Baked with love

Adelaide Parsons was named for her late grandmother.

The younger Adelaide never knew the elder, but said that if the stories are true, Adelaide Fitzpatrick had a maverick streak.

"She was one of the first women in Cape [Girardeau] to drive a car," Parsons said. "And smoke cigarettes."

And when Christmas neared, her legacy grew to include fruitcake. "It was during the Great Depression," Parsons said. "She would bake them and sell them to make money to buy gifts in front of ... Vandeven's [grocery store]."

While fruitcake has become the bread and butter of lazy holiday comedy, Parsons said her grandmother's recipe was different.

Robert Parsons, left, eats a piece of fruitcake made by his wife Adelaide Parsons, right, in their home Wednesday at Chateau Girardeau in Cape Girardeau.ANDREW J. WHITAKER

Decadent and flavorful, hers was an heirloom.

And it was more than good enough to buoy her family through Depression-era holidays -- it helped her granddaughter woo her now husband.

In winter 1979, she was sweet on a man named Robert Parsons. Things were moving along, but not quite as quickly as Adelaide had hoped, so she went to her mother for advice.

"So I was in my early 30s, and she was worried because I wasn't married," Parsons recalled, while stirring batter into this year's fruitcake mix in her kitchen. "So her comment was, 'Well, what could you do to entice him? Is there something you could cook or whatever for him?'"

Parsons remembers being discouraged at first by that suggestion. For her mother, the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, but Parsons wasn't sure about her sweetheart's sweet tooth.

"No, 'cause the only thing he likes is fruitcake," she told her mother with a groan. "And I don't even like fruitcake. My mother said, 'Oh, have I got a recipe for you.'"

So Adelaide Parsons whipped up a fruitcake according to her grandmother's handwritten recipe.

"It's a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, half a pound of butter and six eggs, two teaspoons of nutmeg," she explained, waving her spatula, and then a very full wine glass of whiskey."

There's also lemon and orange peel, citron, a pound each of dates, figs, raisins and dried cherries.

"We buy the cherries specially every summer in Michigan," she said.

And as far as the wine glass, according to the family recipe, the bigger the better.

"And it's gotten me into a lot of trouble because I sometimes have used Johnnie Walker Red Label or Black Label if that's what we had," she said, shrugging in her bright yellow apron. "I just use whatever's in the house."

Robert took the fruitcake to his family's Christmas Eve celebration in Alabama and, that night, called Adelaide.

"He said 'Merry Christmas, we're here eating the fruitcake and we all love it, and now everybody wants to know about this girl,'" Adelaide recalled. "And the rest is history."

Robert proposed three months later, and they've been married ever since. And most years, Robert still gets some Christmas fruitcake, along with several of their neighbors in Chateau Girardeau.

"They really like to get their fruitcake," Adelaide said. "They've come to expect it."

And as far as traditions go, Adelaide said fruicake baking is what most helps her get into the holiday spirit.

"When I make that fruitcake, it's as if that grandmother I'm named for but never knew is right there with me, you know?" she said. "It's so cool to touch that recipe she wrote out by hand and know that she did this and she did it for a person and I'm carrying that on. And the amazing part is that my husband likes it."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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