My mom makes the best fruitcake I've ever had. It's full of the creepy-colored candied cherries and pinapple, studded with raisins, nuts and figs and soaked in vermouth for about a month. There's barely enough batter to hold all the goodies together. Their neighbor who is from England looks forward to it every year. He says it reminds him of home. I will happily eat fruitcake of every variety, but Mom's is the best.

I used to be a non-lover (hater is too strong a word) but I have an uncle who took upon himself to upgrade our family recipe to incredible results! Each cake costs a lot to make but they are very fruity (apricots, cranberries, three sorts of raisin, all rehydrated in booze), very nutty (I don't remember how much different sorts) and deliciously boozy (he brushes the cakes with rhum or cognac each week for about a month). So I'm a reborn lover!

I always wonder if fruitcake hate is related to the booze - do people hate it because it has booze? Because they get ones that don't have booze (and need it)? Because they get ones with cheap, bad booze? To confess, my mother made it with just grape juice, aged over about a week. I didn't start liking fruitcake until I was an adult, and didn't know it was traditionally alcoholic until just a couple of years ago.

...hm. I sorta made it sound like Mom's fruitcake is the reason I didn't like it before, which isn't the case. It took me a while to grow into liking it, that's all. Hers is one of my favorites now.

I don't love eating it, but I love making it. I use my mom's old recipe - http://cheesecloth.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/christmas-cake-part-1/

Oh, man. My grandpa gave us half a fruitcake he picked up at the local bakery to celebrate the start of the season, but couldn't finish. I figured "Hey, I'm a mature and responsible lover of food, but it's been years since we even had a fruitcake in the house, I can't even remember trying it when we did. I've probably outgrown my childish aversion to it. Heck, it was probably based in the way it's lambasted in popular culture. A long time ago, it was probably just designated as a scapegoat, and people formed their impressions from there."

But, tragically, I found out that this depiction of fruitcake doesn't just contain a kernel of truth, it's all true. The slice of fruitcake I had was horribly dense--not pleasantly dense and fudgy, no, its density was the stick-to-your-teeth and adhere-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth type dense. It was filled with sticky bits of candied fruit, and while admittedly I am not a fan of bits of fruit/raisins in baking, these little chunks of evil are precisely the reason why. I had hoped that the flavours of molasses and spice would make up for the textural issues, but even those were underwhelming. True to the Canadian stereotype, you could use these things for rocks in curling.

I don't know, maybe I caught a bad one. Maybe I need to find a fruitcake that comes from a really good background. Reading the comments from fruitcake lovers, the cakes they describe really do sound appealing. But I think I'm going to go another few years before I try again. I highly doubt I'll suffer much from lack of fruitcake.

I make one that sounds kind of like SophieMtl's. It is from an Alton Brown recipe that uses mostly dried fruit instead of candied (except the ginger, that's still candied) and lots of nuts. It's not cheap so it is a Christmas gift for the few fruitcake-lovers in my family.

The Fruitcake Bars in Vegan Cookies Take Over the World by Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero are excellent, and the only way I take my fruitcake.

Didn't like it until I found this recipe: http://serenitydawn.blogspot.com/2005/12/sxms-fruitcake.html The dates keep it moist for many many months, alcohol-infused or not.

LOVE LOVE LOVE fruitcake!! If anyone has some they want to give away, send 'em over here!

My dad makes a yummy lemon sauce for fruitcake. We always have that Christmas Eve after dinner.

I love them when done right. I've had my share of icky ones, usually we just take those over to my grandmother's, she'll eat ANY kind of fruit cake.

The best fruitcake I ever tasted was made by a youth pastor's wife that I knew while attending college. She bought candied cherries and other fruits from a flea market and chopped them up into the tiniest pieces possible. (I spent hours helping her with this.) Then, she mixed them together with a batter made from graham cracker crumbs and melted marshmallows (I think) and formed small loaves. I don't think she even had to cook them in the oven. She just wrapped the loaves up in tinfoil and handed them out as Christmas presents. They were quite gooey and delicious.

I've had some pretty dreadful fruitcakes over the years, but I really like the ones I make!

One has dried apricots, golden raisins, dates and pecans, flavoured with orange juice and orange rind. I dump a whole lot of Grand Marnier and brandy over the loaves while they are still warm, and top them up regularly. It has just enough cake batter to hold all the fruit and nuts together, and I just love it.

the other one is a Jamaican-style dark fruitcake - mostly dates, figs and raisins and just a little bit of candied fruit - but the fruit is marinated in copious quantities of rum for a week before you mix the cake. Very tasty. And moist in a good way.

Every Halloween Day I put together my "Christmas Cake", which is just another name for Fruit Cake. In addition to a wide variety of fruits, with some nuts for variety, I also put in shredded coconut. Once the baked cakes have cooled, I start adding either rum or brandy to the cakes once a week. By the time Chirstmas actually does arrive the cakes are ready to be enjoyed by our friends and family, some of whom would be horrified if they realized that the finished cake is basically "Fruitcake"! The cake batter is matched right about 1 to 1 with the fruits, nuts, and coconut combined, so it is not at all like the purchased ones that are almost all fruits, but it has a much higher percentage of fruit than say raisin bread.

My Mom always made fruitcake cookies, which are sometimes called Texas Lizzies if you want to look up the recipe. I always preferred those to traditional fruitcake - you get the flavor of fruitcake but you also get a better texture, crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. My Mom used those neon colored "fruit bits" but I've seen recipes that use genuine fruit. (Plus at least a cup of whiskey.)

Anne (in Reno), I only like Alton Brown's fruitcake which my sister makes (I think she makes fruitcake cookies out of this recipe too and they are good also)...Also, Franklin Pecan Cake has a few fruity things in it (just a teeny bit) and it is divine.

I do not like fruitcake unless it fits the above categories.

I am thinking of buying an inflatable plastic fruitcake from Archie McPhee because as they say, it is exactly as edible as the real thing!

As said above, the Alton Brown Fruitcake is wonderful. I can't recommend it enough.

bad fruitcake can put you off for life. yuck. i hate that candied "fruit".

i use a nigella lawson recipe from Feast - Chocolate Fruit Cake. so moist and dark and full of fruit, but so so rich. definitely a once-a-year cake.

How timely, I'm making mine right now! It's boiled pineapple fruitcake that comes from the Women's Weekly cookbook and dates back to the 70s or early 80s. My mum's been making it since I was little. It is the best fruit cake- pineapple, sultananas, raisins and currants. No disgusting glace cherries or anything.

I think AT should host The Great Fruitcake Bake-Off!!

Well, maybe next year, since most of these babies have to sit for 4 weeks.

Some of your recipes sound amazing from the descriptions -- please share!!

I've long searched for the perfect fruitcake even fruitcake haters could love; the closest I've come is a version I found in the local paper in the '80s which had cherries, nuts (pecans I think), and the batter was chocolate. Very good.

I've tried version with dried, not candied, fruit and find them too heavy, especially ones with figs (and dates). Wonder whether there is a French equivalent of fruitcake ?-- they make the most amazing candied fruit in France...

p.s., have to add that the reason I think most people don't like fruitcake is that most candied fruit is horrid... but once you have tasted the really good French glacé fruits, you become a convert to its deliciousness...

I love fruitcake - but I really don't like the candied peel etc... except for the cherries - they're fine (the good glace ones that aren't clown-nose red). I run on the principle that if I don't like it, it doesn't go in - so long as the weight of fruit overall matches the total in the recipe. I recommend Nigella's easy action Christmas cake - it has a can of chestnut puree in it, which although it sounds gross, makes it taste great. I also recommend her Simnel cake for Mother's Day/Easter time - a lighter fruitcake, but with a layer of marzipan baked into the middle of it.