Corsicana fruitcake with tin
Bon vivant Calvin Trillin wrote that there is actually only one fruitcake in the world, and it is continually re-gifted each holiday season. That fruitcake joke, or a variation, has had just as much recycling to the point that giving a fruitcake for Christmas, or offering a slice to your guests, is to invite ridicule.
Enough already. While I have no doubt there are inferior fruitcakes, the standard of the art from Collin Street Bakery is a masterpiece, made with 28% Texas pecans and other high quality ingredients, and packaged in a keepsake tin with tableaux of winter festivities (in some place other than Texas, obviously) bracketing a cowboy whirling a lasso in front of the Lone Star and the Alamo. Yee hah!
The reusable tin alone is nearly worth the price of the fruitcake (currently a little under $30 for the two pound Deluxe) and when I was growing up in Dallas more often I saw these packed with chocolate chip cookies or divinity than the original product.
I enjoyed “Corsicana Fruitcake” (the bakery is located in Corsicana, TX) as a special treat at my grandmother’s buffet each Thanksgiving, and had no idea about the ridicule until I ventured out of state. I also have a family connection to Collin Street Bakery because my cousin, John A. Burnett, did their advertising for a number of years.
I like to think John A. was responsible for the unusual entry on their mail order form where you specify in care of whom the gift should be sent. One assumes this is because a large percentage of their orders went to assisted living facilities, and what finer treat could there be to share with your neighbors at social hour?
We are currently at the end of the holiday season so I am going to ask you to get on their email list so you can try it in 2017. Here is a sign-up link which will possibly give you 5% off your first order. Also, keep an eye out for specials… last Cyber Monday they were offering free shipping plus a steep discount when you order two cakes. (Which proves, definitively, that there is more than one fruitcake in the world.)
I don’t get the fruitcake hate. I’m not big on sweets, but I really like fruitcake. Did you mean umami in the previous post?
An eater after my own heart… thanks! Re umami, I guess you are right! I always preferred “umami” (maybe because it has “mommy” in it) but a spellchecker taught me otherwise. But a search for “is it unami or umami” comes down squarely on the side of the two m’s. I’ll go correct it now.