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enough spicy batter to hold together the
dried or candied fruits and copious amounts
of nuts, not to mention a judicious amount
of brandy or bourbon.
I’m here to tell you:
lots
of people still make
fruitcake at home. Alton Brown’s Free
Range Fruitcake recipe on foodnetwork.
com has 257 reviews, all five-star. The
Tampa Tribune
has to print its recipe for
Mrs. Harvey’s White Fruitcake every year.
In 1956, Lucille Harvey won a recipe
contest with the recipe known as “the
fruitcake people like to eat.” She didn’t
use any alcohol in the recipe, but brushed
bourbon on the cake with a special brush,
according to Anne Byrn’s 2016 masterwork
cookbook,
American Cake: From Colonial to
Gingerbread, the Stories and Recipes Behind
More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes
.
Mrs. Harvey shipped fruitcakes to
servicemen in 13 foreign countries overseas
during World War II. The sturdiness of
fruitcake for shipping made it especially
appropriate for packages, although the
rationing of many ingredients at the time
made them even more prized. Assistant
Director for Curatorial Services Kimberly
Guise of the National World War II
Museum told me last year that the museum’s
archives contain many letters thanking the
folks at home for the holiday fruitcakes
sent to the soldiers.
The 2009 book by Robert M. Edsel and
Bret Witter,
The Monuments Men: Allied
Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest
Treasure Hunt in History
, has a passage that
evokes the impact such a package could
have. One of the Monuments Men, George
Stout, received a long overdue package
from home.
“It was an artifact from another world, a
connection to his old life, and he stared at
it fondly. He believed in duty and honor,
but like everyone else, he was homesick.
He thought of his kitchen back home and
his wife over the mixing bowl, and of his
sons …The cake was still good, moist and
delicious. It’s amazing how the world can
change, he thought, during the
lifespan of a fruitcake.”
New Orleans has its own fruitcake,
the one the Sorensen family has
made for more than 50 years. Greg
Sorensen’s great-grandfather is the
creator of the Creole Royale Sliced
Fruit Cake, and the family’s Baker
Maid factory near the Superdome
has been baking them for months
in preparation for the upcoming holiday
season. (Baker Maid is also the developer
and baker of the Love, Cookie brand, also
sold by Rouses Markets.)
The Creole Royale has a unique topping
layer of thinly slivered almonds. Each slice
is individually wrapped, and the tin it is
sold in depicts a pastel Jackson Square, with
St. Louis Cathedral in the background.The
image is the work of Charles Henry Reinike,
who, according to
Louisiana Cultural Vistas
,
was one of New Orleans’ most respected
artists and art teachers from the late 1930s
until his death in 1983.
Sorensen’s great-grandfather had several
retail bakeries, including Dixiana.
“He started selling fruitcake to different
clubs and things, to grocery stores,”
Sorensen said. “My dad grew up in all the
“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.”
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