Australia In Australia, fruitcake is consumed throughout the year, but most commonly at Christmas, and is available at most major retail outlets. The cake is rarely given icing; often it is consumed with butter or margarine, or custard.
Bahamas In the Bahamas, not only is the fruitcake drenched with rum, but the ingredients are as well. All of the candied fruits, walnuts, and raisins are placed in an enclosed container and are soaked with the darkest variety of rum, anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months in advance. The cake ingredients are mixed, and once the cake has finished baking, rum is poured onto it while it is still hot.
Bulgaria In Bulgaria, the common fruitcake is known as
keks ( ), is home-made and is consumed throughout the year. Recipes for
keks vary, but commonly it contains flour, butter and/or cooking oil, milk, yeast, yoghurt, eggs, cocoa, walnuts, and raisins. It is usually baked in
Bundt-style pans. There is also another specific type of fruitcake prepared for
Easter, which is known as
kozunak ( ).
Canada The fruitcake is commonly eaten during the Christmas season in
Canada. Rarely is it seen during other times of the year. The Canadian fruitcake is similar in style to the UK version. However, there is rarely icing on the cake, and alcohol is not commonly put into Christmas cakes that are sold. The cakes are shaped like a small loaf of bread, and often covered in marzipan. Dark, moist and rich Christmas fruitcakes are the most frequently consumed, with white Christmas fruitcake less common. These cakes tend to be made in mid-November to early December when the weather starts to cool down. They also can be a gift generally exchanged between business associates and close friends/family. It is called
gâteau aux fruits in
Quebec and
New-Brunswick.
Chile Pan de Pascua is a fruitcake traditionally eaten around Christmas and
Epiphany.
France In France, fruitcake is called
cake aux fruits confits.
Germany In German, fruitcake means
Früchtebrot, which is used both as a general and as specific name. In Germany, baked goods which fit the description of fruitcake are not usually regarded as cake but rather as sweet breads.
Stollen is loaf-shaped and often powdered with icing sugar on the outside. It is usually made with yeast, butter, water, and flour, with the addition of citrus
zest,
candied citrus peel,
raisins, and
almonds. The most famous Stollen is the
Dresdner Stollen, sold at the
Dresden Christmas market, the
Striezelmarkt. Official
Dresden Stollen, produced by only 150 bakers in Dresden and some adjacent settlements, bears a special seal depicting Elector
Augustus II the Strong. Typically, it is covered with a crust of compacted
powdered sugar around 1 cm thick, but it is actually defined by its richness in butter and certain fruit and nuts: Per kilogram flour,
Dresdner Stollen is mandated by law to contain at least 650 grams
sultanas, 500 grams of butter, 200 grams
succade, and 150 grams of almonds. The recipe originated in 1491, when after several generations of lobbying by
Elector Ernest,
Duke Albert III, and their ancestors,
Pope Innocent VIII gave an exemption to the Roman Catholic
ban on using butter during
Lent to Saxon bakers. In
Bremen, the local fruitcake called
Klaben is traditionally sold and eaten during the Christmas season.
Bremer Klaben is a kind of stollen which is not dusted with powdered sugar after baking. Both
Dresdner Stollen and
Bremen Klaben are
protected geographical indications. In Southern Germany and the Alpine region,
Früchtebrot (also called
Berewecke,
Birnenbrot,
Hutzenbrot,
Hutzelbrot,
Kletzenbrot,
Schnitzbrot, or
Zelten) is a sweet, dark bread baked with nuts and dried fruit, e.g. apricots, figs, dates, plums, etc.
India In India, fruitcake is found everywhere during the Christmas season, although it is also available commonly throughout the year.
Ireland In Ireland, a type of sweetbread called
barmbrack is eaten at Halloween. The cake contains different objects such as a ring or small coin, each signifying a different fortune for the person who finds it.
Italy is a yeast-leavened fruitcake.
Panforte is a chewy, dense
Tuscan fruitcake dating back to 13th-century
Siena. Panforte is strongly flavored with spices (
panforte means "strong bread") and baked in a shallow form. Genoa's fruitcake, a lower, denser but still crumbly variety, is called pandolce ("sweet bread"). There are various types of fruitcakes from the
Emilia-Romagna region, most being dark and heavily spiced with an abundance of candied fruit and nuts. The
certosino from
Bologna is a round cake similar to panforte but with aromatic spices and a variety of whole-halved candied fruit decorating the top; dark chocolate is often added to the dough for a richer flavour. The certosino is low and very dense.
Panone, produced in much of Emilia, is similar to the certosino, but with a lighter, fluffier dough and candied fruit inside the cake rather than used as decoration.
Panpepato from
Ferrara has a dough similar to panone but has a higher ginger content. Candied fruit is not often found and instead there is a high concentration of nuts within the dough; the entire cake is often coated in dark chocolate.
Gubana is a Christmas/holiday cake from the
Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, specifically from the area around
Cividale del Friuli. It is a leavened dough cake with a filling of nuts, dried fruit, sugar, and
grappa which is rolled into a spiral filled tube which is then twisted into the shape of a rose or snail's shell. Gubana is often eaten with alcohol (
slivovitz or grappa) around the holiday season. It combines Italian, Friulan, and Slovenian tastes and cooking styles to create a unique sweet.
Panettone is a
Milanese sweet bread (widely available throughout Italy and in many other countries), served around Christmas, which is traditionally filled with dried and candied fruits, with a bread-like consistency.
New Zealand Fruitcakes arrived in New Zealand with early settlers from Britain. Until the 1960s fruitcake was generally homemade, but since then has become commercially widely available in a range of styles. Light coloured fruitcake is often sold as
tennis cake or
light fruit-cake all year round. Most New Zealand wedding cakes are finely iced and decorated fruitcake often several tiers high. Most fruitcake is eaten in the Christmas period. It is dark, rich and made from multiple dried fruits. Homemade cakes may use brandy or sherry to enhance flavour rather than as a preservative. They may be square or round, iced or uniced. A Christmas cake is usually simply decorated with a Christmas scene or the words Merry Christmas.
Poland Keks is a traditional fruitcake eaten during Christmas season. It is a loaf shaped sponge cake with a substantial content of nuts, raisins, figs and candied fruits.
Portugal Although French in its origin,
Bolo Rei is a traditional fruitcake enjoyed during Christmas season and a staple dessert in any Portuguese home during the holidays. Included is the characteristic fava bean and, according to tradition, whoever finds the fava bean has to pay for the cake the following year.
Switzerland Birnenbrot is a dense sweet Swiss fruitcake with candied fruits and nuts.
Anglophone Caribbean Black cake, is a traditional part of Christmas celebration in the English Caribbean. The cake incorporates a large quantity of mixed fruits and rum/wine and becomes a treasured Christmas treat consumed and given out between the Christmas season and New Year. The fruit, wine and rum is prepared weeks, sometimes months, ahead, and has its origin in the English Christmas pudding, and can be quite expensive. It is very different from a North American fruitcake.
United Kingdom In the UK, fruitcakes are made in types ranging from extremely light to rich and moist. The traditional Christmas cake is a round fruitcake covered in
marzipan and then in white
royal icing or fondant icing. It is often further decorated with snow scenes, holly leaves and berries (real or artificial), or tiny decorative
robins or
snowmen. It is also the tradition for a similar kind of cake to be served at weddings. In Yorkshire, fruitcake is often served accompanied with cheese. Fruitcakes in the United Kingdom often contain
currants and
glace cherries, an example of this type being the
Genoa cake. A type of fruitcake which originated in Scotland, the
Dundee Cake, owes its name to
Keiller's marmalade. It does not contain
glace cherries, but is decorated with
almonds. In Wales,
bara brith is a type of fruitcake flavoured with
tea, dried fruits and spices. Fruitcake was historically referred to as
plum cake in England from around 1700.
United States Typical American fruitcakes are rich in fruit and nuts. Mail-order fruitcakes in America began in 1913. Some well-known American bakers of fruitcake include
Collin Street Bakery in
Corsicana, Texas, and
The Claxton Bakery in
Claxton, Georgia. Both Collin Street and Claxton are Southern companies with inexpensive access to large quantities of nuts, for which the expression "nutty as a fruitcake" was derived in 1935. The fruitcake produced by the
Trappists of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky earned the "best overall fruitcake" accolade from
The Wall Street Journal. During an interview on
Russell Howard's Good News, astronaut
Chris Hadfield recounted that a fruitcake made by "Trappist monks in the Ozarks" was found and served aboard the
International Space Station during Hadfield's tenure as commander. Most American mass-produced fruitcakes are alcohol-free, but those made according to traditional recipes are saturated with
liqueurs or
brandy and covered in
powdered sugar, both of which prevent mould. Brandy (or wine) soaked linens can be used to store the fruitcakes, and some people feel that fruitcakes improve with age. In the
United States, fruitcake has become a ridiculed dessert, in part due to inexpensive mass-produced cakes of questionable age. Some attribute the beginning of this trend to
The Tonight Show host
Johnny Carson. == Shelf life ==