Before church on Sunday a friend and I were talking about holiday food, particularly fruit cake. Both of us like fruit cakes that are mostly fruit and nuts with very little “cake”.

Aside from making a cake with ground nuts, fruit cake may be one of the best cake options for Type Os. My Mom is from in a small town near Corsicana, Texas, the home of the famous Collin Street Bakery fruit cake. So I grew up with that as my standard. Over the years I’ve had lots of other fruit cakes, some homemade, some store bought. I’ve never found one that I like better than Collin Street’s.

My friend has a recipe developed by her grandmother that she says is the best fruit cake in the world. She described how tired her arms get stirring the batter by hand. I asked if she shared her recipe. She hesitated and said No, that the family had voted not to give it out.

That conversation has sent me on a search for a fruit cake to make for New Years. There is one recipe on the BTD recipe center, but the ingredients are not very similar to the fruit cake I am so fond of. A Texas fruit cake would be loaded with chopped pecans. It would have pineapple, papaya raisins, and cherries. It wouldn’t be spicy. I’m still looking.