A fetish for fine fruitcake adds spice to life

I'm making fruitcake this weekend. Don't hate me for it.

I've had the family recipe tucked away in a cookbook for at least two decades. I've never tried it. One year I even bought all the various dried and candied fruits but never followed through on the project. About two years later I threw out the candied fruit, though I doubt the sugared blobs ever go bad.

Fruitcake has never been high on the Hintze holiday agenda. Actually, they loathe the loaves. My own family produces a gag reflex when I mention the sumptuous brown cakes of candied-fruit goodness. When I polled the newsroom at the Daily Inter Lake, most of them turned up their noses at the thought of actually eating a slice of fruitcake, although one reporter said she'd try it, if it were soaked in enough hard liquor.

I like fruitcake.

It's a bold statement, I know, but the sweet treat is a nostalgic link to Christmases past for me. My mother hasn't missed a fruitcake season in the 53 years she's been married to my dad. I suspect she learned the art from my grandmother. My foremothers probably carried the recipe with them from Scandinavia. It's only right that I carry on the tradition.

Mom has sporadically kept me supplied with fruitcake through the years. You'll be happy to know it does actually have the shelf life of a rock, and doesn't turn moldy even if you send it via snail mail in mid-July.

I've heard all the urban (and rural) legends surrounding fruitcake. There's the myth that there hasn't been any new fruitcake made for decades because the old ones keep circulating among families, from generation to generation. And the one that maintains you can make fruitcake just by decorating actual bricks.

But I ask you, what's not to love about this spiced concoction of dried fruit and nuts? It's a kind of prehistoric Power Bar. Maybe that's why it's the stuff that languishes the longest on holiday goodie trays.

Cookbook author Linda Stradley researched the history of fruitcake and posted her findings on the Web site for What's Cooking America. The oldest reference dates back to Roman times, in a recipe that included pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins mixed into barley mash. Honey, spices and preserved fruits came into play during the Middle Ages, Stradley learned. Crusaders and hunters took fruitcake with them to sustain themselves over long periods of time away from home.

Remember the 1994 movie "Iron Will"? When young Will Stoneman's father dies, he embarks on a cross-country dogsled race to save the family farm, and it's his mother's fruitcake that gets him through the brutal winter conditions.

Of course the Internet is full of fruitcake trivia. Apparently fruitcake was outlawed throughout much of Europe in the early 18th century because it was "sinfully rich."

In England, it was customary for unmarried wedding guests to put a slice of the cake, traditionally a dark fruitcake, under their pillows at night so they could dream of the person they'd marry.

And just two years ago, a group of Mexicans baked a fruitcake that weighed 29,480 pounds and fed 34,000 people on Jan. 6 to mark the end of the Christmas holiday season.

The four loaves of fruitcake my family recipe makes won't feed an army, but it's probably enough to supply every Flathead Valley fruitcake lover (few and far between they may be) with a slice. If you're feeling brave, give me a call.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.