Bena Mae’s Kitchen: Fruit Cake Stories

Fruit and cake in one package. What a brilliant concept.
Wrong. I don’t like fruit cake. I’d just as soon eat a hockey puck. The taste of citron…yuck.
But early in my marriage, I felt it was my wifely duty to make a fruit cake each year. It was pure labor, but not a labor of love. But it was as important to the holiday scene as the Christmas tree. So each year I’d make out the long list of dried fruit and nuts which stretched a mile long and send my husband to the store for the ingredients.
That day when he came back from the store I asked him if he was able to find everything on the list.
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t find the fig nuts.”
“Fig nuts?” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. I even had a lady shopper trying to help me look for them. We searched up and down the aisles for an hour but ‘no fig nuts’.”
I doubled over laughing at the sight of these two earnestly looking for an ingredient that didn’t exist. Then I checked my list again to see what I had written. On the line where I had written “figs,” I had added “nuts” without putting a space between figs and nuts.  Since then I have worried about his helpful shopper spending the rest of her life looking for the non-existent fig nuts when she goes shopping.
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This story has made the rounds every year but I still laugh when I read it. Enjoy it again.

Christmas Whiskey Cake

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour, sifted
1/2 t. salt
1 cup bourbon
1 pound pecans, chopped
3 cups white raisins (or use candied fruit)
1 t. nutmeg

AND

~ a very large bottle of bourbon whiskey ~

First, sample the whiskey to check for quality.
Assemble all of the ingredients. Check the whiskey again.
To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.
Repeat this step.
Turn on the electric mixer and beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar and cream until beat.
Make sure the whiskey is still okay… try another cup.
Turn off the mixer. Beat six leggs and add to the bowl, then chunk in the cup of dried flut. Mix on the tuner.
Throw in two quarts of flour. Gradually pour in the cow.
Add 2 dried anything.
If the fried druit gets struck in the beaters, pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the whiskey and check it again for tonsistency.
Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Whateva???
Check the whiskey again.
Now sift the nutmeg and strain your nuts. Add one table.
And the spoon. Of whiskee. Or something. Whatever you find left.
Grease the oven.
Turn the crake pan to 350 degrees. Don’t forget to beat off the turner.
Pour the oven into the batter. Throw the bowl out the window.
Lick the batter off the floor.
Bake 300 minutes at 50 degrees.
Finish the blobble of whishy and fall into bed.
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Enjoy your fruit cake friends and HAPPY CHRISTMAS.