Fruitcake – the ugly red-headed stepchild of the cake world. That’s probably because it’s not really fruit and it’s not really cake. It’s also the cockroach of the food world – it will be more likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse than you will. Seriously, fruitcakes will never die. If I had wanted to, I could have test tasted one that my grandmother made about eight Christmases ago.

On the bright side, it is multi-purpose. Fruitcake can be used to eat. It could be used as a gag gift for white elephant gift exchanges. It can be used as a medieval torture tool. If you want to play football for the holidays and you don’t have a ball lying around, grab a fruitcake. If your finals didn’t go as well as you hoped, use it to throw through your professor’s window. (Please note that the Collegio does not condone fruitcake or non-fruitcake related violence.)

Now, let’s move on to the taste. Nobody should taste test this, but I was willing to take one for the team so that you readers never have to undertake the pain that is the taste of fruitcake. It took going to seven stores across the four states to find one that was willing to associate itself with the horror of fruitcake. I didn’t have to ask where it was because its radioactive “fruit bits” were glowing from afar. This fruitcake may have actually witnessed nuclear activity.

Some foods get better with age and, theoretically, fruit cake is supposed to be one of those foods. Yet, somehow, it does not mature well. Fruitcake is the food equivalent of that one aunt who is currently 102 years old and no matter how many Christmases you think she won’t come back, she keeps on coming – forever alive well past her expiration date. That one aunt who wears bright pink lipstick that gets on your cheek if you come within six feet of her.

The taste was incomparable to anything that had ever touched my lips. It was a mixture of dried, candied, and chopped fruit. Even one of these in cake can be too much, but this is literal overkill. Some people try to brighten it up with the taste of alcohol, but this is one cake that booze cannot save. It’s also covered in nuts. I was convinced that it was impossible for pecans to taste bad, then fruitcake dropped in to prove me wrong. The actual cake itself is dryer than a sunny day in the Sahara Desert. No matter how you bake it, cut it, slice it, or freeze it, fruit cake just cannot be tasty.

I do want to say that nobody should blame fruit cake. It can’t help how horrible it is. It was just baked that way. Who should be blamed is the person who thought it was a good idea to make the first one. While the Christmas or holiday season may be about giving, maybe fruitcake gives just a little too much. Try again next year, Aunt Judy.