Fruitcake Fiasco

By Kevina Clear

Every year, I tell myself I’m never baking for the fair again. It always ends in disaster. When I tried making a gingerbread house, the walls wouldn’t hold together and the roof caved in. I struggled on, until Mama paid me to give up on it. Another time, I made pies. While they were baking, the juices dripped onto the oven floor and burned, filling the house with smoke. The pies all got Bs—one was underbaked, one had mushy fruit, and one was oversalted. It’s not just my confections I ruin, though. Once, Mama asked me to watch her raisin bread while it was in the oven. When she came back, the bread was the same color as the raisins. And they weren’t golden raisins.

Somehow, this didn’t convince me to throw in the dishtowel and leave baking to people who know cake flour from confectioner’s sugar. Nope. Every August, I do it all again.

This year, with three days until the fair’s entry day, I asked Mama for ideas for the Holiday Baking category.

She stood at the sink, scraping burned rice from the bottom of a pot. Rice I had been “keeping an eye on.” “You could make fruitcake.”

“In three days? I thought fruitcake needed time to age. And I can’t use rum.”

Using alcohol in baking at the Berrien County Youth Fair is a recipe for disqualification. Even using a color name that happens to be shared with a kind of wine can disqualify your exhibit. I learned this the hard way.

“You can use juice. And if you start now, there’s enough time.”

So, I made fruitcake. I chopped up prunes, dates, dried apricots, and candied ginger—only cutting myself once—poured in orange juice and pomegranate juice, and soaked it all for two days, letting the flavors meld. Friday night, I stirred up the batter, scraped it into a pan, and put it in the preheated-to-325-degrees oven. The recipe said it should take seventy-five minutes to bake, so I set a timer. This cake was not going to burn. I would watch it like it was a flight risk.

When the timer went off, I stuck a skewer in the cake to see if it was done. The skewer came out with gooey crumbs clinging to it. Not done yet. I set the timer for five more minutes. The timer beeped, and I checked the cake again. It looked exactly the same. Whatever. I didn’t need a timer. I would come back and check it soon.

Fifteen minutes later, my little sister Meira walked into the kitchen. “Why is there smoke pouring out of the oven?”

“Because I’m an idiot!” I jumped up from the couch and ran into the kitchen. Smoke rushed from the oven as I opened it, fogging my glasses. I waved away the smoke and pulled out the blackened cake.

“That’s awfully burnt,” Meira observed.

“Really?” I huffed. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I put the cake on the table, then slumped beside it. “It was fine fifteen minutes ago. How did it burn so fast?”

Mama came into the kitchen. “Did the oven malfunction again?”

“No, I malfunctioned again,” I groaned. “I’m cursed to fail at everything I bake.”

She checked the oven temperature. “Five hundred degrees. It overheated.”

I lifted my head. “So… it wasn’t entirely my fault?” I felt better, until the smell of burned cake assaulted my nostrils again. “But my fruitcake is still ruined.”

“Let’s look and see.”

I stood back as Mama turned the cake out onto a cooling rack. Part of the blackened crust stayed in the pan, revealing a beautiful golden-brown interior. It looked delicious. I tore a chunk from the inside—brilliant move.

“Ow! Oh!” I tossed the piece between my hands. Once it was cool, I popped the cake into my mouth. It was as good as it looked. The perfect balance of sweet and tangy, soft and chewy.

“Why?” I bawled, slumping onto the table. “I bake one thing that actually tastes good, and I can’t even enter it!”

“You could cut off the burned parts,” suggested Mama. “Make fruitcake bars.”

“And dip them in chocolate,” added Meira. “Chocolate makes everything better.”

“I guess it’s worth a try.”

Carefully, I trimmed away the blackened crust and sliced what was left into brownie-sized pieces. Then I melted chocolate and gave each bar a thick coating. They looked a little messy, but they tasted better than anything I’d ever managed before.

Filled with a foreign sense of pride over my culinary creation, I left the bars sitting on the table while I got a cookie tin. When I returned, my cat was crouched on the table, chomping away.

“Bob!”

He looked up, eyes wide, then scurried away.

“Yeah, you better run, you little turdhead! Ugh!”

I surveyed the damage. Only four bars remained unscathed. That was still enough to enter. “I should keep them in a safe until entry day,” I muttered, scooping the surviving bars into the container. “Maybe with a biometric lock.” Grouching about the audacity of cats, I sealed the cookie tin, put it in the back of my closet, and firmly shut the door.

On entry day, I pulled out the container and gently carried it to the car. All the way to the fairgrounds, it rode on my lap. Finally, despite mishaps, I’d made something good. That’s what the fair is all about, I thought. Persisting in the face of setbacks.

At the Home Ec building, the check-in clerk handed me a Styrofoam tray for the bars. I opened the container to get out the bars, and saw… crumbs.

“No, no, no.” I closed my eyes and opened them again. The container was still empty. “Where are they?” I shrieked. Had Bob found his way into my closet?

I wheeled around to face Meira. “Do you know what happened?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t resist.” Her face stretched into a grin. “Chocolate really does make everything better.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevina Clear is drawn to books like a magnet to a refrigerator. She’s started writing several novels, finished a handful of short stories, and written some poetry (her favorite form is the limerick). A self-proclaimed nerd, she loves reading historical fiction, classics, and fantasy, and watching The Lord of The Rings and Doctor Who. She lives in Michigan on a mini-farm, where she enjoys working in the garden, sometimes while writing.

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