Fun Facts about Fruit Cake

By Lauren Scott, Arizona Farm Bureau Intern

It is national fruit cake month, and what better way to celebrate the traditional holiday pastry than with some fun facts! We’ve done a blog on this interesting food before, and now it’s back for round two! To tell you the truth, when I think of fruit cake I don’t necessarily think ‘fun’ or for that matter ‘tasty’, either, but the fruit cake has a long history full of interesting facts, and a long list of fans, too! So without further ado, here are some fun facts (that I’m sure you never knew) about fruit cake!

• The first references to fruitcake were from the time of the Romans when they would combine pomegranate seeds, raisins, and pine nuts to create their perfect loaf.
• It seems the British are big fans of fruit cake, and they have been since 1400s, when dried fruit found its way to the British Isles from the Mediterranean.
• In England, there used to be a custom where the night of a wedding, when unmarried wedding guests went home, they would put a piece of fruit cake under their pillow when they slept to have dreams of the person they would marry.
• Fruit cake was served at the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, as well as the weddings of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and their son, Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton.
• Fruit cake can be aged for a very long time before it is eaten and there have been reports of cake that is over 25 years old still being consumable.
• Although some fruit cakes are aged for a very long time (like you learned above) before eaten, they really only need to be aged about a month before you can serve them.
• Two different towns, Corsicana, Texas and Claxton, Georgia, both claim to be the fruit cake capital of the world.

I don’t think fruit cake is as loved as it should be, and I don’t know why, but people seem really disgusted by the stuff. It’s just fruity and sugary goodness wrapped up into a little loaf, nothing to be afraid of. I think this year we should change the stereotype that is fruit cake, and turn it into a holiday tradition that people actually take seriously. And the good thing? Because fruit cake gets better with age, you can make one for the next holiday season now!