It's Not Christmas Without Fruit Cake

Recipe below

Like with other ethnic groups here in the United States, Christmas for African Americans has traditionally been a very special holiday centered on sweets like fruit cake. I interviewed my mother in law Clara [Bullard] Pittman, who is a terrific cook, for my book on soul food called Hog and Hominy. She was born in 1948 in the very rural farming community of Pinehurst, Georgia. She recalls that on Christmas her mother made homemade fruitcake from what she grew in her yard. The children of West Indian parents I interviewed also associated childhood Christmas memories with homemade fruit cake. Making Christmas fruitcake was a long process, according to the 84 old Benjamin Outlaw. When asked what Christmas was like growing up in Windsor, North Carolina, Outlaw responded, “Oh boy, it was like heaven.” Mother “would start cooking her fruitcake, sometime about a month before Christmas. And she always made [either apple or grape] wine.” Hattie Outlaw poured the “wine on the cake until Christmas . . . building it up.” This must have worked to season the cake, “because it was the best fruitcake I have ever eaten.” Here are an host a fruit cake recipes from a very interesting organization: The Society for the Protection and Preservation of fruit cake. Here is their website and list of recipes: http://mbgoodman.tripod.com/fruitcakerecipes.html