Nanea's Wartime White Fruitcake

The fruitcake people actually want to eat!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway! It was a lot of fun reading about everyone's favorite holiday recipes. And congratulations again to Shannon! I hope you and your dolls enjoy your set of rum balls from Pippaloo. 

Today, we're going to be tackling a classic but controversial holiday treat: fruitcake. When I told people I was going to be giving this a shot, almost everyone's reaction was instinctively very negative. I've met very few people in my life who have genuinely liked fruitcake, or who are even willing to give it a try, although funnily enough my wife fits both categories and was genuinely excited to see how this came out. 

Part of the reason why it's such a hard sell to people is because the perception is that they're very artificial, stale, or just generally old and bad. Countless people have joked about having a crazy great-aunt who gifts everyone the same fruitcake year after year, or using it as a door stopper instead of eating it. I must be crazy for giving this a shot, right? 

Wrong! Spoilers, but this 1940's recipe for fruitcake was a lot tastier than I was expecting. It's also got some really cool history, and I'm very pleased to be sharing it with you guys.

The earliest known recipes for fruitcakes date back to Ancient Rome, and they were extremely popular during the Middle Ages in Europe. Fruitcake became affordable and therefore popular in the American colonies after sugar plantations led to an excess of candied fruit. 1913 saw the first mail order fruitcakes in America, and the expression "nutty as a fruitcake" can trace its history back to 1935, as southern based companies with access to large quantities of nuts produced fruitcakes that were loaded with nuts. These mail order fruitcakes - or just bad recipes from home bakers - are probably responsible for fruitcake's less than beloved reputation in the United States. 

So, what does fruitcake have to do with World War II? 

Unsurprisingly, Christmas during war time was a lot less extravagant than the holidays we enjoy today, or Maryellen might have enjoyed in the 1950's. Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, many people were too worried about the war to feel like boisterous holiday celebrations were appropriate. As the war continued, rationing and shortages meant people had to get creative in creating decorations, presents, and holiday treats. Although rationing was never instituted in Hawaii, Nanea and her family would have been thinking of ways to save and contribute to the war effort in addition to celebrating the holidays. 

One important way people contributed was to make holiday care packages for America's fighting forces overseas, and a popular item to include in these packages was - you guessed it! - fruitcake! As fruitcake is traditionally soaked in alcohol over several weeks to help preserve it, it can survive a long trip across the Atlantic or Pacific to a hungry serviceman or woman who's tired of eating repetitive military rations. The National World War II Museum has many letters in its collections specifically thanking family members for sending them a fruitcake in their Christmas package. These were genuine words of thanks, as anything sweet or different from C-Rations were really deeply appreciated. One of my favorite funny stories from the war comes from R.V. Burgin's memoir Islands of the Damned. His Australian girlfriend mailed him a fruitcake, but his friends got into it first and ate all of it. He wasn't pleased! 

POWs in German camps also received fruitcakes in Red Cross packages. These would have gotten to prisoners in Japanese camps as well, but the Japanese prison guards notoriously inspected these packages first, and often took most of the items for themselves. Fruitcake would have been deeply appreciated by underfed or starving prisoners on both theaters of the war. 

We've looked at other recipes for war cake before (and even tested one out to see if it could survive a trip!) but this one intrigued me for its unique history. According to Anne Byrne's American Cakes, Mrs. Harvey's White Fruitcake is not only the "fruitcake people want to eat", but during World War II, Mrs. Harvey shipped it to service members in thirteen different countries during the war. That's amazing! I'd love to know which thirteen it was. 

Mrs. Harvey was from Tampa, and every year the Tampa Tribune reprints the recipe around the holidays. A recipe like this might have been passed on from Nanea's grandma Mitchell, and definitely would have been something the McIntires might have baked to send to Dr. McIntire while he was stationed in England. Both girls might have helped make cakes like this to send to friends and family - or even strangers - who were serving overseas. 

You can find the recipe and a lot of facts about Christmas during World War II on NOLA.com. The original recipe makes a large tube cake sized fruit cake, or two nine inch loaves. Since I wasn't sure if I would like the recipe, and some of the ingredients can get a little pricey, I decided to halve it and just make one loaf. 

To begin, chop up 2 cups of pecan halves, 1/2 lb of candied cherries, and 1/2 lb of candied pineapple into "medium" chunks. I ended up quartering the cherries and halving the pineapple unless the piece was originally on the larger size. These all get tossed in flour so they will spread evenly through the batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan. 

I have to admit, I was definitely initially put off by the color of the fruit. It looks so artificial, and the pieces I tasted definitely were more generically fruity than recognizably a specific fruit. Still, I wanted to give this a shot.

In a separate bowl, cream together 1/2 cup of room temperature butter and 1/2 cup of sugar. Add in three eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add 3/4 cup of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 tablespoon of vanilla, and 1/2 tablespoon of lemon extract (I used almond instead, I don't like lemon extract particularly!) and stir everything together This is literally the only non nut or fruit part of the cake, and really did not look like a lot of batter. Again, I was really interested to see what this would be like to mix together.

Fold in the nuts and fruit. This took a bit of effort to make sure everything was well mixed, and I can imagine it's going to be worse if you do the original recipe. There was a lot of stuff in my stand mixer, and doubling it seemed like a lot of work. Still, better to have two loaves if you're making a bunch of care packages, I suppose! 

I poured the batter into a loaf pan, which had been greased, layered with parchment paper, and greased again. The batter was - unshockingly - very stiff, so it took some work to get it smooshed into the pan evenly.

Interestingly, this goes into a cold oven, which is then set to 250 degrees. It bakes for about two hours without ever raising the temperature. I've never baked a cake like this before, but when you consider how little wet ingredients are actually in here, it does make sense. Low and slow helps it cook all the way through without burning. 

After two hours, my cake came out looking nice and golden, with a lot of the colorful fruit poking out of the top. It felt very firm to the touch and smelled really nice while it was baking. I was excited to try it, but it has to cool for another 30 minutes in the pan before it can be taken out.

Thanks to the parchment paper, the cake slid right out of the pan and onto a wire rack. After it was cooled, I moved it onto a plate and brushed it liberally with rum instead of bourbon, because I had a fair amount of rum left over from my rum ball experiment. This cake can be wrapped in cheesecloth and then aluminum foil. According to the recipe, the cake can keep for several weeks at room temperature like this, and needs to be brushed with more alcohol weekly. 

I wasn't going to wait that long to cut into it, though. I was too curious to see what it looked like!

The slices are so full of fruit and nuts that they almost look like stained glass. It's really beautiful! The cake is really sturdy, but it was also really easy to cut into, and made a really nice, even slice. 

But I bet you're all dying to know what it tasted like, right?

Honestly, really good. Really good. Your mileage might vary, but I went into this with rock bottom expectations tempered by an enthusiasm for historic cakes. I was expecting to dislike the flavor or texture because that's usually people's complaints about fruitcake, but this was genuinely a nice cake. Loaded with nuts and fruit, yes, so the texture is a lot different than other cakes, but not in a bad way. It was a really interesting bite. The crunch of the nuts is nicely balanced by the juiciness of the candied fruit, and it's got a nice, light flavor without being overly sweet. It lets both the nuts and fruits speak for themselves in a nice way. 

My wife really likes fruit cake, and she said this was a really good, interesting fruitcake that's unlike any other she's had until now. It was much nuttier than other fruitcakes she's had, and she liked the nice, boozy punch of the rum as a final touch of flavor. We're both in agreement that this is a cake we'd eat again. Jess has even been jokingly reluctant for me to take it into work for my coworkers to try because she's enjoyed it so much! 

When I've told people this was a cake enjoyed by servicemen and women during wartime, their reaction has been to joke that people living on military rations were probably excited to eat anything new out of desperation, and desperation's the only thing that would have made them happy to receive this. I really don't think that's the story here. Having something sweet, with interesting textures and flavors, with just enough of that homey Christmas feel would definitely be welcomed, even if it was a little stale or worse for wear after being shipped across an ocean. Besides, fruitcake's reputation for indestructibility and never going bad thanks to the alcohol makes it a better candidate for care packages than plenty of other holiday treats. 

I've read plenty of memoirs and listened to several oral histories with people speaking fondly about homemade treats they were mailed during the war, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn that some of the letters in the National WWII Museum's collections were be thanking Mrs. Harvey for her tasty fruitcake. I know I'd be happy to open up a package to find something like this in it. Don't be afraid to give it a shot yourself!

And let us know what you think!