Nuts Over Fruitcake!

When the ovens crank up during the height of summer in Claxton, Ga., a sweet aroma of fruitcake wafts down the streets and around the corners.

When the ovens crank up during the height of summer in Claxton, Ga., a sweet aroma of fruitcake wafts down the streets and around the corners. While most residents cool off at the beach or relax in the shade, the “Fruitcake Capital of the World,” prepares for the holidays.

“It’s almost like fresh cookies being baked,” says Dale Parker, head of marketing and public relations for the family-run Claxton Bakery. Every August, Parker, his siblings Betty, Mid, and Paul, and at least 100 seasonal employees gear up to produce 4 million pounds of fruitcake for Christmas.

And just up the street from Claxton Bakery, John Womble and his father, Ira Womble Jr., run the Georgia Fruit Cake Co., which bakes an annual fruitcake batch of several hundred thousand pounds. “We’re a hands-on kind of company,” John Womble says. “I make birthday cakes, too.”

Just drive into Claxton (pop. 2,276), and it’s hard to miss the city limit signs and the 50-foot water tower bearing their slogan.

“Everybody from here to California has heard of Claxton,” says Chris Gay, who owns Claxton Supermarket on Liberty Street. “There is not a downside to being known for fruitcake.”

Except for the jokes. Comedian Johnny Carson once said only one fruitcake actually exists—and it gets passed around from year to year. If that’s the case, that’s a mighty big cake—and Claxton probably produced it.

Claxton residents take their claim to fame as seriously as any livelihood, however.

“I like the fruitcake,” says Dick Gardner, who manages a Flash Foods store where many tourists stop for directions to the bakeries. Gardner grew up in Michigan and has fond memories of his grandmother’s homemade fruitcake, which differed a bit from the kind he gets down South today.

“Up North, it’s more of a cake and they don’t put much fruit in it,” says Gardner, who has lived in Georgia for six years. “Down here . . . there is more fruit.”

Savino Tos, an Italian immigrant, began it all in 1910 when he opened Claxton Bakery and began selling bread, homemade ice cream, pastries, and—during the holidays—fruitcake.

Tos hired two youngsters, Albert Parker and Ira Womble Sr., to perform chores around the bakery, never dreaming that 92 years later his fruitcake legacy would still be going strong, run by the very descendants of his two young helpers.

Tos ran Claxton Bakery until 1945, when he retired and sold it to Albert Parker, who had worked for Tos for almost 20 years. After World War II, Parker realized that bread and ice cream were in plentiful supply in gas stations and grocery stores, so he decided to specialize in fruitcake.

In 1948, Womble, who had moved to Iowa in the 1920s, returned to Claxton and opened Georgia Fruit Cake Co.

Over the years, the two families have not only supplied fruitcake to America, but also have gone to high school together, given each other swimming lessons, and operated their businesses with tradition in mind.

Although no one besides direct descendants of Ira Sr. have ever mixed a batch of Womble fruitcake, the recipe is available for the asking, John Womble says. “It’s a family recipe, but it’s not a secret.”

He remembers doing chores at the bakery when he was 4 or 5, and his own son and daughter have both worked there. “We’re trying to keep a family tradition alive,” he says.

That heritage also is important at Claxton Bakery, although Dale Parker has seen his share of changes since entering the family business in 1974, including the addition of a company website. On a typical day, they now create nearly 90,000 pounds of fruitcake, double what Albert Parker produced when he baked his first cakes in 1945.

But one thing that won’t change is customer service, Parker says. This means you’ll never talk to an answering machine when you call the bakery.

“We have always treated our customers the way we would want to be treated.”

Why a fruitcake? (for goodness sake)

Fruitcakes have been popular for centuries because of three qualities.

First, being saturated with various alcoholic liquors such as rum and brandy, they can last a long time—up to 25 years in a sealed tin, by some accounts. Craig Claiborne, food writer for The New York Times, once wrote that he inherited a fruitcake his mother had in her possession since 1880. This lasting quality made fruitcakes a perfect food for long trips and voyages in earlier times.

Second, being saturated with rum or brandy, fruitcakes have a certain … well, character and kick that other cakes lack. The cakes therefore were so revered in Puritan England, in fact, that laws governed how many times a year fruitcakes could be made.

And finally, the cakes are extremely tasty. Made of dried fruit and nuts with just enough batter to keep everything together, a small bite goes a long way. The baked cakes are vaguely related to English plum puddings (which contained no plums; plum was a generic word for any dried fruit). These, like the fruit or nut ingredients of mincemeat, were often fermented in a crock for a year or more, fed periodic doses of brandy, then added to batter and baked.

If fruitcakes are heavy (and they generally are), that’s deliberate. They aren’t meant to rise to the light, fluffy texture of modern birthday cakes. Instead, they are meant to be a treat of substance, to be sampled in small pieces.

Don’t rush. Take 25 years, if you like.

Karan M. Robinson is a writer based in South Carolina.

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