All my life I have never heard fruitcake mentioned except in derision. It is the one foodstuff that gets absolutely no respect at all. It’s a long-running joke to always dump on fruitcake.
So what I don’t get is: if everyone hates it so much, why is it still made and sold and distributed?
The “no one likes fruitcake, but everyone gives it as a gift” cliche is almost as stupid as the “no one knows how to set their VCR” cliche. I’ve never known anyone who ever received or gave a fruitcake as a gift. (Nor do I know anyone so clueless that they can’t set their VCR, but that’s another story). Maybe it’s just me, but that is honestly my experience.
My guess is that at one time fruitcake was more common than it currently is, and that it was rather unpalatable. I guess it just stuck.
See, I have a different perspective on it, because of growing up Catholic. Every Christmastide my sainted grandparents used to have sent to us a ring-shaped fruitcake made by the Trappist monks at Gethsemani Farms in Kentucky. Those monks had a kickbutt fruitcake recipe; they used the highest quality ingredients (including Kentucky bourbon) and baked it with care to make a superior product. It was gooood. I used to devour it. So I never understood why everyone joked about fruitcake as the most undesirable thing in the world.
Then once somebody gave us a fruitcake from some no-name source. Bleah, it was this inedible brick. I realized that I had been spoiled by only knowing the Trappist fruitcake.
Since most people are not lucky enough to taste the good one, I could understand why fruitcake was so disliked. But what sustained the joke for so many years if people weren’t passing fruitcakes around? It does happen, as I know from personal experience. At least back in the 1960s and 70s.
According to what I learned from an episode of “Good Eats” on the Food Network, fruitcakes have been around for a LONG time.
They have been popular for a long period of time because the alcohol in them preserves them almost indefinitely.
I don’t know how popular fruitcakes are, but they are still sold in stores. They are also not very hard to make.
Here is an easy recipe for fruitcake. You can see that putting one together should be simple enough. The trick is to allow enough TIME for the ingredients to marry.
As noted in this recipe, if you wanted to really, really make a good one for Christmas, you should have made it last August.
Hey, fnord1966, get in here and defend yer love of the fruitcake!!! 
Fruitcake - YUMM!!!
Can’t wait to get some of my Mum’s annual cooking spree. Her boiled fruitcake recipe does indeed kick ass.
As Dave Barry says, there is only one fruitcake, it just gets passed around every year.
And they make good doorstops, too.
I thought Cecil did a column on the hated fruitcake a while back, but I can’t find it. I make fruitcake, and most people seem to like it. A few people don’t like it, but I don’t force them to eat it. I don’t give it as a gift, I just offer it up to visitors, without twisting their arms. The only fruit in it is cherries and raisins. It is also made with nuts, real butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and lots and lots of bourbon. Not only do I put bourbon in the batter, but I also wrap the cake in a cloth soaked in bourbon.
That Corsicana, Texas fruitcake is good stuff - Collin Street Bakery. My mother regularly sends their fruitcakes to relatives and close friends around Christmas, to rave reviews.
Just like anything, you can buy a quality product or you can buy krep. Some folks love fruitcake with a passion usually reserved only for wild teenaged sex in the back seat of an old Buick. Others despise it as though it were the antichrist. Frankly, there are fruitcakes that justify both opinions.
Good fruitcake is a fantastic, high-energy food that makes trail mix look like sawdust. Some backpackers bring it along instead of granola bars.
Bad fruitcake has the palatability (and longevity) of adobe bricks. If you can bite off a piece without breaking a tooth, it will lie in your stomach like a lump of depleted uranium.
If ancient Egypt had known the secret of fruitcake, their pharoes would’ve been unearthed in just-dead, if somewhat pickled, condition.
Of course, what do I know? I liked the ones that came in MREs.
~~Baloo
I used to work for Mary of Puddin’ Hill. They are one of the more popular fruitcake sellers. Sold a LOT of fruitcake, and they were damn expensive (I think the 1.5 lb. ones were $24 when I worked there). They were good, though.
mm…fruitcake!! drooling
don’t know about the rest of you aussies, but in SA, the Lions’ Club have a beautiful cake which they make! Tastes great, and you know it’s going towards something worthwhile…I think! 
anyway…if ne1 gets a chance, try it…and stop baggin out the fruitcake! it rocks!
Collin Street Bakery, Corsicana, Texas. 'Nuff said.
I’m the wrong one to ask, but I’ll throw in my opinion as well.
I don’t like dried fruit in my food. I don’t even like raisin bread. I rarely like nuts in my food. Heck, the only nuts I like at all are peanuts and almonds. I’m a really picky eater, and Christmas is hell because I don’t like 90% of Christmas treats that everyone pushes on my every year. It’s really hard to find treats that don’t contain dried fruit, nuts, coconut or marshmallows. I also have a hard time refusing in a polite manner, as people often don’t take a refusal well, and KEEP PUSHING ME TO EAT!
We used to recieve fruit cakes from a variety of sources every Christmas. My dad doesn’t like it either, so we would try to pawn it off on guests.
The Best Fruit Cake Recipe Ever:
1 cup Butter
1 cup Sugar
4 large Eggs
1 cup Dried Fruit
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Nuts
1 or 2 quarts Aged Whiskey
Before you start, sample the whiskey to check for quality.
Good, isn’t it?
Now go ahead, select a large mixing bowl, measuring cups, etc.
Check the whiskey again, as it must be just right.
To be sure the whiskey is of the highest quality, pour 1 level cup into
a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat.
With an eclectic mixer, beat 1 cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add 1 teaspoon of sugar and beat the hell out of it again.
Meanwhile, at this parsnicular point in time, wake sure that the whixey
hasn’t gone bad while you weren’t lookin’.
Open second quart if nestessary.
Add 2 large leggs, 2 cups fried druit and beat til high. If druit gets
shtuck in peaters, just pry the monsters loosh with a drewscriver.
Example the whikstey again, shecking confistancy.
Then shift 2 cups of salt or destergent or whatever, like anyone gives a
hoot.
Chample the whitchey shum more.
Shift in shum lemon zhoosh.
Fold in chopped sputter and shrained nuts.
Add 100 babbelspoons of brown booger or whushever’s closhest and mix
well.
Greash ubben and turn the cakey pan to 350 degrees.
Now pour the whole ______ mesh into the washin’ machine and set on sinsh
shycle.
Check dat whixney wunsh more and pash ou.
Remo Boracchini’s (sp/) Bakery in Seattle used to make a good fruitcake. Really moist and not too sweet.
Mom makes a fruitless bundt cake soaked in Amaretto. She used to make about twenty of them every year for gifts. No one liked them – way too sweet – but no one had the heart to tell her. Mom said she didn’t like them, but since everyone said “Oh, you shouldn’t have”, she kept making them.
Isn’t that a good definition of failure to communicate?
I rather like fruitcake, but DAMN is it rich. Which is, I suppose, why it became a seasonal food: it takes a while for you to forget just how rich it is and dare to sample it again.
Hey, how did I miss this one? Oh yeah, I rarely hang in GQ, and I havent been here in about a week.
I happen to love fruitcake, Check out my request thread at
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=48176
The offer still stands if anybody has some unwanted cakes of fruit.
LOL, Collin Street Bakery was one of our biggest competitors at Mary of Puddin’ Hill. We got to sample some of their cake (boss wanted us to be able to give our honest opinion on the differences between ours and theirs if it ever came up) and it was pretty good too, though I did prefer the Puddin’ Hill ones.
It got depressing working there, though. The merchandise was very overpriced ($24 for a 1.5 lb fruitcake) and we could get these little old ladies spending hundreds on our stuff at the holidays, and it bothered me sometimes when I realized that many of the people on the receiving end of their gift-giving probably mocked what they got.