By Shelby Duffy
The vacation season goes hand in hand with candy treats. I’m typically overcome with fond recollections of the irresistible aromas of cinnamon and brown sugar drifting by means of the home as my mother baked away. She stuffed our stockings with vacation sweets and chocolate bars, and tucked packing containers of chocolate-covered cherries beneath the tree. However there was all the time one Christmas dessert that I didn’t fairly know what to do with: fruitcake.
For a few years, I averted attempting the traditional Christmas cake, considering of it as previous and outdated. It wasn’t till I used to be an grownup, once I had vowed to rid myself of the “choosy” title I used to be given as a younger youngster, that I discovered the braveness to strive the cake I had been dodging for thus lengthy. Abruptly, the old school dessert made sense. The wealthy and buttery cake, bursts of brilliant taste from chewy dried fruits, spices that lingered on my tongue after the primary chunk, all wrapped along with the delicate and heat roundness of rum. It was a posh taste profile that I couldn’t absolutely recognize as a toddler and may’t resist as an grownup.
To be taught extra about these time-honored treats, it solely made sense to go to Claxton, Georgia—the so-called “fruitcake capital of the world” and residential of the 115-year-old Claxton Bakery, famend for its conventional fruitcakes. It was based in 1910 by Savino Tos, an Italian pastry maker who immigrated to the US within the early 1900s and finally settled in Claxton after being drawn in by the pleasant locals and realizing that the small agricultural city didn’t have a bakery. Although he supplied clients a number of scrumptious pastries and home made ice cream, many of us regarded ahead to the autumn when Savino would create his personal specialty fruitcakes. The desserts had been primarily based on his favourite recipe for pound cake and included a mix of raisins, pecans, and candied fruits. This candy cake quickly grew to become a beloved vacation deal with.
In 1945, Savino retired, passing the bakery onto long-standing worker Albert Parker. Albert quickly started to seek for methods to develop the firm, recognizing that many objects previously obtainable solely at an area bakery had been immediately popping up in grocery shops throughout the nation. Albert determined it was time to shift his focus to large-scale manufacturing of fruitcakes, enabling the corporate to distribute them to a a lot wider viewers. Impressed by the nostalgia of Southern custom, he created packaging emblazoned with the now-iconic depiction of a horse-drawn buggy, highlighting the corporate’s conventional values, with festive pink and white stripes that evoke the vacations in addition to making the desserts straightforward to acknowledge.
Albert and the bakery continued to embrace custom, making few adjustments alongside the way in which. The present fruitcake recipe is a fashionable adaptation of Savino’s authentic method and focuses on the next ratio of fruits and nuts. Actually, their “gentle” desserts are 70 p.c fruit and nuts, with one chunk revealing crunchy, earthy nuts; chewy papaya, pineapple, and orange; and wealthy raisins and cherries. In addition they provide a “darkish” fruitcake, which ups the mix of spices and incorporates ribbons of wealthy molasses straight into the cake batter for a richer style. Each gentle and darkish flavors can be found as loaves, 1- and 2-pound desserts, and by the slice, known as “Clax Snax.”
Albert’s household continues to run the enterprise, and although little has modified their celebrated bakes, they’ve skilled regular, sustained development. Through the busy baking season, the small-town bakery welcomes greater than 100 seasonal staff, who work alongside the year-round employees to prep, bake, bundle, and ship all their fruitcakes. Claxton Bakery produces round 3 million kilos of fruitcakes a yr, and through their busy season, which spans from mid-August by means of December, upward of 65,000 kilos of cake a day might be baked. Their merchandise might be bought at most main grocery shops in the US, on-line, and at their native retail retailer.
As the vacation season attracts close to, with gloomy afternoons that too rapidly flip into darkish, frigid evenings, I can’t assist however to reminisce on a few of my most fond recollections. Being ushered by means of a bustling mall stuffed with individuals who are all trying to find the proper presents; a flurry of chilly wind tousling my hair as I gaze up at twinkling lights set in opposition to a darkish, snow-dotted sky; and the faint, soothing sound of Christmas jazz buzzing within the background of grocery shops as I stroll previous tables crammed with cellophane baggies of cutout cookies and a show stuffed with red- and white-striped packing containers flaunting loaves of jewel-toned speckled desserts.
Go There
Claxton Bakery
203 W. Most important St.
Claxton, Georgia
claxtonfruitcake.com
