News, Fruitcake, Long A Holiday Horror, Gets a Makeover. (ingredients, health, cake)

[JD59]

Bakers have finally found a way to make fruitcake more appealing: Ditch the fruit -- especially those ghastly little neon-colored bits.

"That sticky red, green, yellow chopped-up stuff," says Kevin Nokels, vice president of Alegent Health Midlands Hospital in Papillion, Neb., which sells fruitcake each year. As a kid, Mr. Nokels sneaked a handful of candied fruit off the kitchen counter one Christmas when his mom wasn't looking. "It was awful," he recalls with a shudder.

Fruitcake is one holiday tradition that inspires both reverence and revulsion. Despite its battered image, fruitcake remains big business this time of year. Retailers like Collin Street Bakery, Harry & David and Butterfield Farms sell hundreds of thousands of the cakes in November and December. Premium cakes sell for $12 to $15 a pound.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1198...googlenews_wsj

[litlux]

Fruitcake used to taste great, but then the food manufacturers started to cut corners, and the raw ingredients, like the "candied fruit" nowadays barely resembles the delicious cut up additions your great grandmother added.

Blame it on modern ersatz foods that pretend to be real things. Much harm is done in the name of convenience. Even if people make a fruitcake from scratch today, the flour is different, as are those horrid adulterated fruits that people buy off the shelf. That's why a handful of them straight out of the package is so repulsive.

IMO, the blame is on the food industry, not the fruit cake itself.