“I want a slice with cherries in it!”
“They ALL have cherries in them.”
Thus began a lesson from my dad in quality, and ingredients, and fruitcake. I was maybe 9 years old.
This story has the resonance of a memory for me, although not exactly the reality – it could be an amalgamation of more than one real-life event, “remembered” over the distance of 45 years – but at any rate, it’s a story about me & Dad & fruitcake.
As mentioned here before, my dad was VP of Production for a chain of bakeries in the Midwest for my entire childhood. One of those bakeries is in Beatrice, Nebraska, which is where they make Grandma’s Fruit Cake.
Dad & I were the only ones who liked the fruitcake. In fact I love that damned fruitcake. We always got some at Christmas. And I especially loved the candied cherries, as much for the bright red color as the flavor. And yes, they actually had flavor!
And this was in fact the lesson: Dad explained to me that to be a GOOD fruitcake, it had to be made of high-quality ingredients. All those nuts and candied fruit were expensive, he said. So people who wanted to cut corners would use less of those things, and more fillers, like flour. Really good fruitcakes actually have hardly any flour in them. The flour in a good fruitcake is just enough to hold everything together, and in Grandma’s Fruit Cake it wasn’t really enough to do even that. (Pro tip: for that reason, you’re supposed to cut it with a wet knife.)
Even today, long after the original bakery chain got bought out by some Belgian company, the slices don’t really hold together very well. They crumble into a delicious sticky pile of nuts and fruit, a bit more than a hint of booze, and those beautiful candied cherries.
I can say that with assurance because today my husband went out for coffee with his boss, and on his way home he stopped off at the grocery store.
Of course he knows about my history with Grandma’s Fruit Cake. And only a few days ago I had been thinking of trying to order one for the holidays, and wondering aloud if it was already too late to do it – or indeed if it was foolish to order a whole fruitcake just for me.
So when he happened to spot some small, stocking-stuffer-sized boxes of fruitcake at the store, of course he picked one up for me.
And that’s what was prominently printed on the top of the box in red: one generic word, FRUITCAKE.
I was grateful for the gesture, sure, but not at all convinced that a grocery store FRUITCAKE was going to fit the bill.
(Husband didn’t notice anything special about it either at the time – although he did mention later that he thought it was kind of on the expensive side for a little box of fruitcake.
Dad was right, and still is.)
So. Tonight I was making myself some cocoa, and the box of fruitcake nearby on the kitchen counter caught my eye again.
Only this time, I saw the dark green logo in the bottom corner: the curved banner that without even reading it, I KNOW says “Grandma’s Bake Shoppe”.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
I grabbed the box, turned it over. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, except that I saw it immediately. There was the bakery address: Beatrice, Nebraska.
Proof that this was a real, honest-to-god Grandma’s Fruit Cake…
…and the first two slices had at least 3 cherries apiece.
Much like the last time one showed up unexpectedly at a horrible time in my life, it’s a very important message. The fruitcake is something that was special to both Dad and me; that bond is still there, and still meaningful even after all these years. Dad’s love for me is still there when I need it.
“I can’t be there any more, but here’s a fruitcake for you. You know what it means. Love, Dad.”
I love you too, Dad. Merry Christmas.