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MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2017
the
Holiday
issue
P
eople who love to bake do so year-
round, but the holidays are when
bakers really pull out all the stops.
Once a year, we indulge our families and
friends by creating rich, indulgent desserts
with expensive ingredients — often dishes
that a great-great-grandmother or a favorite
aunt made. It’s the taste of tradition.
The great holiday cakes are in their own
special league, and fruitcakes and rum cakes
are in another category altogether. Both
use brandy, bourbon and rum to flavor and
preserve them.
In the 1970s and 1980s, late-night
comedians led the anti-fruitcake chorus. It
became fashionable to decry the fruitcake.
Some smart-alecky
Times-Picayune
reporter
had the bad taste to say something snippy
about fruitcake to one of Greg Sorensen’s
forefathers. Sorensen’s family, owners of
Baker Maid, has baked Creole Royale Fruit
Cake in New Orleans for more than 50
years.The reporter was informed that more
people would eat that fruitcake than would
ever read the guy’s article.
Rum cakes never got a similar bad rap.
American rum cakes today tend to be
pound or butter cakes with rum in the glaze
and, sometimes, the batter. Compared to
fruitcakes, the rum cakes we know today
are mere youngsters.The incredibly popular
Bacardi Rum Cake, based on a yellow cake
mix, was introduced in 1976 — relatively
speaking, fairly recently.
The cake was created when Bacardi’s then-
president William Walker was entertaining
at his home inMiami, according to the best-
selling
The Cake Mix Doctor
. A neighbor
invited to a party at Walker’s house brought
a cake made with Bacardi’s dark rum in
the batter and glaze. It was such a hit that
the company’s corporate chef made one
to serve to Bacardi executives. A vigorous
advertising campaign ensued, and everyone
was crazy for Bacardi Rum Cake.
An exceptional version of rum cake, known
as Satsuma Rum Cake and created by the
late Antoinette Ragas of Buras, Louisiana,
was discussed by author Jude Theriot in his
1983
La Meilleure de la Louisiane/The Best of
Louisiana
cookbook. The recipe took third
place in the 1976 Plaquemines Parish Fair
& Orange Festival’s Women’s Division,
and Mrs. Ragas had several other winning
recipes that year, in “previous years and
for many years after,” according to Paula
Cappiello, past secretary for the annual fair
and festival.
“Mrs. Ragas was a wonderful cook, baker
and craftsperson,” wrote Cappiello.
The cake recipe includes in its ingredients
the grated zest of two satsumas and a lemon
in the batter, and the juice of both citrus
fruits in the glaze. It tastes like a Gulf Coast
holiday. Buttermilk in the batter gives it a
wonderfully tender crumb.
Fruitcakes have been around since the
Middle Ages and possibly even as far back
as Roman times.The advantage of fruitcake
is its keeping quality. They can be made up
to three months in advance and aged in a tin
or foil, improving with repeated spritzing or
dosing with liquor.
In these enlightened times, we can
appreciate fruitcake for its history, utility
and, yes, its deliciousness. The haters never
had a good homemade fruitcake with just
Baking
Spirits Bright
by
Judy Walker