Fruitcake. If you are an American, you are probably rolling your eyes. If you are from nearly anywhere else, your mouth may be watering from memories of delicious holiday treat or dense and sweet wedding cake. Fruitcake is a very popular dessert throughout the world, but here in the old United States of America, the humble fruitcake has a laughable reputation. Johnny Carson joked that there was only one single fruitcake in the whole entire world, and people just keep passing that one cake around as a gift. In Manitou Springs, Colorado there is a yearly fruitcake toss (the record for distance, 1420 feet, was set in 2007 by a group of Boeing engineers). In American English slang, a fruitcake is a person who is strange or even crazy. Well, I think it's high time to restore good old fruitcake's reputation with help from Chef Nicholas and his family recipe!

Chef Nicholas' homemade family fruitcake! Photo: S. Ewing