[SwellJoe]

I don't understand why everyone doesn't love fruit cake. Maybe most people have only ever had crappy cheap grocery store fruit cakes?

Fruit cake is literally one of my favorite foods, and I don't really feel like I have esoteric taste in the general case.

[stephenhuey]

Plenty of my friends are surprised to hear that some of us actually like them! I grew up on Collin Street Bakery fruitcakes which are shipped all over from Corsicana, Texas. We even ate them in Nigeria when relatives would send them out to us via travelers.

[SwellJoe]

I don't think I've ever had one from Collin Street Bakery, even though I've been living in Texas off and on for a couple of decades. But, I happen to be parked 15 minutes away from their Waco location right now (I live in an RV and found a nice quiet park in West, TX where I'm holed up to finish some projects that are behind schedule), so maybe I'll pick one up next time I drive to town. Though, I tend to like making my own. It's fun to experiment, as fruit cake is such a weird creature.

[scarecrowbob]

My grandfather owned and ran a life insurance agency in San Antonio and that was his go-to gift for clients and family for many years.

[vidarh]

For my part I've never understood why people want fruit in cakes at all. I live in the UK where it is a national obsession to put fruit in cakes. I'm used to much more extensive use of cremes (egg, vanilla, regular), possibly combined with berries in Norway, but not nearly as often with fruit (we do get some, especially apple pies, but I at least perceive the selection as much more varied, where it's often a challenge to avoid pastry where the filling isn't meat or minced fruit in British bakeries...

(don't get me started on how limited British bakeries are - the only saving grace is a slow increase in French and Eastern European patisseries)

[gjjrfcbugxbhf]

Interesting I find French and also Scandinavian bakeries very limited compared to British ones - I also find the Norwegian habit of serving desserts which are basically a bowl of cream fairly boring.

I guess it comes down to where you grew up and what you are used to...

[vidarh]

There are no Norwegian desserts I'm aware of that are basically a bowl of cream, so I'm curious what you had that gave you that impression.

There are a variety of traditional puddings and mousses, usually served with a contrasting sauce. That's the closest you might get to a "bowl of cream" that I can think of. There's also a variety of porridge types but they are usually served as the main meal, not dessert.

All of these might be served without anything on, but you're rarely meant to eat them that way unless it's a mousse with a particularly distinct flavor or texture (e.g. a chocolate mousse might be served without a sauce, but you'd not generally do that with a caramel pudding or almond pudding)

Then again most of these are not served often apart from Christmas, where rice porridge and puddings are a tradition, or as a treat for children.

When it comes to finding non-British bakeries "limiting" the only thing I could think of would be savoury pastries, as that is a weird British obsession and the selection will generally be very small most other places. To me that doesn't belong anywhere, but certainly not at a bakery. At a butchers or a 7-11 or similar comfort-food store, maybe, but not at a bakery..

Apart from that I can't think of any category of baked goods I've found an adequate selection of in a British-style bakery. In actual French-owned bakeries or patisseries (like e.g. PAUL) sure, but most French-sounding bakeries in the UK are British bakeries. E.g Cuisine de France / Delice de France brands are owned by Aryzta Food Solutions of Southall, Middlesex...

And this is the cake selection of a relatively fancy British bakery (Peyton and Byrne), to illustrate my original issue of overly fruity selections:

Berries: Swiss Roll (though this can also be made with cream fillings, it's usually jam in the UK), Victoria Sponge, Bakewell Tart

Fruity: Jaffa Cake, Lemon Drizzle Loaf, Banana Loaf, Elderflower Layer Cake, Banoffee, Lemon Meringe

Non-Fruity/berry: Chocolate & Caramel Explosion (possibly, I would not be surprised to see berries on that in the UK), Carrot Cake, Coffee & Walnut (not a certainty...), Treacle Tart, Chocolate & Salted Caramel

So that is 4 out of 13 where fruit or berries are not a substantial element.

This is in my experience a substantially above average selection terms of avoiding fruit/berry dominated pastry. And I've nice and not put the treacle tart in the fruit category (since it's generally more zesty than overly sweetened lemon.

Here's an example of what I expect a decent selection of cakes to look like at a bakery:

https://samson.no/sortiment/konditorvarer https://samson.no/sortiment/sot-bakst

I have excluded their large cakes and only included the ones suitable to eat in (though most will have a selection of slices from their larger cakes available to eat in at times as well).

Of those the following have fruit or berries: Rosinbolle (raisins), Scones Grov (raisins), Skolebrød (drizzled coconut shavings on top), Eplemuffins (apples), Jacob (raisins), Friand (raspberries), Sitronterte (lemons), Jordbærterte (strawberries), Sitronkake (lemons)

That is 14 out of 26, of which most will not be particularly sweetened by the fruit, as unlike the British selection most of them are small amounts rather than filling, and pieces of fresh fruit rather than jam or similar high-sugar. I would say that would apply to about half of the above.

Note, I am not against using berries and to a (much lesser extent) fruit in pastry, but the dominance of it in UK pastries annoys me. In the selection above you see, on top of a similar selection of different fruits and berries, pastries with fillings based on almonds (macaron style fillings), rum, egg cream, chocolate, vanilla cream, cinnamon, several of them in several distinct variations.

[gjjrfcbugxbhf]

Trollkrem, blotkaker, tilslørte bondepiker to name three.

Also there are several types of 'porridge' for which the primary ingredient is cream but yeah they are served as a main meal rather than a dessert.

As I say this really does come down to personal preference which is largely shaped by where you grew up.

[Accacin]

Because not everything needs to be as incredibly sweet as Danish pastries tend to be?

[vidarh]

But it's the opposite, usually. A lot of Scandinavian pastry is not particularly sweet, whereas the fruit in British pastry tends to be drowning in sugar.

There are some very sweet Scandinavian pastry, but I don't think they're particularly prevalent, and frankly many of the sweetest ones - including the Danish itself - are not of Scandinavian origin. What is today considered a Danish came in an earlier form from Austria; in Scandinavia they are known - with some spelling variations - as wienerbrød; literally "bread from Vienna" though the modern Danish is an adaptation more than straight "theft". Puff pastry in general is not typical of Scandinavian pastry, but probably arrived with the Austrian bakers that brought the basis for wienerbrød/Danish

And I guess the sweetness is probably the reason - more need for conservation. A lot of older Scandinavian baked goods are dry and can last for years in some cases, but the creamier ones may very well largely be new enough for many of them to have come at a time when at least the wealthier people who could afford them would have started having at least ice boxes to refrigerate foodstuffs.

[Accacin]

To be honest I can't even think of many British pastries off the top of my head as I'm not a huge fan so I'm not sure which ones you're refering too.

I mean they may not be Danish, but that's what they're called colloquially. I tend to find French pastries the best as I don't find them too sweet.

[hanoz]

>For my part I've never understood why people want fruit in cakes at all.

How do you think your patisserie's finest extensive use of cremes cake would look after 100 years in a hut?

[vidarh]

Our patisseries finest cakes would have been eaten, rather than left behind, as they actually taste good enough to be something you want to consume.

[logfromblammo]

I'd eat fruit cake more often if it wasn't like the tungsten of calorically-dense foods (compared to chocolate as gold).

Great for arctic and antarctic expeditions, but not so much for sitting on bums in front of screens.

[SwellJoe]

Sure, this is why I don't always have fruit cake in the house. But, I have been making boiled puddings (a close relative of fruit cakes) pretty regularly lately because I've been watching the Townsends' videos on YouTube about 18th Century Cooking (which are among the most enjoyable, educational, and relaxing videos on the web) and I find the idea of a boiled pudding ridiculous. But, it actually works, and it's actually delicious.

Luckily, 18th Century recipes had a lot less sugar than modern recipes, and so I'm staying under my calorie goals for the day even when I have pudding.

[teh_klev]

My dad had a penchant for fruit slices [0]. When we were kids he used to wave them in front of our faces and told us he was eating a "flies graveyard". More or less put me off any cake or patisserie that contained currants, sultanas and raisins, or in fact all fruits for life; even now at the tender age of 50 I'm only just beginning to appreciate apple and cherry pies.

[0]: https://imgur.com/a/fKbWb

[_joel]

Agreed, I'm very partial to a good fruit cake.