Fruitcake

Thirty RedPlum.com staffers blindly taste 10 different fruitcakes, ranking them in order from least favorite to "the best fruit cake you can buy!" They judge the cakes on appearance, flavor, texture and… aroma. Assumption Abbey's fruitcake is ranked dead last, with comments such as "it burns" and "worst ever." The top three are Old Cavendish, Kirkland's, and Berries, Cherries N Nuts Fruitcake by Women Helping Other Women, which snags first place. Testers describe the cake as "moist, chewy and chunky, packed with raisins, and simply tasty." As a bonus, the cake is described as "healthy" -- low in fat and sugar, with unbleached flour and no high fructose corn syrup.

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The Wall Street Journal's tasters sample six fruitcakes from mail-order sources; Gethsemani Farms fruitcake is the winner. This dark and spicy fruitcake, which is doused with bourbon, is considered to have… a nice cake-to-fruit balance. Walnut Acres and Mary of Puddin Hill are the runners-up. Harry & David's "sticky, overwhelmingly sweet" fruitcake brings up the rear. Given that most fruitcakes are given as gifts, we appreciate Julie Michaels's attention to customer service, shipping cost and time, return policy, "telephone attitude" and packaging.

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Gugino taste-tests four Texas-style fruitcakes: Collin Street Bakery Original Deluxe Fruitcake, Mary of Puddin Hill Pecan Fruit Cake, Eilenberger's Bakery Fruit Cake and the Texas Manor Cake, as well as… cakes from Bien Fait (the Traditional Fruitcake), American Spoon Chocolate Fruitcake and Harry & David's Fruit Cake Confection and Traditional Fruitcake. While Harry & David's Traditional Fruitcake "approached the cliché of bad fruitcakes," Gugino calls their Fruit Cake Confection "addictive," and although it's almost entirely fruits and nuts, "not overly sweet." He says he was "hard-pressed to pick a winner" among the Texas four and has praise for each. He is not a fan of Bien Fait's Traditional Fruitcake, saying it is "too spicy and heavy."

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A smattering of fruitcakes is reviewed by a handful of customers on Amazon.com. Cakes from Trappist Abbey, The Wisconsin Cheeseman, Assumption Abbey and Old Cavendish all boast reviews, but most have only… one customer review (though some have five, such as Grandma's Original Fruit and Nut Cake Ring). The reviews are mostly positive and don't differ greatly between cakes, decreasing their usefulness for choosing between fruitcake brands.

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