I make them every year and get jokes but people ask for more.
My mother used to make the (reportedly) best fruitcake - she would make it weeks in advance and then wrap it in cloth soaked in rum (I think, or some other liquor). No-one ever complained when they received one of these goodies from her.
I would like it, I feel certain, but I’m allergic to nuts.
Nuts!
I have had both good and bad fruitcake. Two years ago, I bought one at a Big Lots, and our company president adored it. We ended up going through two of them in the course of a month.
The good stuff is great and the bad stuff is horrible.
It has the reputation it deserves. It’s just too heavy. I guess it stays popular because it doesn’t change when sent for a week through the mails, unlike cookies which can end up either soggy or turn to powder.
Texas Manor Fruitcake was an annual Christmastime treat when I was younger. I liked not only the food, but the tin’s scenes of Texas history and culture as well. When I was in college, Mom sent a loaf a few weeks before the holiday break, and the dessert helped sustain me on a homeward-bound Greyhound ride from Norfolk (VA) to Cleveland (OH).
I never understood all the fruitcake jokes until I sampled some of the inferior brands, such as this one. So if I’m offered homemade fruitcake, I’m prepared for it to be anything from delicious to disgusting.
I love fruit cake. The only part I don’t like are the glazed cherries that often in it.
Not particularly. Too stodgy. I generally avoid it.
There’s a family recipe on my mother’s side, which has certainly passed muster in various ways. It’s now well-known (it’s not a ‘secret recipe’ or any such nonsense) in as diverse places as Utah and Malaysia, and plenty of other locations we probably don’t even know about. It’s also been used by a local baker because it worked better than his own recipe.
Me? I go and visit my parents and eat fruitcake 
The problem with many fruitcakes is they’re too dry. If so, they’re usually only worthy for the compost heap.
If they’re made with suet or whatever other disgusting animal products, then laced with pure liquor for several months before eating, then they can be divine. And because of the booze they keep for years - it’s a British (and Irish) tradition in some families to preserve the top tier of a wedding cake for the christening of the first child.
Understood; I can handle the cherries, it’s that “candified” fruit rind that I can’t stand. The rest of it I love, expecially when there’s lot of raisins in it.
Noooo - they’re the best bit! Just don’t put nuts in it. I’m not allergic, just don’t like 'em. And yes, it has to be moist. Marzipan and icing improve things still further.
My mother annually sends out fruitcakes from Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas for Christmas. My wife and I are impatiently awaiting ours, which we’re told is on the way.
Good stuff, those.
I love fruitcake but it has to be moist. Good fruitcake is the second best thing about Christmas.
I love fruitcake. You can bludgeon a large mammal to death with it and eat the evidence.
Sternvogel, I remember those Texas Manor fruitcakes, and the tins. We may still have a few of the tins, put to other uses now, around the house.
I love fruitcake. Every couple of years my mother and I make a big batch, and wrap and freeze it. The recipe came from a newspaper in Buffalo New York, about sixty years ago. It’s very good, and the only change we have made is to use pecans instead of almonds.
For purchased fruitcake we go with the Collin’s St. Bakery stuff that brad_d provided a link for. We love it too, although it’s different from what we make.
I like cherries and cherry pie filling. I don’t like maraschino cherries, chocolate covered cherries, cherry candy, cherry pop or koolaid, cherry brandy, or - and most especially - candied cherries. I haven’t yet seen a fruitcake without red, yellow, and green candied cherries. The cake itself is fine - nothing more than a heavy rum cake. It’s those goddamn cherries that make me twitch.
I’m the same way with grapes. Grapes good. Wine good. Grape-flavored anything is just gross.
twitch
This has turned into a discussion of food.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
I have had delicious homemade fruitcake and bad homemade fruitcake. I’ve never had a store bought fruitcake that was any good. Most store bought fruitcake falls into a catagory I’d call “grossly inedible”.
Somehow, I thought the title would be plain enough, since it’s not an openquestion but asks for yes or no. I.e., a poll.
Instead of moving it to Cafe, could you please add the word Poll to the title and leave it in IMHO ?
Actually, I guess I’ll just restart the poll as a new thread and link recipes to this one.