French Fruit Cake

Truly fruity
Fruitcakes here are kept traditional in taste and appearance
By Huang Lijie,Straits Time 2.12.2007







SUGAR, spice and all things nice - liquor-soaked fruit, to be exact. This list reads like a recipe for a sweet treat until the word 'fruitcake' is mentioned
















Then, memories of bad wedding cake and overly saccharine Christmas fruit loaves surface.













Despite the prominence of fruitcakes, the confection has a much maligned reputation as being a leaden Yuletide confection. Case in point - the annual Great Fruitcake Toss in Colorado in the United States where people compete to see who can hurl a fruitcake the farthest.










But fruitcake is steeped not just in alcohol but also in a tradition that goes all the way back to Europe in the 1700s.





Then, they were baked at the end of the harvest and kept for a year - the high concentration of sugar used to preserve the cake - before being eaten prior to the next harvest as an auspicious food.


Over time, it has become a gastronomic tradition more popularly associated with Christmas.

While one would expect local chefs to give fruitcakes a new twist the same way mooncakes here have been re-invented, the sugar-laced fruit creations sold here are largely traditional in taste and appearance.