Fruitcake

 OK, sitting down with a wee dram of brandy and waiting for my heart to quit pounding and my hands quit shaking.

I put a cake in the oven.

Ye Olde Annual Fruitcake.  The type that people make jokes about, and sneer at.  White batter, filled with artificially dyed sweet candied fruit.

Honestly - I'm not even sure that I like it that much.  But it's the fruitcake that I first made when I was about 12 or 13 and in my Victorian literature phase (not sure I've ever gotten out of it).  And I've made it every year since then.  In the kitchen at the end of the hall in the dorm.  In an aunt's borrowed kitchen. Once in the middle of packing up to move across country.  I've made it when it meant eating lean for a bit to afford the candied fruit and half bottle of brandy.   I've never really that big on Christmas, but by golly those fruitcakes got made.

My parents loved them (and possibly they loved the memory of their tween daughter making a mess of the kitchen).  My father in law adored it (we saw them on that cross-country trip, and he came out to the car going "did you make fruitcake?")  My brother and his wife like it, because Christmas Tradition.

And most importantly, Bob loved the whole ritual of making them.  The fruit would be soaked in brandy for a day (or a week) before, and he would sneak nibbles.  The, on Baking Day, he'd be hovering over my shoulder, spoon in hand.  Cream the butter and sugar, add eggs (time for a taste), add brandy - and time for more tasting until I would slap his hand and tell him that I needed at least some of it for baking.  Then he would get to lick the beaters and the bowl.

So now I'm 70 (still getting used to that idea).  58 years of annual fruitcake baking.  But my parents are gone, as is Bob's parents, as is Bob.  The family (Rob, Amanda, Della, and Don) let me know many years ago that this is one tradition that they don't need.  I have another fruitcake recipe (Alton Browns) with dried fruit and spices that I like much better, and that is the one that gets made for friends.

But somehow I have to make this one anyway.  It's part of Who I Am.  And I've lost so much of my identity in the last few years (there's a post coming up on that) that I have to cling to something.  So, as in 2020 and 2021, I thought seriously about finally skipping it, knowing that I would hurt doing it, and then knowing that I would hurt more if I didn't.  So, with thoughts of the bustling Christmas market from A Christmas Carol in my head and the Nutcracker Suite playing, I cut the recipe down and made two small cakes, one for Mike and Margo and one for me.  I tasted the fruit and the batter and licked the beater and the bowls.  This evening I'll make the dark fruitcake and Monday mail one of each to Mike and Margo.

Traditions are sometimes what keeps us going.

[I have to come back at edit this, because I just got a note from my friend Nancy who moved to California saying that she found herself missing my fruitcake and would I share the recipe? How coincidental is that? I've asked her for which one - the white or the dark.  If it's the white with candied fruit I'm going to have hysterics)