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> But. . . drum roll, please. . . homemade fruit cake is good to eat. Great, even. It's full of nuts and fruity bits surrounded by a light brown cake that slices normally. No chopping necessary. No gummy texture. No gag reflex. Homemade fruitcake is good to eat. Don't age it. Don't soak it in booze. Don't freeze it. Don't let it sit around for days drying out. It's good hot from the oven or even cold the next day. It goes great with eggnog, cranberry juice, coffee or ice cream. Don't try to eat it after a whopping big meal. Even chocolate cake would fail that test. Have your homemade fruit cake as a snack, with a little apple cider. You'll be glad you did.
> Howard

My mother would agree with you. I was looking through her handwritten recipe notebook from the 1950's the other day and found tons of fruitcake recipes, among them: "Simply Wonderful Fruitcake", "Honey Blonde Fruitcake", "White Fruitcake", its counterpart "Black Fruitcake", and, for those who really just can't wait to eat homemade fruitcake, "Hurry-up Fruitcake". Who knew there were so many variations? I thought fruitcake was fruitcake.

I guess she mostly got over this particular food jag before us kids were around, because I only remember her making fruitcake once. It was quite a production involving a gazillion ingredients, cheesecloth, and a mysterious ripening period where the fruitcake lived in the broom closet for a month getting the occasional rum baptism. I don't know why the broom closet. I also don't know how it ever turned out, because I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot broom.

Her other food jags were better received by the family, particularly the lemon meringue pie jag and the lemon pound cake jag. The fish stick jag did grate a bit, though. I don't tend to get on jags myself so much, although I did notice the other day at the grocery store that three-fourths of the stuff I bought had cinnamon in it, which was a little alarming.

koala"but probably excusable this time of year"mom