanna eat it. Okay, so how does that work? Well, some cakes get better over time, so I do believe that. Like, remember my special grandmother's birthday cake. Yes, so it's just sugar and flour and almond extract, and like the third or fourth day after you've made it is when it peaks because the flavor is just sort of deepen, the texture just kinda gets richer and richer, never have I let it sit for a year though, so I can't testify to that. But some cakes do get richer with time. And dried fruit, which is part of what goes into the batter, right? Dried candy Fruit have tannins in them kind of like wine. So they develop flavor, over time, the flavor matures. And it has this really long shelf life because of the sugar content is so high and the alcohol content, those kill any bacteria in the cake.
LIA 27:16
It can't get moldy.
ANNA 27:17
Right? It can't get moldy. it's pure antiseptic. So, it is actually fine to let it sit there for a year or more, and some people take this to an extreme. Yes, for example, a family in Tecumseh, MI has had a family fruit cake for 142 years.
LIA 27:41
Wow, that seems like 141 years way too long to have a fruitcake.
ANNA 27:48
It's actually a really sweet, if creepy story. So in 1878, Vidalia Ford made her beloved Christmas fruit cake, but she passed away before it could be eaten at the holiday, and so her family considered that last fruit cake to be part of her memory, like part of her legacy, and so instead of eating it, they kept it in a glass case to honor her memory. And they never threw it away or ate it. So that fruit cake has been passed down through the generations of their family and currently is held by Fidalia's Great-great-granddaughter. Julie Ruttinger, who still lives in Michigan.
LIA 28:30
Wow. I'm really impressed that it's lasted this long. No one lost it.
ANNA 28:35
And then they kept track of it.
LIA 28:38
Yeah, I don't know how many things I've lost or misplaced just in my regular daily life, so...
ANNA 28:43
Totally. It didn't get like it didn't get put in the wrong box in a move? Nobody threw it out cleaning up after a party? So props to them for this accomplishment, I don't know. But they won't be getting any Guinness World Records any time soon because the oldest fruit cake on record was found in an Egyptian tomb and has estimated it to be 4176 years old.
LIA 29:10
Man, these tombs have everything. They have everything like Bulgar wheat. They got fruitcake.
ANNA 29:16
They got the Bulgar wheat. They got wine casks. It's just like we need... Are there more tombs? We should open them up... No, don't don't. I've seen The Mummy. I take it back. 2020 can't handle it. We'll give it a minute, yeah. But yes, it's currently on display at a food Museum in Switzerland. So when Switzerland will have us again... We'll go see it.
LIA 29:40
Yes. Okay.
ANNA 29:41
In my fruitcake research, I found that most cultures have a version of fruitcake, so some form of cake filled with fruit and soaked in alcohol exists pretty much everywhere. For example, in Germany, there's a fruit cake called Stollen. Germany has incredible Christmas food. I've been to the Weinacht Machts and I've been to Germany several times. My dad lived there off and on for a long time... Oh man, the lebkuchen, the Gleuwein. Yeah.
LIA 30:10
I had my first pfeffernuss last year because there's a National Pfeffernusse day? Yeah, I liked it a lot.
ANNA 30:16
Little tea cookies. I think that means peppernuts are a little bit spicy... Right.
LIA 30:21
Yeah, they are spicy. I like them more than a gingerbread cookie actually, I thought there was more earthiness to it...
ANNA 30:29
Yeah, they're really good dipped in tea and stuff. Anyway, plug for pfeffernuss. Pfeffernuss Guys call us. in Italy, they have panforte, which is a fruit cake that's made with a lot of honey and it's covered in icing sugar, in Russia and Eastern Europe, like Poland, Bulgaria, they have a keck keck, which I just love that they have a cake called Keck. Okay. And in the Caribbean, they make black cake, which is a little bit different from fruit cake, a similar idea, but it's soaked in rum for months and months... Not Cognac, not Brandy, or Whisky I guess in Alabama. And the fruit is pulverized into a paste, so the dry fruits and nuts that they soak in the alcohol instead of putting them straight in the fruit cake, so you get this big chunks that you like to eat around, Lia, they pulverized it into a paste to work into the batter, so you actually might like that better.
LIA 31:24
That's more... Yes, I would like that. Way better.
ANNA 31:27
Portugal has a Bolo Rei, which is, I said that French, but I can pronounce things in Portuguese, it's really extreme, so Bolare, which is similar to a king's cake, they also eat that around epiphany. And Vietnam has a Ban bo mut that is made for their Lunar New Year, so there's a version of fruitcake in all kinds of different cultures. So as I was looking at all these different manifestations of fruitcake from all over the world, I suddenly remembered an experience I had with the Irish version, that I’m pretty sure I repressed all this time.
LIA 32:04
Are you sure you wanna bring this back up?
ANNA 32:08
I’m scared. But I really feel like I need to process this trauma.
LIA 32:12
Yeah, well this is a safe place. So you can do it here.
ANNA 34:14
Thank you. Thank you. So the traditional Irish version of fruitcake is called a plumb pudding. Have you ever heard of that? So, I dated a guy for a while whose mother was from Ireland, and she used to make a plum pudding. It was a horror show. This thing, the process, I'm pretty sure it's a war crime, she might be at the Hague. Like this thing was so insane. I'm gonna tell you about it. Yeah, so they make a cake that's like a dome, so it's kind of like in a bundt cake pan, but with no hole in the center, and it's made from bread crumbs that have been soaked in Sherry, dried fruit that's already been soaked in Cognac for God knows how long. Okay, and then the ingredients for the cake are butter, sugar, eggs, flour, breadcrumbs, and then just Cognac. No amount. No measurement. Just all the Cognac that is necessary, right? So what she would do is she would make this little cake and then she would wrap it in cheesecloth, and then she would turn it upside down and stick it in a mixing bowl and then she would pour Cognac up to the top and cover it, and then she would wait until the cake had absorbed all of the Cognac, take the cake out wrap it in saran wrap and tin foil. And just let it sit for like a few weeks or a month. And then she would take it back out, she would unwrap it, put it back in the mixing bowl again, soak it in Cognac till it had absorbed all the Cognac. And Lia, she did this for months, as this was like six or seven times, right? By the time it got near Christmas, this thing...I'm actually gonna send you a picture of it because it was so insane, it looks like a brown calcified jelly dome. Yeah. (Lia laughs) Do you see it?
LIA 34:15
I just saw the picture. Yeah. Like, why?
ANNA 34:21
Doesn't it look appetizing? This hard, brown jelly dome. So I finally figured out that the reason it was wrapped in cheesecloth was to keep it from just disintegrating from all the Cognac in it.
LIA 34:33
To hold its form.
ANNA 34:34
Right, to hold its form. And so by the end, the Cognac and the bread crumbs had fused so much that we kind of Carmelized, and then she would pour this Cognac sauce on top. It smelled so bad, that's what really traumatized me, not just the appearance, which is unacceptable, but I could smell this thing from outside the house, if I'm standing on the front steps, I could smell this thing, it reeked so bad, it was unbelievable. And she just ate it for breakfast. So she was a great woman, but her plumb pudding was a horror show - much like her son.
LIA 35:14
That is so much alcohol. It's so flammable. What if it caught fire? It could be a weapon.
ANNA 35:23
That's true. I never thought of that. What if its like, You're lighting your Advent wreath. Yeah.
LIA 35:29
And then, yeah, the plum pudding caught fire.
ANNA 35:35
You can just see firefighters to step into the rubble and what happened? Plum Pudding.
LIA 35:41
“Another plum pudding disaster.”
ANNA 35:42
“Another plum pudding Christmas tragedy.” So Let me tell you about the history of fruit cake, so as we learned ancient Egyptians put them in the tombs of their kings and queens, apparently with everything else they could find or own. The Romans made their own version containing pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, honey, and raisins mixed into the cake that was made out of barley mash, instead of wheat flour. And, it was standard practice for the Crusaders to carry it in their war satchels because it was so dense and had so many nutrients and so much protein in it, they used it as like an energy bar.
LIA 36:22
Yeah, it does sound like a protein bar.
ANNA 36:25
It really gained popularity in Europe in the 16th century, because Europe was being flooded with cheap sugar, now that the sugar cane trade had started. Sugar cane being farmed by enslaved workers in the Caribbean was getting shipped all over the world. But it was banned for a while in Europe in the 17th century because all that butter and sugar made it sinful. Yes, the church banned fruitcake, except for the most special of occasions.
LIA 37:00
Wow, what a naughty, naughty food.
ANNA 37:04
I could just see nuns ripping fruit cake out of kid's satchels. “Bless me father, for I have sinned. I had a slice of fruitcake.” I'm Presbyterian. Is that how that goes? I've never done confession.
LIA 37:14
That was really good. As a Catholic school kid, believe me, that stuff is burned into my head.
ANNA 37:21
Anyway, it was unbanned in the 19th century and became a staple of tea time, which is exactly like if you think of an Oscar Wilde play, a parlor scene where they were doing like tea time, totally think of fruitcake, right? And remember how we talked about food is a status symbol, so it was seen as a fancy treat and a way to show off what kinds of exotic fruits you had 'cause you can just roll into Whole Foods and pick up any fruit or any produce from any place in the world, right? This was the 1800s. So if you had a persimmon from Portugal or like a kiwi from Morocco, and you put it in your fruit cake and then you were all case like, “Oh, would you like some more Earl Grey tea, and also, check out my fruitcake.”
LIA 38:10
I just whipped this little thing up.
ANNA 38:13
Oh yeah. Just pick this one up. In Lisbon, in Lisboa. And then from the 19th century on, fruitcake became a traditional wedding cake in England, a trend started by none other than Queen Victoria who served fruitcake as her wedding cake in her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. And that tradition has been held up by other royal couples like Charles and Diana in 1981, and William and Kate served a tamarind fruit cake at their wedding in 2011.
LIA 38:47
Oh. Tamarind fruitcake. There we go.
ANNA 38:53
There we go. William would not stop bragging about the tamarind.
LIA 38:57
Go around to all the guests, like, did you try the tamarind fruitcake. I hope you got a slice, it's got Tamarind.
ANNA 39:02
Whatever, just for my Tamarind stash. Whatevs.
LIA 39:07
I bet Harry and Megan though did not.
ANNA 39:10
Nah, they did some funfetti s*** you know it. You know, Megan was like, I want some funfetti in here. I'm American. I’m a ‘murican.
LIA 39:17
Sprinkles.
ANNA 39:18
I need some sprinkles. I need some frosting from a can. We're American. That's how we roll. Fruitcake has also been in the US for a long, long time. I was looking at different recipes and found some from the Civil War. Right, and we obviously know that because of Fredalia and her fruitcake that reign Supreme even today in Michigan. But like you said, in the 20th century, it started going from this tradition, this family, this generational thing to being commercially produced. You could get them from a mail or a catalog, you could buy them in tins. It became this gift. And then, Johnny Carson started targeting fruitcake in his jokes on the Tonight Show.
CLIP 40:00
Johnny Carson on Fruitcake
Johnny: “We have made a lot of jokes. Did you ever get a fruitcake for Christmas?
Ed: Always, I got one this Christmas.
Johnny: Do you eat it?
Ed: No.
Johnny: See, that’s the thing. That’s the damn thing. Nobody eats them.
Ed: You keep it for a long time.
Johnny: You put it up in the closet somewhere, and then you wait until next Christmas and then you give it to someone else.
ANNA 40:17
And then it became this kind of joke, it kind of fell from grace. So that gave me pause, as I said, I have empathy for vilified foods, the island of misfit foods, and how it went from being this fancy show of wealth and something really, really special to be a sort of a crappy thing that happens at Christmas, but no one really wants...
LIA 40:41
It's like, go to the gas station, pick it up and take it to the potluck.
ANNA 40:45
And the thing is, of course, that traditionally, this is something that took a lot of time and a lot of care, and the people put their most prized ingredients in. Right, and as it became more commercially produced, cheaper ingredients, quicker process, and also just not as personal. Right, and the reason why I think that it really just got pushed into this cheap commercial arena is we don't have that much time anymore, but people don't spend time like that anymore., Right. You need time. You need attention, you need patience. It's an investment into making something like this fruit cake, which is just something as a society overall, we don't do anymore. So don't blame the fruitcake. It’s not the fruitcakes' fault. Our Society has changed. So I've been thinking this year, the pandemic has just wreaked havoc on our lives, right. But one of the things that it's done is it's been an opportunity... For a lot of things, it's been an opportunity to break inertia, it's been an opportunity to really look at how and why we do things, and if that's how we wanted to keep doing them, it's been an opportunity to take stock, to appreciate things, especially the things and the people that we never thought we'd lose. And it's also been an opportunity to slow down. Slow down. We got time people, A lot of time, so I wanna make a proposal, Lia.
LIA 42:25
Okay. Yes, let's hear it.
ANNA 42:27
I wanna propose this as also an opportunity to re-discover fruit cake.
LIA 42:32
I love that.
ANNA 42:34
I wanna challenge you listeners and Lia, other people who are not banned by law from baking and cooking like I am. Try fruitcake. Try a traditional fruitcake. Try giving it that time and love and make something beautiful out of this situation that we're in. And just see, maybe it'll taste awesome, maybe we'll love it, you know, maybe fruitcake could be the new Sourdough.
LIA 43:02
It could be.
ANNA 43:04
So, I'm here to say give loser foods a chance, and let's start with fruitcake.
LIA 43:11
I love this. I like this. Let's rally around fruitcake, you guys. /I'm in.
ANNA 43:16
/Are you in? Let's rally around fruitcake.
LIA 43:18
You know, this year, I slowed down learn to make sourdough and kind of invested the time into taking care of my starter, making bread regularly, kind of adjusting my schedule to make it, and you know what, I think I'm ready to slow it down even more and take on this fruitcake challenge because it does... I love bread, but I love the sourdough that I make so much because I know the time and energy that I've put into it, and it's cool to be able to share that, or when I eat a slice... It's awesome because I made this thing and I take care of it. Fruitcake challenge.
ANNA 43:58
Fruitcake challenge. Make fruitcake great again. No. I'm sorry. I went to a dark place.
LIA 44:05
Too dark. Too dark.
ANNA 44:07
Too dark. Too real. Too soon.
LIA 44:10
Now, I just gotta figure out how to make that wacky green fruit, Anna then you're just gonna see me put a bunch of gummy worms on top.
ANNA 44:21
I wanna make a fake FBI's Most Wanted list with the green things and be like, Do you know this man? If you have any information, it's like unsolved mysteries. If you have any information that could lead to the identification of this weird green thing.
LIA 44:36
Robert Stack did look for this green thing.
ANNA 44:39
DM us @Fooddaypod. Give it a try, listeners, open your mind to fruit cake. Let us know how it goes. We love you, Happy Holidays.
LIA 44:47
We love you.
LIA 45:03
Thank you for joining us today for this episode of Every Day is a Food Day!
ANNA 45:08
We’re going to be taking a little break for the holidays but will be dropping some fun surprises for you while we’re away, and we’ll be back with full episodes on January 5.
LIA 45:18
Help us get the word out about the show by sharing it with anyone who loves food, podcasts - or both! To help other listeners find it, leave a rating, and review. Be sure to subscribe and connect with us on Instagram and Twitter @FoodDayPod and join our Facebook group.
ANNA 45:32
The clips you heard today were from the Great British Bake Off, The Tonight Show from NBC, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote from United Artists Records, and Channel KOAA 5.
LIA 45:43
EDFD is a production of Van Valin Productions and YumDay. It was created by Lia Ballentine and Anna Van Valin. Our sound designer is Steve Thompson, our production intern is Emma Massey and our marketing intern is Eric Chinn.
ANNA 45:57
Happy Holidays! We’ll see you in 2021