9 Recipes For Fruitcakes People Will Actually Eat

Fruitcake is all about tradition; it's are the enduring stale joke of the Christmas season (both figuratively and literally).

We love to express overt contempt for these dense, iridescent, candied-fruit-laden, booze-spiked monstrosities. But eat them? Do people actually do that?

Fruitcake was once considered a "grand indulgence" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reserved only for special occasions, like weddings and Christmas, due to the high cost of the ingredients (candied fruit, for instance, was often imported from Italy). Yet somehow, over time, fruitcake as we know and hate it fell from grace. As Johnny Carson once said, "The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other."

Yet, every once in a while, we come across a recipe for a fruitcake we actually enjoy eating (gasp!).

In this recipe roundup, we share some of the best fruitcake recipes we've ever seen (note that we also take some liberties with the definition of "fruitcake"). So even though Huffington Post characterized the fruitcake as "the most hated cake in the existence of baking," we hope the recipes here might change your mind.

Scroll through this list of fruitcake recipes we swear you will actually want to eat this year.

Apple Crumbles bakes this four-pound fruitcake every Christmas season and suggests that you should add enough booze into the mix to make the cake "drinkable." For this recipe, click here.

Spike your fruitcake with a traditional Indian spice blend (comprising 11 different spices) to infuse the dessert with an exotic, heady aroma. For this recipe for Garam Masala Fruitcake recipe, click here.

Food blogger Diary of a Mad Hausfrau swears that this mandel früchtekuchen, or almond fruitcake, lives up to classic German baking standards and tastes just like Christmas. Click here for her recipe.

"If there was ever a fruitcake to convert the haters, this would be it," writes Bites Out of Life.  "It's spicy and only slightly sweet, punched up with the orange zest and molasses. And no bricks here — this cake is moist and lovely, the only thing you should be eating on holiday mornings." For this fruitcake recipe, click here.

Rich Cake is Sri Lanka's version of fruitcake. However, Hungary Buddha blogger writes that "unlike Western fruitcake, which I've never been able to eat, the version is unique for its moistness and rich flavor." She mentions the defining characteristics of this cake are the finely minced dried fruits and the low temperate at which the cake is baked. Find the recipe here.

Fruitcake can be dense, but the tofu gives it a light, smooth texture and also boosts its protein content — nothing to feel guilty about here! Click here for the recipe.

This fruitcake is rolled up with a decadent filling of guava and cream cheese. Check out this recipe from Feed Your Soul Too here.

Mon Petit Four added her own twist to the traditional rum-soaked cake: orange and raisins — turning it into a kind of fruitcake. "Raisins, orange, and rum are truly a wonderful trio," she tells us. For this recipe, click here.

The View From Great Island used apricots, golden raisins, cherries, pineapple, cranberries, pistachios, macadamias, pecans, almonds, red walnuts, hazelnuts, and cashews in her fruitcake-inspired chocolate bark. Check out here recipe here.