By Shelby Duffy
The holiday season goes hand in hand with sweet treats. I’m often overcome with fond memories of the irresistible aromas of cinnamon and brown sugar drifting through the house as my mom baked away. She stuffed our stockings with holiday sweets and chocolate bars, and tucked boxes of chocolate-covered cherries under the tree. But there was always one Christmas dessert that I didn’t quite know what to do with: fruitcake.
For many years, I avoided trying the classic Christmas cake, thinking of it as old and outdated. It wasn’t until I was an adult, when I had vowed to rid myself of the “picky” title I was given as a young child, that I found the courage to try the cake I had been dodging for so long. Suddenly, the old-fashioned dessert made sense. The rich and buttery cake, bursts of bright flavor from chewy dried fruits, spices that lingered on my tongue after the first bite, all wrapped together with the delicate and warm roundness of rum. It was a complex flavor profile that I couldn’t fully appreciate as a child and can’t resist as an adult.
To learn more about these time-honored treats, it only made sense to visit Claxton, Georgia—the so-called “fruitcake capital of the world” and home of the 115-year-old Claxton Bakery, renowned for its traditional fruitcakes. It was founded in 1910 by Savino Tos, an Italian pastry maker who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and eventually settled in Claxton after being drawn in by the friendly locals and realizing that the small agricultural town didn’t have a bakery. Though he offered customers a selection of delicious pastries and homemade ice cream, many folks looked forward to the fall when Savino would create his own specialty fruitcakes. The cakes were based on his favorite recipe for pound cake and incorporated a mixture of raisins, pecans, and candied fruits. This sweet cake soon became a beloved holiday treat.
In 1945, Savino retired, passing the bakery onto long-standing employee Albert Parker. Albert soon began to search for ways to grow the company, recognizing that many items formerly available only at a local bakery were suddenly popping up in grocery stores across the country. Albert decided it was time to shift his focus to large-scale production of fruitcakes, enabling the company to distribute them to a much wider audience. Inspired by the nostalgia of Southern tradition, he created packaging emblazoned with the now-iconic depiction of a horse-drawn buggy, highlighting the company’s traditional values, with festive red and white stripes that evoke the holidays as well as making the cakes easy to recognize.
Albert and the bakery continued to embrace tradition, making few changes along the way. The current fruitcake recipe is a modern adaptation of Savino’s original formula and focuses on a higher ratio of fruits and nuts. In fact, their “light” cakes are 70 percent fruit and nuts, with one bite revealing crunchy, earthy nuts; chewy papaya, pineapple, and orange; and rich raisins and cherries. They also offer a “dark” fruitcake, which ups the blend of spices and incorporates ribbons of rich molasses straight into the cake batter for a richer taste. Both light and dark flavors are available as loaves, 1- and 2-pound cakes, and by the slice, called “Clax Snax.”
Albert’s family continues to run the business, and though little has changed their celebrated bakes, they have experienced steady, sustained growth. During the busy baking season, the small-town bakery welcomes more than 100 seasonal employees, who work alongside the year-round staff to prep, bake, package, and ship all their fruitcakes. Claxton Bakery produces around 3 million pounds of fruitcakes a year, and during their busy season, which spans from mid-August through December, upward of 65,000 pounds of cake a day can be baked. Their products can be purchased at most major grocery stores in the United States, online, and at their local retail store.
As the holiday season draws near, with gloomy afternoons that too quickly turn into dark, frigid evenings, I can’t help but to reminisce on some of my most fond memories. Being ushered through a bustling mall filled with people who are all searching for the perfect gifts; a flurry of cold wind tousling my hair as I gaze up at twinkling lights set against a dark, snow-dotted sky; and the faint, soothing sound of Christmas jazz humming in the background of grocery stores as I walk past tables crammed with cellophane baggies of cutout cookies and a display filled with red- and white-striped boxes flaunting loaves of jewel-toned speckled cakes.
Go There
Claxton Bakery
203 W. Main St.
Claxton, Georgia
claxtonfruitcake.com
