So today I sent my Mom, Ginger Strickland a text before I left for work “text me to let me know you aren’t dead from Fruitcake”.  She texted back that she was alive.  Why you might be wondering did I send such a text?  Well last night she ate a slice of year old fruitcake.  I know it was a year old because it was made last Christmas and I have moved it around the fridge for a year (not the freezer, the fridge).   She taunted me with it last night and said it was really yummy, I told her I wasn’t going to eat year old fruitcake and warned the dogs to not fall into their Grandmother’s fruitcake trap.

You see my family has a long history of fruitcake, my Grandmother, Mema, and her mother and my mother and I have all participated in the making of the fruitcake, back in the 70’s Mema had a two page list of people who not only received a fruitcake at Christmas but whined and cried until it arrived.  You see these fruitcakes are at the base an applesauce cake from an old receipt called “The Man’s cake”.  Now why a “Man’s cake”, I don’t know, I know lots of men who love Chocolate cake as much as anyone (Harry Griffith I am talking about you!).  But I digress; this cake is at the heart an applesauce spice cake with lots of nice dried fruit, raisins, dates, currants, nuts and such mixed in.  Then they are baked in loaf pans, I like them warm from the oven with a little butter spread on them, yummy!

By now with that description of the recipe I am sure you might be saying “she ate a year old fruitcake!  YUCK!”  But I am about to pass along the secret of the fruitcake, the reason it was still tasty after a year in the fridge, the reason people not only ate them when served but asked for one if it didn’t arrive at their home for the holiday, the reason that as much fun as people poke at fruitcake this is the kind of fruitcake that most likely made them popular to begin with the SECRET is………………… wait for it………….

BOOZE! 

My brother Randy Strickland and I called them Booze logs, the suckers are basted in brandy, over and over and over again, they are basically pickled in brandy which is why people love them, or maybe after they eat them they don’t remember they ate them and just thought they loved them.  It is the secret to my Mom wasn’t dead of Fruitcake.  Maybe we should call them Pickled Brandy Holiday Booze Logs………

I still think I’ll wait for a fresh one!

Merry Christmas