Fruitcake

Fruitcake is a cake made of dried fruits and optionally candied fruit, spices and nuts that may be soaked in brandy or rum, the richest versions (possibly iced) often being used in the celebration of weddings and Christmas.
Americans have a love-hate relationship with fruitcake. What comes to your mind when you think of a fruitcake? Is it “a rich, moist cake filled with delicious fruit and nuts”, or a dried out “doorstop”? Misconceptions about fruitcakes inspire many jokes. Even Johnny Carson once joked, “there’s only one fruitcake in the U.S., and it’s passed around year after year from family to family“.
Maybe people today dislike fruitcake because so many of them are mass-produced using cheap, inferior ingredients. If you have eaten one of those dry, tasteless commercial fruitcakes made with bitter citron that are sold in supermarkets, it’s no doubt that any future fruitcake is looked upon with trepidation. Even the so-called gourmet fruitcakes are full of preservatives and things like melon rinds colored to look like cherries.
A real fruitcake is sinfully rich, studded with real fruits soaked in liquors, fresh nuts, and complex spices. The ratio of fruit to batter has always been an issue for true fruitcake connoisseur. An outstanding fruitcake can be put together in less than an hour. And it will be fondly remembered long after the last crumbs have disappeared.
Commercial fruitcakes sold in supermarkets are often dry, tasteless, and made with bitter citron. Those yellow-green, candied, things called citron, a semitropical citrus fruit that looks like a huge, lumpy lemon, so its no doubt that a fruitcake is looked upon with suspicion. Even the so-called gourmet fruitcakes can be full of preservatives and things like melon rinds colored to look like cherries and these poorly made fruitcakes have given fruitcake a bad image.
Fruitcakes should be moist and delicious, a cornucopia of naturally sweet (not candied!), plump pieces of dried fruit, complex spices, sometimes nuts, but not a red or green candied thing in the lot. A real fruitcake is sinfully rich, studded with real fruits soaked in liqueurs, fresh nuts, and complex spices. The ratio of fruit to batter has always been an issue for true fruitcake connoisseur, and the best fruitcake will be at least 50 percent fruit.
By tradition, when labor day rolled around everyone in my family knew it was time to start making fruitcakes so the first one would be ready to cut on Thanksgiving Day. There are dark fruitcakes and light fruitcakes, and some people prefer one better than the other. A light or white fruitcake uses light colored fruits such as currants, dried apricots and pineapple and light corn syrup. A dark fruitcake uses darker fruits like raisins, dates, cranberries, and prunes, and dark corn syrup or molasses. The ratio of fruit to batter has always been an issue for serious fruitcake connoisseurs, but the general rule is at least half the weight of the cake should be fruit. A fruitcake with less than a 50:50 ratio is not really a fruitcake, but a Plum Cake or Dundee Cake. A good fruitcake is the result of the best quality ingredients and most recipes are fairly tolerant of substitutions- so use the fruits you like best.

History
The earliest recipe from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash.
In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added and the name fruitcake was first used. Robert Sietsema finds that inexpensive sugar from the American Colonies and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits created an excess of candied fruit. The fruitcake was the way to use them.
In the 18th century, Europeans were baking fruitcakes using nuts from the harvest for good luck in the following year. The cake was saved and eaten before the next harvest. Fruitcakes proliferated until a law in Europe restricted them to Christmas, weddings, and a few other holidays. Even so, the fruitcake remained popular at Victorian Teas in England throughout the 19th century.
Mail-order fruitcakes began in 1913. The management of Ringling Brothers Circus liked the fruitcake from Collin Street Bakery, a local bakery in Corsicana, Texas. They ordered them as gifts to be mailed to friends around the country. Collin Street Bakery, using the old European recipe of baker Gus Weidmann and salesman Tom McElwee, grew quickly, and have shipped their fruitcakes to nearly 200 countries worldwide and numerous multi-national corporations and famous individuals.
The modern fruitcakes are fundamentally butter cakes with just enough dough to bind the fruit. The cakes are saturated with liqueurs or brandy, and covered in powdered sugar, both of which prevent mold. Brandy or wine-soaked linens are used to store the fruitcakes. Many people feel fruitcakes improve with age. Some cakes have been eaten 25 years after baking.
Fruitcakes have been around for a long time, and history is as full of lore and rumor about their creation. Fruitcake was probably man's first high-energy snack food. The oldest reference to fruitcakes dates back to Roman times. Fruitcakes were often a means of preserving excess fruits and nuts by incorporating them into a type of cake. Not only could native fruits like plums and cherries be conserved, but served out of season or in places where fresh fruit was difficult to come by. Recipes included pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins mixed into barley mash. History is full of lore and rumor about fruitcakes. They have been around for a long time, and were a means of preserving excess fruits and nuts by incorporating them into a type of cake. Not only could native fruits like plums and cherries be conserved, but served out of season or in places where fresh fruit was difficult to come by.
The oldest reference to fruitcakes dates back to Roman times with recipes that included pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins mixed into barley mash. During the Middle Ages, sweet ingredients were added, such as honey and spices, and pilgrims carried them to the Holy Lands. In Europe in the 1700's, a ceremonial type of fruitcake was baked at the end of the nut harvest and consumed the following year to celebrate the beginning of the next harvest. In England by the end of the 18th century there were laws restricting the use of rich, plum cake, that being the generic word for dried fruit at the time, to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings, and funerals because they were considered so decadent. During the Victorian era (1837-1901), fruitcake was popular and Queen Victoria received a fruitcake for her birthday one year. Legend has it; she put it aside for a year as a sign of restraint, moderation, and good taste. It is still the custom in England for unmarried girls often put a slice of fruitcake under their pillow at night expecting to dream of the person they will marry.
The English tradition that came to America with the first colonists. Fruitcakes are sometimes called the Queen of Cakes”, and were always served at weddings, Thanksgiving and Christmas and other important occasions. In 1753, Eliza Smith recorded one of the first fruitcake recipes. She used 4 pounds of flour mixed with 4 pounds of butter, spices, 20 egg yolks, 5 pints of cream, 6 pounds of currants, candied lemon and orange peel, but only 1.5 pounds of sugar in her ”Great Cake”
In the South, slices of fruitcake were wrapped up in little packages and tucked into soldier's jackets as they left for battle during the Civil war.
In an ”A Christmas Memory”, Truman Capote, who grew up in rural Alabama during the Great Depression, recalls gathering pecans by climbing the giant trees and shaking the branches until the nuts fell to the ground. He baked fruitcakes with his cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, and delivered them via baby carriage to their neighbors. One year, they baked a fruitcake for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, about 50 miles south of Dallas, uses a recipe imported from Germany in the late 1800's, and became the first mail order fruitcake business when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town in the early 1900s. Before leaving town, performers bought up fruitcakes to take on the road. The following Christmas, John Ringling called the bakery and asked if it could ship fruitcakes to him since the circus wouldn't be back in town that year. Collin Street Bakery sells 1.5 million mail-order fruitcakes every year, and over 300,000 people stop by the bakery to purchase their world-renowned fruitcakes.
The Japanese appreciate fruitcake with a dense texture and surfeit of colorful fruit. A popular department store offers it year-round in gift-wrapped boxes containing miniature ingots of fruitcakes wrapped in gold foil.

Fruitcake in popular culture
In the US, the fruitcake has become, amongst some, one of the most ridiculed desserts and the butt of many jokes centered on its heaviness and long shelf life.
Former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson's joke that there really is only one fruitcake in the world is also frequently attributed to the writer Calvin Trillin, who denies being the source. Trillin says he was just passing along a theory he "had heard from someone in Denver". He continues, "There is nothing dangerous about fruitcakes as long as people send them along without eating them." The Fruitcake Lady (Marie Rudisil) made appearances with current host Jay Leno and offered her "fruitcake" opinions.
Comedian Jim Gaffigan has used fruitcake in his bit to question its relation to regular cakes with the line, "Fruit, good; cake, great; fruitcake, nasty crap."
For the last nine years about 500 people have shown up in Manitou Springs, Colorado each January for the Great Fruitcake Toss. "We encourage the use of recycled fruitcakes", says Leslie Lewis of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce. The all-time Great Fruitcake Toss record is 420 feet.
In the UK, fruitcakes come in many varieties, from extremely light to those that are far moister and richer than their American counterparts, and remain extremely popular. The traditional Christmas cake is a fruitcake covered in marzipan, and then in white satin or royal icing. They are often further decorated with snow scenes, holly leaves and berries (real or artificial), or tiny decorative robins or snowmen.
Fruitcakes have been banned on airplanes. Because they are difficult to identify using x-ray equipment at security checkpoints, they could exacerbate security delays created by recently increased security.
Fruitcake is also used, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, as insulting slang for a 'crazy person' (e.g. "he's a complete fruitcake"). It is derived from the expression "nutty as a fruitcake", which was first recorded in 1935. It is also used to suggest that someone is a homosexual.
Comedian Bill Engvall once released a song about fruitcake on his album 'Here's your Christmas Album'. It's called 'Fruitcake makes me puke.'
Even famous singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett wrote and sang a song called 'Fruitcakes'.

SOURCES: Wikipedia, Miss Vickie's website