A traditional holiday treat that many people don’t like, or at least lots of folks joke about. Sweet, chewy, filled with candied fruit and nuts, encased in a rich spicy cake, what’s not to like? In fact, this treat is so rich that it might not be a good idea to eat more than a small piece at any given moment. If you are watching your weight, forget fruit cake because each piece will have between four hundred and eight hundred calories given all the sugar it has in it. Perhaps it just seems old-fashioned. There are recipes for fruit cake that go back to the middle ages, a fact which opens the door to numerous jokes and lots of ridicule, but I think most of that ridicule is unfounded and based on a biased and uneducated experience as to what this delicious, succulent, treat is really all about. Cake. Who doesn’t like a nice spice cake with lots of rich eggs, flour, and sugar? Walnuts and pecans. Enough said. Candied fruits of all kinds. There are those people who do not like candied fruits, but again, it’s about sugar, so unless you are diabetic, you should love fruit cake which has candied oranges, cherries, pears, lemons, figs, watermelon rinds, and raisins in it. The common denominator here is sugar, and lots of it. Perhaps people fear and loath fruitcake because your strange Aunt Hortensia was the one who gave it to you as a gift, when you really wanted a new video game for your console. You have a natural aversion to your aunt who smells like cats, dresses as if it were 1955, and usually gives you tighty-whitey underwear for Christmas, not a new video game. This time the box weighs several pounds, and you know it’s not what you want. I often think that the presentation and image of fruitcake gives it a bad rap as well: brown and bumpy with strange, muted colors. Fruitcake is also rather massive and somber looking, not at all pleasant or translucent, as if it needed an extreme makeover so that it looked more like a diaphanous piece of sculpted cheese cake rather than something that the cat might have killed and dragged in. If you were to give it to the cat, I’m sure they would make short work of it though. Fruitcake has an image issue which its makers need to deal with. This is a dessert which is just not modern and glitzy, not healthy or holistic, not for losing weight or getting control of your blood pressure. I would suggest, in fact, that if you have any problems related to sugar or fat or weight or high blood pressure or cholesterol, that this is not your ideal food. If, on the other hand, you want to have friends in for a nice hot cup of coffee or mulled wine or aquavit or whatever, you might want to offer small pieces of this delightful, heaven-sent victual that is a delight to eat and wonderful to share. Certainly, you are not going to give this to the younger generation–they want toaster pastries or energy drinks or fast food. They eat with their eyes and fruitcake does not “look” good, so they won’t eat it. Their loss. But if you are having in a few people who have been around the world and eaten a few odd things, then a freshly baked fruitcake from a central Texas location is probably called for. The nuts, the fruit, the cake, it’s a great gift for your favorite teacher, a fabulous administrative assistant, your boss, or just someone you love. Being generous and loving during the holidays is a fine way to cap the year, and God knows, this has been a stressful year. So why not do it with fruitcake?