Link to Random Lengths Article: Coping With Fruitcake

Random Lengths News published my article, "Fruitcake:  Cope with This Much Maligned Holiday Tradition." Here's the link for the online version, which you may copy and paste into your browser:
http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/2017/11/fruitcake-cope-much-maligned-
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Below is the article, should the link be down:

Fruitcake: Cope With This Maligned Holiday Tradition

By Lyn Jensen

If you love fruitcake—also called fruit bread, Yule cake, or Christmas ring—you’re probably planning to get one (or more) from a local retailer such as Amalfitano Bakery in Rancho Palos Verdes, or order online from a world-renowned company such as Collin Street Bakery based in Corsicana, Texas.

If you dislike fruitcake, you may find yourself with one, anyway. Maybe you’ll get one at a party. Maybe you have that relative that always bakes fruitcake for gifts, like Truman Capote’s cousin Silk did in the classic story A Christmas Memory. Maybe this is the season for you to confront the reality that you have a fruitcake stored away somewhere--for longer than you want to admit. If so, consider options beyond throwing that fruitcake away. Adding food to the waste stream isn’t environmentally correct.

Browse around the Internet for ways to get away with serving fruitcake. The Collin Street Bakery website provides some ideas. The following suggestions are culled from several Internet and print sources.

·        Some people eat ice cream even when it involves fruitcake. Fruitcake purists may insist fruitcake is to be eaten plain, but if you’re not a fruitcake purist, slice it and top it with ice cream and/or whipped cream, and you’ll find it tastes much better. You can even make a fruitcake sundae the way you’d make a brownie sundae. A variation is to crumble or cube bits of fruitcake as garnish on a sundae.

·        Try toast. Put thin slices on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven, then top them with butter or cream cheese for breakfast or snacks. You can also use the slices to make French toast.

·        Make trifle or bread pudding. Both are time-honored ways to recycle leftover bread or cake, and that includes fruitcake. Find a recipe and hit the kitchen.

·        The right wine makes a marriage. If you serve fruitcake with compatible dessert wine, such as Riesling, tawny port, or cream sherry, you’ll find they make each other taste better. You may even want to throw a wine-tasting party. Invite guests to blind-taste several selections of dessert wine, and serve fruitcake to cut the liquor. Award a door prize to the person who eats the most!  

If after considering ways to make fruitcake enjoyable, you still can’t face serving/eating it, dispose of it in a useful way.

·         Repeat, trashing or composting fruitcake is not a good idea. Fruitcake infamously lasts years or decades. It’s not going to break down in a compost pile anytime soon.

·         Our animal companions like fruitcake even if we don’t. Humorists sometimes wonder how many fruitcakes end life as bird feed. How about gifting your backyard’s wildlife with an appropriate feeder, too? If you know a friendly dog, horse, pig, chicken, parrot, or goat, maybe they’ll like your unwanted fruitcake!

·         Call food charities about making a donation. Ask about donating some butter or cream cheese, too!

• Don’t tell anybody but you’re re-gifting it. Johnny Carson is credited with originating a joke about how maybe there’s just one fruitcake in this world, and it’s forever being passed around as a gift. If you do this kind of recycling, make sure it’s going to someone who’ll be pleased to receive it and stop the chain. Otherwise you may find it coming back around. Do the recipient a favor, too—type or write up serving suggestions (like these)!