FRUITCAKE... from the Willamette Valley!

 All it took was a post on Facebook about how much I love Fruitcake and it has snowballed from there!  What I didn't know, is that there are quite a few fruitcake lovers out there but I think I have found someone that is way more obsessed with it than I am!  But, I have benefited from his obsession and have been blessed with three homemade and very delicious fruitcakes.  Thanks to Matt Bennett, I'm not the only "fruitcake" in town and thanks to his lovely wife Janel, we may have really begun a big FRUITCAKE REVIVAL! 

 We all remember the cakes we had when we were kids at grandmas at Christmastime.  Liquor soaked loaves inundated with nuts, raisins and fruits that we had never seen before in anything else.  A little bite or nibble and some of us were hooked!  Others... well, let's just say they aren't fruitcake lovers!

I ordered some fruitcake from the Trappest Monastery right here in the Willamette Valley.  My Facebook buddies said it was the best.  I googled "where to find the best fruit cake in the world" and the Monastery Fruitcake came up on top so I ordered three-one pound boxes!  

According to Matt Bennett, he has been on his fruitcake kick for a while and the three loaves he has given me along with the Trappests loaf proved to be a great beginning to a nice little afternoon tasting and comparing between these four fruitcakes.  

I have to say, I thought one would win out above all the others.  It didn't happen that way.  Each and every fruitcake had it's very own distinctive taste.  One was soaked in Apple Jack and was moist and full of flavor.  Another was more cakey and tasty as well.  The larger of the three had a lot of spice flavor that pretty much won me over.  Matt said it would be good to use as a Christmas stuffing bread.  Great idea!  The Monastery Fruitcake was pretty and full of fruit and nuts with very little actual "cake!"  Very dense but still moist and delicious as well.

What excited me most about tasting fruitcake with Matt, Janel, Ray and the Bennett daughters was not only that were we surrounded by pans of peanut brittle, candied almonds, a huge Gingerbread Boy and homemade root beer candy in the kitchen of Sybaris, but that this fruitcake obsession could quite possibly end up the latest Willamette Valley craze!  Matt's idea of dousing future fruitcakes in Oregon distilled goods and baking them with ingredients found here, could quite possibly bring fruitcake right back to where it should be... on every one's dessert table at Christmastime and this is an exciting possibility to this obsessed fruitcake lover!