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To most people, they're a joke, but, to Truman Capote's aunt, fruitcakes made with the proper effort are ambrosia.
By MARY JANE PARK
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 11, 2000
HUDSON -- In Truman Capote's story A Christmas Memory, his cousin Sook Faulk baked her famous fruitcakes in November.
Better to have begun in June for holiday giving, says Capote's aunt Marie Rudisill.
"A fruitcake must be at least 6 months old before it's ready to be eaten," she says. "It takes that time to soak up everything."
Certainly, she has heard the jokes about leaden baked goods passed along, untasted, from household to household.
She dislikes some of the cakes herself.
"The fruitcakes they make today are not fruitcakes at all," she says. "They're just dried fruit thrown together, and they really have no taste. They crumble and fall apart.
"I think they've been maligned long enough. If a fruitcake is properly made, with the proper ingredients, it is absolutely the queen of cakes."
Rudisill, 89, spent most of her teenage years in the same house with her nephew, their cousin and other relatives in Monroeville, Ala. Today, she lives in a mobile home on a spacious wooded lot in rural Pasco County with her pit bull, Chrissy, a Christmas present after Bubba, its predecessor, died of cancer. Also in residence are a half-dozen or so cats.
In her kitchen are ancient cast-iron cookers -- a circular griddle and a tripod spider pot -- along with a microwave oven, a Cuisinart food processor and a rotisserie cooker.
Old copies of Gourmet, for which she has written, are stacked on shelves near her electric typewriter; more current Vanity Fair and Art & Antiques magazines are on the coffee table.
Her Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook (Hill Street Press), due out in November, is a collection of fruitcake recipes.
Sook Faulk began baking fruitcakes at age 50, Rudisill says.
"She sent them to presidents," Rudisill says, "and President Roosevelt was her favorite of all because she loved Eleanor Roosevelt because of all the good that Eleanor Roosevelt did. She had letters from Eleanor Roosevelt" that were lost in a fire that claimed the family home.
"She sent them to everybody that she knew in town. They used to load them up on this little old baby carriage, a little wicker baby carriage, and haul them all over town."
In Sook's Cookbook, published in 1989, Rudisill included a recipe for the cake immortalized in Capote's story. The cake weighs about 12 pounds. "That thing was so big, my God! I really should have cut it down," she says.
The new book has more practical recipes, including her favorite, which she calls 1866 Fruitcake. "Of all the recipes I have used," she says, "that is the best, because it has everything on God's green earth in it."
During Prohibition, Sook seasoned her cakes with bootleg corn whiskey purchased from a man who claimed to be an Apache chief. Rudisill prefers Sandeman cream sherry or Courvoisier.
"It's a lot to making a fruitcake," she says. With the proper effort, however, "Fruitcakes are true ambrosia."
Even though it is too late to achieve fruitcake perfection for December gift-giving, here is Rudisill's counsel for success:
-- Use a soft-wheat flour, such as White Lily brand.
-- Plump the raisins and marinate the nuts in alcohol before you start the batter. "The main thing about a fruitcake is you've got to marinate your nuts and steam them before you bake it," Rudisill says. "What tears a fruitcake up is striking those pecans and Brazil nuts (as you are) cutting it. You've got to have them soft enough to cut through."
-- Flavor the cake. "Sook used to surround them with fresh apples," Rudisill says. "The apples eventually sort of rot, but the essence goes into the fruitcake. Put (slices of) apples all the way around it. When they spoil, just take them out and put more, but let them completely deteriorate, because that's when the fumes really go into the fruitcake. You know, an apple has a wonderful smell.
"And then she wrapped them in cheesecloth, soaked the cheesecloth in brandy, put them in a container or crock and covered it. You let them stay six months. You periodically lace them with brandy. That's a real fruitcake."
-- Slice the cake correctly. "When you take that fruitcake out, when you're ready to eat, you put it in the (freezer) and let it get almost frozen," Rudisill says, "then take it out and cut it with a real sharp knife in a seesaw motion. You can slice that thing wafer-thin."
1/2 cup candied lemon peel
1/2 cup sliced candied orange peel
1 1/2 cups finely cut citron
1 1/2 cups candied pineapple
1 cup candied cherries
1 1/4 cups dark seeded raisins
1 1/4 cups chopped California walnuts
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup sifted enriched flour
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups enriched flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 cup grape juice
Combine the peels, fruits and nuts; sprinkle with 1/4 cup of flour and mix well.
Thoroughly cream butter and brown sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Sift together 2 1/2 cups of flour, the baking powder, salt and spices; add alternately with grape juice. Pour the batter over the floured mixture of peels, fruits and nuts.
Pour into a large tube pan until three-quarters full. Do not flatten batter. Bake in a very slow oven at 250 degrees for about 5 hours.
Remove from pan and pack in airtight tin with a double layer of cheesecloth soaked in bourbon.
Bake at least 3 months before Christmas. Do not let the cake dry; keep lacing it with bourbon.
Source: "Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook" by Marie Rudisill (Hill Street Press; $15.95. To be published in November.)
2 1/2 pounds Brazil nuts
2 1/2 pounds white (or golden) and dark raisins, mixed
1/2 pound candied cherries
1/2 pound candied pineapple
1 pound citron
1/2 pound blanched almonds
1/2 pound pecan halves
1/2 pound black walnuts
1/2 pound dried figs
1 scant tablespoon ground nutmeg
1 scant tablespoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons grated bitter chocolate
8 ounces grape jelly
8 ounces grape juice
8 ounces bourbon
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 scant tablespoon allspice
2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
12 eggs
4 cups flour
Cut the fruits and nuts into small pieces and use enough of the flour to dredge them, making a thin coat over all. Cream the butter and sugar, adding one egg at a time, beating well. Add the flour. Add the dredged fruits and nuts, spices, seasoning and flavorings. Mix thoroughly. Line cake pan with waxed paper and grease well, then flour. The pan should be large enough to hold a 12-pound cake.
Pour the mixture into the pan and put it in a steamer over cold water. Close the steamer and bring the water to a rolling boil. After the water boils, lower the heat and steam the cake on top of the stove for about 41/2 hours. Preheat the oven to around 250 degrees and bake the cake for 1 hour.
Note: The original cakes were steamed on top of a wood stove, then baked. Any steamer that allows the steam to rise may be used. Sook Faulk doused her cakes with whiskey and even used moonshine corn whiskey during Prohibition.
Source: "Sook's Cookbook: Memories and Traditional Receipts from the Deep South" by Marie Rudisill (Longstreet Press, 1989; out of print.)
To most people, they're a joke, but, to Truman Capote's aunt, fruitcakes made with the proper effort are ambrosia.
"Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature, but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
"A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable -- not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my,' she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"'