The fruitcake, long maligned as a holiday punch line, deserves another look. Gone are the candied fruits and sticky-sweet batters. Today's fruitcakes can be delicious, even light, and not overly sweet. Southern-style fruitcakes have no alcohol and tend to be heavy on the nuts, especially pecans. Monastery-style, or traditional fruitcakes are usually drenched in alcohol and have a balanced cake-to-fruit ratio (and are lighter on the nuts). Contemporary fruitcakes bend the cliché, often past its breaking point, with lighter cakes filled with different kinds of dried fruits that you might not have seen in a fruitcake before. Here are a few other fruitcake pointers to keep in mind this season:

  • Buy directly from the bakery. This ensures that you'll receive a fresh fruitcake, not one that has been sitting in a warehouse for months. It may also be less expensive to buy direct. For example, Williams Sonoma sells Assumption Abbey fruitcake for $40, not including shipping. The abbey's price, which includes shipping, is just $30.
  • Order early. To ensure holiday delivery, contact the company by early to mid-December to learn their order cutoff date.
  • If you can, make your own. No matter how much fruit you use, homemade fruitcake is more economical than ordering one. Internet recipes for traditional fruitcakes abound. We've compiled some for you in our Useful Links section.
  • Ask about ingredients. Some bakeries use unexpected ingredients such as turnips, turmeric, papaya and prunes -- items that can trigger food allergies. Dried fruits, also commonplace in fruitcakes, often contain sulfites, and these compounds can also cause physical reactions.
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