Fruitcake: Reviews

Mail-order fruitcake: No joke!

Once the butt of bad holiday jokes, fruitcakes are making a comeback. Gone are the liquor-laden, rock-hard confections of yore. Today's cakes offer a lighter touch -- and contain more interesting ingredients. For instance, Southern-style fruitcakes, typically rich with nuts, contain no alcohol, while monastery fruitcakes (usually bathed in booze) offer a more balanced cake-to-fruit ratio and are light on nuts. Then there are contemporary fruitcakes, which twist tradition. These are generally lighter cakes that contain dried fruits.

To help you find the tastiest cake this holiday season, we sought out several reviews. One helpful source, RedPlum.com, ranks 10 fruitcakes, which have been sampled by 30 staffers. Fruitcakes are judged on appearance, taste, texture and aroma.

MondoFruitcake.com, the world's only fruitcake blog, also offers some insightful reviews. Marian Burros, a veteran food writer for The New York Times and cookbook author, includes several fruitcake recommendations. Sam Gugino of Wine Spectator magazine also samples fruitcakes from seven bakeries, but is "hard-pressed to pick a winner." While he doesn't describe his criteria, he does comment on taste and texture. To round things out, we turned to advice sites like KitchenDaily.com and postings on food forums SeriousEats.com and Chow.com.

Modern fruitcakes that actually taste good

The Gethsemani Farms Kentucky Bourbon Fruitcake (*Est. $40, including shipping), which is made by Trappist monks in central Kentucky, draws raves from MondoFruitcake.com, which calls it "the cake against which all past and future fruitcakes will be judged." Tasters at KitchenDaily.com also give the cake a top ranking, saying that it is very moist and tasty, although they concede that it is not as visually attractive as other cakes. Additionally, one poster at Chow.com's Chowhound forum calls the Gethsemani Farms cake "outstanding," but another complains about its ingredients, which include corn syrup and preservatives. Tasters at RedPlum.com award Gethsemani fifth place out of 10 fruitcakes in blind taste tests, calling its texture "moist and gooey." One taster comments, "I hate fruit cake but like this one," yet some found the cake too "mushy."

Bien Fait's Cranberry Almond Teacake (*Est. $14 plus shipping) earns a place on New York Times writer Marian Burros's top 25 picks for mail-order holiday food. She praises the alcohol-free cake's "dense pound cake loaves" and appreciates its "buttery almond flavor with a hint of tartness." In previous years, she's recommended this cake and Bien Fait's other cakes, calling them "old fashioned cakes with new-fangled lightness." Bien Fait also gets a nod from blogger Cheryl Herrick at CrankyCakes.com, who loves all the Bien Fait products she has tried, while a poster at Chow.com's Chowhound forums says Bien Fait makes "nice holiday products."

Mary of Puddin Hill's Pecan Fruit Cake (*Est. $30 plus shipping) is highly praised in reviews. MondoFruitcake.com puts it above all other Southern-style cakes (which do not contain alcohol but are typically loaded with nuts, especially pecans). Sam Gugino of Wine Spectator magazine calls it a "sticky and delicious toffee-like cake," noting that although it is even heavier on the nuts than Collin Street's fruitcake, there were "still plenty of dates, pineapple chunks and dried cherries."

Collin Street Bakery's Deluxe Fruitcake (*Est. $23; shipping starts at $4) draws mixed reviews. One contributor to SeriousEats.com calls it "the best," while Sam Gugino, columnist with Wine Spectator magazine, says it is less sweet and rich than other fruitcakes, but still "plenty sweet and rich enough." The review on MondoFruitcake.com, however, criticizes the cake for being "boring" and containing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil. RedPlum.com gives the Collin Street fruitcake a rating of 6 out of 10 cakes and a middle-of-the-road review. Some taste testers call it "nice" and "good," while others say, "dry" and "boring."

Assumption Abbey's round, traditional-style fruitcake (*Est. $30 including shipping) also gets mixed reviews from professional reviewers and amateur fruitcake enthusiasts. RedPlum.com ranks it at the bottom of the 10 cakes they tested, with tasters calling it "lovely looking" but some complaining that it burned going down and was the "worst" fruitcake ever. MondoFruitcake.com ranks Assumption Abbey third on its list of monastery fruitcakes, calling it "delicious," though maintaining that the Gethsemani cake is still the "favorite."  A handful of customers posting to Amazon.com say the Assumption Abbey fruitcake is excellent, although another customer calls it too dry and says it does not contain enough fruit.