Collin Street Bakery Fruitcake
Old-People Christmas Thing. 1947-Present
Your great uncle used to send a mail-order fruitcake to your family every Christmas, but that ended in 1989. A Collin Street Bakery fruitcake is an industrial product of the middle 20th century, like metal filing cabinets or bakelite telephones. The gift ones come in a metal tin, like danish butter cookies do. The tin has a sort of Victorian Alamo Cowboy Holiday thing going on.
The cake inside is delicious, dense, covered in plastic, full of candied fruit in bright primary reds and greens.
A few years ago there was an embezzling scandal at the bakery, that prompted a pretty great Texas Monthly article.
Unless you have elderly relatives in Texas, no one is going to send you one this year. You’ll need to order it yourself.
I’m a little late and out of season, eh? That there tin looks awfully familiar. But I grew up in Ohio and had no relatives in Texas! My mother, deceased since 2013, was the only one who ate fruit cake at Christmas time... I still don’t think candied fruit belongs in anything. Cheers Joe!