Alton Brown's Top Tip For Fruitcake That Actually Tastes Good

Fun fact about fruitcake — even though it has a national day, as what food does not? (it's December 27, in case you were wondering), 89% of Americans can't stand the stuff. (The other 11%, apparently, are keeping a fruitcake-baking Missouri monastery in business.) What is it we don't like about this hate-able holiday dessert? According to Alton Brown, who is never shy about sharing his opinions, candied fruit is 100% to blame. He proudly declares that his fruitcake contains no candied fruit, although his recipe does use candied ginger.

Apart from dried, uncandied fruits, what makes Brown's fruitcake so different? Possibly the variety of fruits used, since the recipe calls for both lemon and orange zest along with dried apricots, cherries, cranberries, and blueberries. (If you can't find the last-named item in the grocery store, you can always buy it on Amazon.) Apart from that, it appears to be a fairly standard fruitcake recipe, although Brown being Brown, he does insist that you grind some of the spices by hand. He also favors brandy over rum and uses a spray bottle to apply the stuff to the cake post-baking.

The question remains, is Alton Brown's fruitcake all that different from any other you've tried? Your mileage may vary. One person commenting on Food Network mentions it being less dense than store-bought fruitcake, while someone else calls it "beautifully dense". Most who rave about the cake, however, seem to agree with Brown that it's all about the fruit. They like the fact that uncandied fruits are less sweet than their sugary counterparts, while some also praise the lack of artificial coloring. The downside of these natural ingredients, though, is that they come at a price. One person commenting in 2009 said they paid $200 for everything needed to bake multiple cakes, while another estimated the cost to be $30 per loaf back in the late '00s.

Alton acolytes may insist that Brown's fruitcake recipe redeems the dish and has converted hordes of haters, but we have a game-changing fruitcake recipe of our own that's completely different. It does have candied fruit, but omits the spices, and as one commenter who doesn't care for Brown's fruitcake explains, the spices may be what gives fruitcake its polarizing flavor. (Brown's recipe is heavy on cloves and allspice.) Our recipe also bakes the rum into the batter, while the cake is coated with Karo syrup after baking to keep it moist but not mushy. The best thing about our fruitcake, though, is that it contains no raisins. (Team Raisin Hate, sound off!) Brown's cake is said to be very raisiny-tasting, perhaps because it uses four times the amount of dried grapes as any other type of fruit.