In this New Year, Just Say NO!

Everyone has opened their gifts and started their returns. The tree and/or other festive decor has been recycled or is going back into its box in the basement. The eggnog and champagne was cleaned out. Family members have dispersed to their respective worlds, five pounds heavier.

The holidays are over….right? Actually, no.

The most wonderful time of the year is not officially over until the most unpleasant dessert of the year is gone – fruitcake.

In theory (fruit = yummy, cake = yummy, fruit + cake = yummier?), you would think that fruitcake tastes good. But no, I can’t even use full sentences when describing it: gross, sugar, candied fruit that shouldn’t be candied, hard cake, gag. As you can tell, I’m not a fan. I really enjoy desserts but not fruitcake. I think there should be a global ban against it.

For years I have held back my feelings in fear of being impolite to those who offered it. But I think the time for formalities is over. It’s not personal. Most of the people I know and have spoken with on this subject (you would be surprised) echo my dislike for fruitcake. In fact, there are many more like us and much to my delight, they have banded together to create antifruitcake.com

My sentiments exactly.

But the larger question here is, if everyone hates them, why is fruitcake still made? And why during a holiday time loved by so many?

I don’t have a legitimate answer, but my research on the origins of fruitcake confirm my thesis that – everything can somehow be blamed on the British.

Existing data is substandard at best because no researcher of sane mind really wants to explore this dark side of culinary innovation.

One source dates the fruitcake back to the Romans. But in the same section, credits (read: blames) the English for introducing it in the 1400s.

A second source confirms my blatant bias by writing:

“Modern fruitcake was born with an influx of cheap sugar that arrived in Europe from the Colonies in the 1500s, says Robert Sietsema, writing in the Village Voice.

‘Some goon discovered that fruit could be preserved by soaking it in successively greater concentrations of sugar,’ he wrote, not in the most appreciative tone. ‘Not only could native plums and cherries be conserved, but heretofore unavailable fruits were soon being imported in candied form from other parts of the world. Having so much sugar-laced fruit engendered the need to dispose of it in some way -- thus the fruitcake.’

Suddenly they were everywhere. Their ubiquitous nature spawned an 18th-century law in England restricting the consumption of fruitcake -- or plum cake, as it was called -- to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals. Eventually the other occasions fell by the wayside, leaving Christmas as the lone holiday with a link to the fruity cake".

If this doesn’t convince you of the perpetrators of this insanity, I don’t know what will. And there is already precedence for a ban!

In fairness, a few people have told me, “The ‘Indian’ fruitcake is good,” or “X version of the fruitcake is good.” To that I say: remnants of colonization. Or as a general rule, if it tastes good, then its not fruitcake.

So as we enter this new decade, and you desperately attempt to avoid the slice of fruitcake in your fridge, office, or in the tin canister with the bow that you “forgot” to open, think about a future ban on fruitcake.

For the sake of our children. It’s time.

And if I haven’t convinced you yet, I leave you with a few startling truths (I use this term loosely) from my new favorite website

• Orange dye used in candied fruit pieces comes from an enzyme extracted from mechanically deboned kittens

• Cherries used in fruitcakes are grown on clear-cut land formerly inhabited by koala bears, which are the biggest threat to cherry crops and are culled using clubs

• One 3-lb Cake produces the equivalent annual greenhouse gas emissions of a 1972 NYC Checker cab