Santa Fe bakers filling holiday demand for fruitcake
Dec. 8—They started on the first day of fall, soaking nuts and fruits in brandy and spiced rum.
By Thanksgiving, Jim and Karyn West, owners of A Cake Odyssey on Second Street, already had begun selling their traditional fruitcakes and taking orders for more.
Carrying a tray of freshly baked fruitcakes from the kitchen on a recent day, Karyn West had an infectious smile. Dressed in a traditional Navajo bright-blue dress and moccasins, she arranged candied fruits and nuts on top of the cakes as Christmas carols played overhead. A sweet scent lingered in the air.
The Wests have been known to convert fruitcake-hating customers, she said. "A lot of people don't care for fruitcake, but we've won over a lot of people with ours."
Their cakes are a far cry from the holiday confection's ancient cousin, first baked in the Middle Ages in Europe as what amounted to a mash of barley, honey, wine and dried fruit with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg — the spices owned and used by the wealthy.
Soaked in alcohol, fruitcake had — and still has — a tremendously long shelf life.
In Tecumseh, Mich., the family of Fidelia Ford owns and displays her 144-year-old fruitcake, baked in 1878 in Berkey, Ohio. The 65-year-old matriarch died before the cake could be eaten, according to a 2019 story in the Detroit News.
"When the holidays arrived, the family no longer regarded her handiwork as food. They saw it as a legacy," the story said. Thus, the cake was handed down to Ford's descendants.
In 2017, Antarctic conservators discovered a 106-year-old fruitcake in one of the continent's first buildings. Although it is hardened, it is still edible, scientists say.
The Wests have sold out of their homemade fruitcakes nearly every year since moving their bakery from Albuquerque to Santa Fe eight years ago. They're fairly certain their cakes won't last through this Christmas season, either.
"We fantasized about owning a business in Santa Fe," Karyn West said.
In all, she has been baking for 43 years and has created fruitcakes each of the 25 years the couple has been in business.
"You have to start months ahead, 45 days at least," she said. "The alcohol bakes out, so we pour a couple of cups of booze over the top of them while they're still hot out of the oven. The alcohol evaporates but the flavor stays."
The phone rang at their shop — another customer inquiring about the fruitcakes. Jim West fielded the call.
"They've got a lot of TLC in them," he said of the fruitcakes. "They're not thrown together and baked a year ago or processed. We keep these fresh and wrapped and covered."
The West's cakes come in two varieties; traditional, soaked in brandy and using the customary nuts and fruits, and New Mexican, soaked in spiced rum and created using pears, apples and piñon from Velarde and red chile from Chimayó. The allure of their fruitcakes lies in the moisture and freshness of the product, Karyn West says.
"It's the spice combination and the length of time that we soak the nuts and fruits. They're moist. We bake at a lower temperature and a little longer to retain the moisture," she said.
Karyn West also creates her own simple syrup, which she says is the key to keeping the cakes moist and rich.
Small loaves sell for $10, medium for $18 and large for $20. This is the first season the couple has put the cakes out for sale prior to Thanksgiving. They were close to selling out of their first batch of the New Mexican variety, Jim West said. "We have three more batches to make, and when they're gone, they're gone."
Barbara Quintana, Karyn West's best friend, was helping out in the bakery's kitchen. "I've known Karyn all my life and have been eating her fruitcakes for years," she said. "Everything here is baked with love."
