FOUNDED IN FALL RIVER, MASSACHUSETTS · DECEMBER 1998
The Fruitcake
Defense League
For the Restoration of an Honorable Cake to Its Rightful Place at the Table
My name is Peter Neves. From 1949 to 1990 I owned and ran Neves Bakery on the east end of Fall River, Massachusetts, where my father taught me the trade and my wife, Grace, kept the books and the customers in line. We made sweet bread and papo-secos every morning, malassadas on Fat Tuesday, wedding cakes in June, and every Christmas for forty-one years, two hundred fruitcakes, give or take.
Every one of those forty-one Christmases, somebody told me a fruitcake joke. Customers, salesmen, the man who delivered the flour, my own brother-in-law, the monsignor once, and in later years the television, every night from Thanksgiving on. I am seventy-six. I have heard them all, and I have heard most of them four thousand times.
Last December my grandson Eric put me on this computer, and I decided that a man who has baked eight thousand fruitcakes has earned the right to say a few words in their defense. So I founded the League. There are no dues and no meetings. There is a pledge, and there is the truth, and there is my recipe.
[ The Articles · The Pledge · Myths and Facts · The Recipe · The Amnesty · Testimonials · My Baking Calendar ]
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The Articles of the League
ARTICLE I. NAME. This body shall be known as the Fruitcake Defense League.
ARTICLE II. PURPOSE. The League exists to defend the fruitcake against ridicule, ignorance and the doorstop remark; to teach the proper making, wrapping, keeping and slicing of the cake; and to win back, one thin slice at a time, those who have been turned against it by bad cakes made in a hurry.
ARTICLE III. MEMBERSHIP. Any person who takes the Pledge is a member. There are, as of this writing, 214 members in 31 states, Canada, Portugal and the Azores. My grandson says the Azores are part of Portugal and should not be counted twice. My father was from São Miguel, and they will be counted twice.
ARTICLE IV. OFFICERS. The President is the undersigned. The Secretary is my grandson Eric Fenn, who types. There is no Treasurer, there being no treasury.
ARTICLE V. AMENDMENTS. These Articles may be amended by the President after consultation with his daughter.
— § —
The Pledge
I will taste before I judge,
and I will ask for a thin slice, not a thick one.
I will not tell the doorstop joke,
nor laugh at it when it is told,
except politely, when it is told by my elders.
I will not pass along a fruitcake I have not tried.
I will remember that the cake in the store, made in a hurry,
is not the cake my grandmother made with patience.
And I will give the next fruitcake I am handed
the courtesy I would give any gift made with care.
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To take the Pledge, write to me (address at the bottom of this page). I will add you to the roll and send you a letter of welcome.
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Myths and Facts
| The Myth | The Fact |
| "It's as heavy as a brick." | A fruitcake is dense, not heavy. It is mostly fruit and nuts with only enough batter to hold them together, so of course it has some weight to it. But a good one is moist and tender and slices clean. If yours was heavy and dry, it was made wrong, or made in a factory, or both. Cut it cold, with a thin sharp knife, a quarter inch thick. You do not eat fruitcake by the slab. |
| "It keeps forever because it's full of chemicals." | It keeps for months because of the sugar and the brandy. The sugar in all that candied fruit holds on to the water so mold has nothing to work with, and the brandy does the rest. Our grandmothers made these cakes long before anybody had heard of a preservative. My father once kept a cake a full year, wrapped and fed, to settle an argument with a customer. He won the argument. It was an excellent cake. |
| "Those red and green cherries are made of plastic." | They are real cherries, cooked slowly in sugar syrup until the sugar takes the place of the juice, and then colored. I don't care for the green ones myself, and I don't use them. You may leave them out too. Nobody will come to your house about it. |
| "Nobody actually eats fruitcake. They just give it to somebody else." | For forty-one years I sold two hundred a year, and I had customers who ordered every year from 1952 until they passed on, and then their children ordered. People do not keep buying something to give away for thirty-eight years. They buy it because they eat it. |
| "It's only good for Christmas." | In England a wedding cake is traditionally a fruitcake, the top tier saved for the first christening. In my house it was eaten with coffee from Thanksgiving to Lent. Christmas is only the beginning. |
| "I don't drink, so I can't eat it." | Soak the fruit in orange juice or apple cider instead, and skip the brandy cloth. The cake will be good, but it won't keep the way the brandy cake does. Keep it in the refrigerator and eat it within a couple of weeks. That should not be difficult. |
| The doorstop. | I have heard this one since 1949. I will say only this, and then I will not mention it again. A doorstop does not get better with age. A fruitcake does. |
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The Neves Bakery Fruitcake
Two 9 by 5 inch loaves. Begin at least four weeks before you mean to serve it. Six or eight is better.
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The fruit, to soak the night before:
1 pound candied peel, diced (citron, orange and lemon; your own if you can, see below)
1/2 pound candied red cherries, halved
1 pound raisins, dark and golden together
1/2 pound currants
1/2 pound dried figs, stems off, chopped (my father's touch; dates will do)
1 cup brandy, and more for keeping
The nuts:
2 cups blanched almonds, coarsely chopped (walnuts if you must), plus a handful of whole ones for the top
The batter:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon allspice, 1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
4 large eggs
1/4 cup molasses
The grated rind of one orange, and 1/4 cup of its juice
The method:
1. The night before, put all the fruit in a crock or a big bowl, pour the brandy over, cover it with a plate and leave it on the counter. Stir it once before bed and once in the morning. Your kitchen will smell the way a kitchen ought to in October.
2. Heat the oven to 275 degrees. Grease two 9 by 5 loaf pans, line them with brown paper or parchment, and grease the paper. Set a pan of hot water on the bottom rack of the oven. It keeps the cakes moist through the long bake.
3. Take 1/2 cup of the flour and toss it through the soaked fruit and the chopped nuts. This keeps the fruit from sinking to the bottom.
4. Cream the butter and brown sugar until light. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the molasses, orange rind and juice.
5. Sift the rest of the flour with the baking powder, salt and spices, and stir it in until you can't see any more flour. Don't beat it.
6. Fold in the fruit and nuts with a big spoon. It will look as if there is not enough batter. That is correct. Do not add more.
7. Pack it into the pans and press it down firmly with the back of the spoon to drive out the air. Lay the whole almonds on top in a pattern. Grace did a cross. I do rows.
8. Bake two and a half to three hours, until a straw or a thin skewer comes out clean. Cool the cakes all the way in the pans, on a rack.
9. The wrapping, which is the whole secret. Peel off the paper. Soak a piece of cheesecloth big enough to go around the cake in brandy, wring it out lightly, and wrap the cake in it. Then wrap in waxed paper, then foil, and put it in a tin with a tight lid. Keep it somewhere cool.
10. Once a week, unwrap it and sprinkle the cloth with two or three tablespoons of brandy, and wrap it up again. Do this for at least four weeks. The cake will darken and mellow and the flavors will marry. A fruitcake is like a marriage that way. It takes time, and it needs a little attention every week.
On candied peel. The diced peel in the plastic tub at the supermarket will make a cake. Your own peel will make a better one, and it's easy. Take the peel of four oranges and two lemons in strips, with as little white as you can manage. Cover with cold water, bring it to a boil, and drain. Do this three times; it takes out the bitterness. Then simmer the peel gently in a syrup of two cups sugar and two cups water for about an hour, until it turns glassy and see-through. Lay the strips on a rack overnight to dry, roll them in sugar, and dice. Keep it in a jar. It keeps for weeks, and you will find yourself eating it off the spoon.
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— § —
The Fruitcake Amnesty
I am declaring an amnesty. If you have ever told the joke, regifted a cake you never tasted, fed one to the birds, or hidden one in the back of the freezer since the Carter administration, you are forgiven. Send me the story. Do not send me the cake. I have plenty of cake.
A few of the stories I have received, printed with permission:
• Louis Gupta of New Jersey confessed that in 1986 he used a fruitcake to prop up a short leg on his workbench, and it held for eleven years. He was very sorry. I told him that anything which holds a workbench level for eleven years is a well-made product, and he is forgiven.
• A gentleman in Ohio, who asked me not to print his name, wrote that his family had passed the same fruitcake among four households every Christmas since 1993, each one wrapping it in new paper. This past Christmas his granddaughter finally unwrapped it, cut it, and served it, and it was, he says, "pretty good." Five years in a tin. I would have fed it more brandy, but I am not surprised.
• A lady in Oregon wrote only one line: "I told the doorstop joke at my office party in 1978 and I have regretted it every day since." Madam, you have suffered enough.
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Testimonials of the Converted
"I made Mr. Neves's recipe last November, my first fruitcake in fifty-six years of life. My husband, who has told the doorstop joke every Christmas since 1965, asked for a second slice. Then a third. He has not told the joke since."
— Ruthann Hannah, Taunton, Massachusetts
"I bought my Christmas fruitcake from Neves Bakery every year from 1957 to 1990, when Peter retired, and I have not had a decent one since. Now I make my own. It's almost as good. Don't tell him I said almost."
— Harold Kelling, Somerset, Massachusetts
"I was a skeptic. My wife joined the League. I said I would try one slice, cut thin, to keep the peace. I am now a member."
— Reginald Adan, New Bedford, Massachusetts
"Made the candied peel with my grandchildren. They ate half of it before it went in the cake. Next year I'm doubling it."
— Henry Flinn, Albany, New York
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A word across the way to my neighbor here in the Bakery, Dolores, who is The Pie Lady, with four county fair blue ribbons for her fruit pies. A fruit pie, Dolores, is a fruitcake in a hurry. I mean that as a compliment, and I mean it about the ribbons too.
My Baking Calendar for This Year »
(Start in October, or the cakes won't be ready.)
Visitors to the League since December 1998:
    
To take the Pledge, or to confess: [email protected]
Peter Neves, President · Eric Fenn, Secretary (he types)
Last updated Monday, September 20, 1999
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