this is not a food blog, but you couldn't tell from that from recent entries, could you?
November 26, 2014, 8:12 P.M.

First of all--for those who wondered (waving at stepfordtart!), cheesecloth is used in traditional American fruitcake making. Our fruitcakes are dense, heavy things that are full of nuts, raisins (sultanas), and glac� fruit. They aren't iced or coated in marzipan--instead, once the cakes are cooled, they are wrapped in liquor-soaked cheesecloth--brandy or rum, or even bourbon whiskey. Then they are wrapped in plastic or foil, and stored in a cool place for three to eight weeks, which allows them to "cure" and become infused with the booze. I personally unwrap them and pour a bit more liquor over them about once a week, and cure them for three weeks before mailing them to the relatives that ask for them. They live 1,800 miles/2902km away, in Arizona, so by the time they get them they have had about a month to cure.

American fruitcake is kind of a long-standing cultural joke in this country, because of poor-quality mass-produced versions sold by mail-order throughout most of the 20th century. But it is pretty good when it is homemade, from good-quality ingredients. And since I have people I love that love the stuff, I am happy to make it every year for them. They seem to love it, but I have never actually tasted one of my cakes. It is so much work, and the ingredients are so expensive, I don't make one for myself!

The ones I send to Arizona are a highly customized recipe to suit my aunt's taste--a light cake, as opposed a dark, spicy one, extra pineapple, light on the citron, a combination of macadamias and pecans for the nuts, and soaked in Cognac. This year, I am doing a third cake for my brother-in-law that is the dark kind, and I will be soaking that one in rum, because that's what he prefers.