RIVER CITY JOURNAL: FRUITCAKES DON'T COME OUT OF AIR

Yes, Virginia, there are still good cooks who make fruitcakes.

A couple of weeks ago you wondered why fruitcakes have fallen on such hard times. You even rhapsodized about the noble fruitcake in verse.

One gracious reader, Frances Miner, responded immediately. As a matter of fact she had recently baked a fruitcake, and Mrs. Miner believes she has a plausible answer to why so few fruitcakes are made at home anymore: cost.

"I used the recipe for Miss Alma's Fruitcake," Mrs. Miner wrote.

Alma Schrader was born in 1886 and began teaching at the Old Lorimier School in Cape Girardeau in 1906. She became principal of Jefferson School in 1911 and was the first principal of May Greene School when it opened in 1921. She held that post for 34 years. She died in 1959. That year a new elementary school was named in her honor.

"She was also an excellent cook. I thought perhaps a cost resume of the ingredients might help," Mrs. Miner added. Here is the recipe:

Miss Alma's Fruitcake

2 cups whole Brazil nuts -- $3.98

2 cups whole pecan meats -- $6.00

1/2 cup whole candied cherries -- $5.07

1/2 cup chopped candied pineapple -- $5.97

1 lb. dates (cut fine) -- $3.98

4 eggs -- beaten separately -- $0.33

1 tsp. vanilla -- $0.42

1/4 cup wine, good whiskey or grape juice -- $6.89

1 cup sugar -- $0.13

1 cup flour -- $0.06

1 tsp. baking powder -- $0.00

1/2 tsp. salt -- $0.00

Mix flour, salt and baking powder with fruit and nuts. Add beaten egg yolks and sugar. Add wine and vanilla, mix, and lastly fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Line a loaf bread pan with two thicknesses of greased brown paper. Pour in mixture. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. When cool, peel off paper. Wrap in thin cloth soaked in wine. Store at least one month in air-tight container in cool place. Re-moisten cloth when needed (with wine).

Total tab: $32.83.

For your mother, also a former schoolteacher, getting the special fruitcake ingredient -- rum -- was always a problem. As a staunch believer in temperance, visiting a liquor store in a small town is a ticklish matter. Maybe some of you have had the same experience.

Sometimes you are able to find a relative who is neither a teetotaler nor a blabbermouth. It is a rare combination. You can't ask a friend, particularly if she goes to the same beauty shop.

So sometimes you have to be brave about certain matters and do what has to be done. Seeing your own mother walking into a liquor store is the kind of memory that stays with you for a long time. The visit's preliminaries included a stern lecture about the sin of strong drink and a litany of examples of lives gone bad due to a bottle. On the way to the liquor store there would be loud announcements to anyone within earshot that she was going to buy rum for her Christmas fruitcakes.

The liquor store proprietor was ready for his once-a-year customers. He enjoyed having the likes of your mother walk into the shop with a few of the regulars hanging around so he could use his special-occasion greeting: "Hitting the bottle again, eh?"

It was worth it, though. The fruitcakes were wonderful. Still are. Miss Alma's version sounds equally delicious. There is only one way to tell, however. Hint. Hint. In about a month, Mrs. Miner?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.