Fruitcake Gets a Facelift

What's a sinfully rich dessert that’s been around since the Middle Ages—and some say tastes about that old? Fruitcake, capable of producing “ahs!” or ”arghs!” in a single bite, has gotten a makeover. The new recipe: less fruit—especially those compacted bits of garishly colored candied fruit—and more spirits, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"The rummier the yummier," says Brother Joseph Reisch, the chief fruitcake maker at Assumption Abbey, a Trappist monastery in the Ozark Mountains. The monks there sell 25,000 cakes a year. Their secret: the fruit is marinated in red wine before it's added, and each cake is injected with rum in eight places. (More fruitcakes stories.)