Rouses_FINAL-November-December-2017

PA-RUM-PUM-PUM-PUM

“The great holiday cakes are in their own special league, and fruitcakes and rum cakes are in another category altogether. Both use brandy, bourbon and rum to flavor and preserve them.​”

enough spicy batter to hold together the dried or candied fruits and copious amounts of nuts, not to mention a judicious amount of brandy or bourbon. I’m here to tell you: lots of people still make fruitcake at home. Alton Brown’s Free Range Fruitcake recipe on foodnetwork. com has 257 reviews, all five-star. The Tampa Tribune has to print its recipe for Mrs. Harvey’s White Fruitcake every year. In 1956, Lucille Harvey won a recipe contest with the recipe known as “the fruitcake people like to eat.” She didn’t use any alcohol in the recipe, but brushed bourbon on the cake with a special brush, according to Anne Byrn’s 2016 masterwork cookbook, American Cake: From Colonial to Gingerbread, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes . Mrs. Harvey shipped fruitcakes to servicemen in 13 foreign countries overseas during World War II. The sturdiness of fruitcake for shipping made it especially appropriate for packages, although the rationing of many ingredients at the time made them even more prized. Assistant Director for Curatorial Services Kimberly Guise of the National World War II Museum told me last year that the museum’s

archives contain many letters thanking the folks at home for the holiday fruitcakes sent to the soldiers. The 2009 book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History , has a passage that evokes the impact such a package could have. One of the Monuments Men, George Stout, received a long overdue package from home. “It was an artifact from another world, a connection to his old life, and he stared at it fondly. He believed in duty and honor, but like everyone else, he was homesick. He thought of his kitchen back home and his wife over the mixing bowl, and of his sons …The cake was still good, moist and delicious. It’s amazing how the world can change, he thought, during the lifespan of a fruitcake.”

in preparation for the upcoming holiday season. (Baker Maid is also the developer and baker of the Love, Cookie brand, also sold by Rouses Markets.) The Creole Royale has a unique topping layer of thinly slivered almonds. Each slice is individually wrapped, and the tin it is sold in depicts a pastel Jackson Square, with St. Louis Cathedral in the background.The image is the work of Charles Henry Reinike, who, according to Louisiana Cultural Vistas , was one of New Orleans’ most respected artists and art teachers from the late 1930s until his death in 1983. Sorensen’s great-grandfather had several retail bakeries, including Dixiana. “He started selling fruitcake to different clubs and things, to grocery stores,” Sorensen said. “My dad grew up in all the

New Orleans has its own fruitcake, the one the Sorensen family has made for more than 50 years. Greg Sorensen’s great-grandfather is the creator of the Creole Royale Sliced Fruit Cake, and the family’s Baker Maid factory near the Superdome has been baking them for months

WWW.ROUSES.COM 45