The English love their cake. They loooove it. Where American grocery stores might have aisles of, say, toothpaste, English grocery stores have aisles of different types of cakes. Christmas has its own cakes, confusingly referred to as "Christmas pudding". A lot of these appear to be of the fruitcake variety, which also confusingly, the English seem to love. I was amazed to see that the Christmas cakes were out already when I did my shopping last week. I thought they must expire before Christmas, so I checked.... September 2010.
For the few of you who haven't seen Jim Gaffigan's humorous thoughts on cake, watch the video below. The classic and applicable fruitcake bit starts around 4.20.
2 comments:
Christmas puddings and fruitcakes last for years. They mature christmas pudding for months - continually adding liquor. I didn't know it was a typically British thing. (I wrongly assume that the rest of the world is equally mental.)
It was always traditional to use fruitcake for wedding cakes, so that the top tier could be saved in a tin and eventually used at the christening of the couples first child.
Kate's right, the alcohol preserves them. I didn't know the reason for having fruitcake at weddings until now though, that's a good one.
People who make their own Christmas cakes or Christmas puddings will have already made them long before now. I wonder if I'll be able to get proper Christmas cake out here...
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