His Fruitcake Has Roots, Deep Ones
The secret is candied fruit.
No, it’s a modicum of flour.
Come to think of it, it’s the lack of citrus peel.
Whatever the secret ingredient - or lack of ingredient - is, Charles Dowdy isn’t hiding the notion that his fruitcake is the best ever.
“Everyone wanted Grandma’s fruitcake,” Charles says as if he’s stating long-accepted fact. “She told me a long time ago, ‘If you give away the recipe, you’ve lost a customer.”’
Charles, 75, hasn’t shared his recipe with a soul. Not one of his 500 Southern relatives can bake the chunky Christmas cake his Kentucky grandmother learned to bake from her grandmother.
They’ve tasted it. They crave it every holiday season. They even pay their good-natured patriarch to bake it and mail it to them from his home in Coeur d’Alene.
“All I’m waiting for is someone in the family who wants to make it,” he says, and adds generously, “and I would tell them who I sell it to.”
Charles was 13 when his school invited his grandmother to teach girls how to bake bread. She pinched his ear in front of his friends and told him he had to be in the class. His friends roared.
“It was the best class I ever had. I loved it,” he says.
A year later, Grandma taught Charles to bake the cherished family fruitcake. He’s baked it every Christmas since, giving away most and selling a few.
By 1988, so many people wanted the fruitcake that Charles went into business. One friend from Kentucky ordered six dozen at $13 each to give to his employees.
Now, Charles starts baking Nov. 1 - as soon as stores stock candied fruit. He neatly rolls his white shirt sleeves above his elbow and dives into a bowl heaped with maraschino cherries and candied pineapple as green, red and yellow as the Bolivian flag.
He doesn’t chop his fruit. He heaps it in Jell-O bright chunks on top of a mountain of dates and pecans. A stingy mix of flour, sugar and eggs, and maybe a few secret ingredients, holds everything together.
When his 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan is full, it weighs 6 pounds. One cake takes more than two hours to bake. Charles trims the ends from his finished product and cuts it into five solid 1-pound bricks.
“Grandma said I’d find this the best there is,” he says, grinning. “She was right.”
Bruising cruise
Kootenai County attorney Dennis Molenaar just wanted fun and sun for his family this December. So he booked a weeklong Caribbean cruise.
But Dennis’ vacation turned sour after two days when the 74,000-ton Monarch of the Seas struck a reef off the island of St. Maarten a week ago. Passengers were shaken up, but no one was hurt. The crew beached the ship before it had a chance to imitate the Titanic, and promised everyone another cruise.
Supposedly all the baggage was retrieved, except Dennis never found his.
Wonder who in Dennis’ family ticked off Santa. …
Light up
For a double Christmas treat, take Interstate 90 east to the Rose Lake exit, turn left over the freeway, then right on Canyon Road. Follow Canyon for 2-1/2 miles to Rover Road - the only paved road on the right.
Take Rover over the highway toward Tamarack Ridge. Up a hill and to the left is a brightly lit home that’s worth the trip.
Giving spirit
St. Vincent de Paul’s Lynn Peterson was beside herself with joy at a $5,000 donation the Eagles handed her last week and $2,000 Coeur d’Alene real estate salesman Marshall Mend promised her this week.
The money will help buy a 14-passenger van for the Transitional Housing Center.