I don't understand the bad rep fruitcake gets either.

I did not know that fruitcake was drinky. Or maybe, it isn't consistently so, because my experience of fruitcakes was seeing them at various relatives' houses, full of those neon things, never being eaten. They seemed very generic (and probably store-bought) and pointless, as holiday confections go. You gotta be prettier to compete with church window cookies and gingerbread people and buche de noel, you know?

I wonder if you can make fruitcake without the fruit. Probably it would just be called "cake." With some nice confectioner's sugar or glaze on top, there's a chance I would eat it.

Anyone guessing next supreme court nominees? I'm thinking Edith Clement.

Because my grandma always used to make peparkokr (that's how she spelled it, who knows?- ah. Looks like it is pepparkakor) which was a really thin spice cookie.

This is what pepparkakor were to my Swedish grandmother. Small, thin, spicy, not at all sweet, and from a child's perspective, miserable, excuses for cookies. To this day, I eat a single pepparkakor at Christmas to please my mother, and then give thanks that I have a year before I have to eat another.

I wonder if you can make fruitcake without the fruit. Probably it would just be called "cake." With some nice confectioner's sugar or glaze on top, there's a chance I would eat it.

Nutty speaks for me. In general, I'm not a fan of dried fruit, nor anything made with it, and while I enjoy fresh fruit and many fruit-based desserts (peach ice cream, blackberry pie, etc.), with infinite desserts to choose from I go for the chocolate and/or nut-based.

What's left when you take the fruit out? A mildly spiced cake?

Fruitcake without the fruit wouldn't be a million miles from Peperkoek. Although, drier. They sometimes have it at Whole Foods, or Trader Joe's, when 'tis the season.

Generic, store-bought fruitcake is, I suspect, the root cause of America's distrust of the fruitcake. There are some things that cannot be mass-produced. Some things that should never be made "Shelf-Stable". Until they install brandy spritzers in every grocery store in the country, fruit cake is one of those things.

What's with all the fruitcake talk? I don't think Bush is going to go with Brown.

My husband's grandfather's fruitcake was so liquor-y that he stored it in mason jars. That fruitcake was very popular.

What's with all the fruitcake talk?

I don't know, waiting for indictments feels all Christmassy.

Suddenly I am flashing back to the best dessert I ever had, which was a chocolate steamed cake, very rich and hot, with caramel drizzled on top. Want.

I don't have an objection to fruits in dessert, but neon cubes are not fruits.