Fruitcakes

Pity the poor, maligned fruitcake. Who hasn't heard stories of the same fruitcake that gets passed around every year and then sits on a shelf until the next holiday season? The poor things are often referred to as bricks, paperweights or doorstops. Most people either love it or hate it. Don't blame the fruitcake, blame the recipe! There are many different styles and recipes from which to choose, so give fruitcake another chance.

Fruitcakes have been making the rounds for centuries. In general, fruitcakes can include any and all of the following: candied fruit, dried fruit, fruit rind, nuts, spices and some sort of liquor or brandy. The ratio of fruit and nuts to batter is fairly high, with just enough cake batter to hold it all together. This naturally results in a very dense, moist, heavy cake, no doubt giving rise to the doorstop reference.

I've always been a huge fan of vegetable cakes. I don't mean broccoli cake (though I like that, too) — I mean sweet cakes that use veg as one of their main ingredients. In my experience the British often find this a bit weird — people freak out about zucchini loaf (sorry, courgette loaf) and don't even get them started on pumpkin pie. I guess vegetable-as-baking-ingredient is more of an across-the-pond thing, though there are signs that things are changing over here. Carrot cake is now as much a British classic as it is a North American one; beetroot seems to be the cake ingredient du jour, with Nigel Slater extolling its virtues and a very popular version being sold at London farmers' markets; and one of last year's hot cookbooks was all about making cakes healthier using veg. Look - there's even a company in Northumberland specializing in root vegetable cakes.