Fresh look at fruitcake
Starting from Scratch
Date published: 12/10/2008
BY EMILY BATTLE
When Conrad and Anne Warlick told me recently that they make 17 pounds of fruitcake every holiday season for friends and family, I thought, "Now, there's something you don't hear every day."
Fruitcake has become the ready-made punch line for holiday-cuisine-related jokes.
Even on the day the Warlicks whipped up this Christmas tradition, a "Dennis the Menace" comic in the paper had Dennis yelling, "Mrs. Johnson brought us another fruitcake! Are we gonna give this one to Ruff [the dog], too?"
The Warlicks will be the first to admit that there are some disastrously bad fruitcakes on the market, and that they are ruining the delicacy's reputation before many people ever get to taste a good one.
The perennial jokes about fruitcake tend to center on the industrial version of this baked good.
There's no question that some people just don't care for fruitcake. Just like some people (me) don't like butter beans, or some cringe at the thought of cilantro.
But if you turn up your nose at a machine-made cake and never try the homemade version, you miss out on a lot.
You don't just miss the moist texture and the refined blend of spices that home-cooked versions are more apt to deliver. You also miss out on a process that keeps alive a tradition and passes on a piece of food culture. This is what holiday baking is all about, right?
In their kitchen each year, the Warlicks bring out a well-worn, hand-written recipe that Anne got from her mother, Helen Shanklin, in Bluefield, W.Va.
Anne said she's not sure where her mother found the original recipe, but Shanklin made it nearly every year from the early 1960s until the late 1980s.
At that point, Anne and Conrad took over.
They mix a blackberry-wine-kissed batter with more than six pounds of dried fruit in a huge kettle that belonged to Shanklin.
They bake cakes for friends in Atlanta, Northern Virginia and around town. And they never foist them on family members who aren't fruitcake eaters.
On the contrary, the Warlicks have to carefully budget their fruitcake supply to make sure they can accommodate all the fans they have acquired in the years they've been making the recipe.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 12/10/2008
Most recent reader comments:
Sign Me Up ....
(posted by
Ranko
, Dec. 10, 2008 12:23 pm)
I've eaten homemade fruitcakes all my life and yes it wouldn't be "The Season" without them. First my Mom's and now my wife's who's recipe is different but still good. I do agree not all will like them but eating a storebought one has never been my idea of good fruitcake. It's great that the Warlicks keep the good stuff going.
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