The Demigorgon's Fruitcake: A special holiday edition of Vintage Recipe Roulette

No cake fruitcake, no bake fruitcake, no fruit crab cake, and even stranger things

Fire up the 50’s carols, grab the Aquanet, put on your Members Only jacket, and come with me, won’t you? We’re going on a special holiday edition of our walk through late our 20th century recipe wonderland!

Did you pack the bear spray? What? Oh, no reason. Just curious.

It’s only fitting to start with a recipe homage to one of the best Christmas series ever: Stranger Things. If you’ve ever wanted to serve your guests roast Demigorgon, pictured above is the best suggestion I’ve ever seen, short of a summoning spell. It’s also one of my favorite cookbook mysteries. I’ve never been able to identify the recipe’s origin, but it’s pretty obviously from holidays in the Upside-Down — where all the food has legs, and no matter how many times you slice a boiled egg, it’s always right through the center. I’m desperate to find the book that goes with this photo. My only clue is “Fig. 200” in the corner. Is it cold or hot? What’s under there — Stuffed crab? Salmon mousse? Lime Jell-O? How does something with no eyes stare at you with such malevolence? It’s perfect. Hang the lights, and set them to flash R-U-N.

And what does one serve as the perfect accompaniment to Demigorgon crown roast? What could possibly be sufficiently twisted, transmogrified, and universally reviled?

Fruitcake!

Below is a list of cheery mutants worthy of the otherworld, each a fruitcake, and each somehow even worse.

Up first, Better Crocker’s MYSTERY FRUITCAKE.

You start by making a boxed spice cake, and then you demolish it, mixing its remains with perversely candied fruits (allegedly) and nuts, and an entire package of Betty’s frosting. You press it into a loaf and chill until dead. How is this an improvement over the usual recipe where you don’t have to mix up an extra box of something? That’s the mystery!

There’s also a white cake version if you’re going for that cave-dwelling orc look.

Still too much baking for you? It’s Pet Milk and (I swear I am not making this up) the Raisin Advisory Board to the rescue! This 1954 version uses packaged graham cracker crumbs instead of cake, and you stick it together with canned milk.

I know you’re going to want to make this one, so here’s an enlargement of the recipe.

What’s that? Still too much cake? No problem. Reynold’s Wrap has a Tutti Frutti ham steak recipe for you. Just mix brown sugar with pecans, canned pineapple and oranges, maraschino cherries, and prunes, and bake with ham wrapped in foil. So festive! Or perhaps it’s more Festivus…I certainly have some grievances.

As weird as those are, I’m not sure they really capture the culinary corruption, the kaleidoscope Bizzaroland that is post-war American cuisine. We need tradition, but run through a meat grinder in an abandoned Midwestern funhouse.

This calls for a molded salad.

I have not just one, but two clinically insane options for you. If you’re looking for JellO-free, (mid-century) modern, try the Better Homes and Gardens Frozen Fruitcake Salad. It’s sour cream and Cool Whip with fruit, and yeah, you just freeze it. Perfect for a frigid day in December.

If you want the ultimate in Demigorgon fashion, though, you gotta go with Jell-O. This pinnacle of unfortunate holiday gastronomy is a literal amalgamation of one of the oldest seasonal recipes, steamed Christmas pudding, and one of the newest, the Yuletide gelatin mold.

This one is from an Australian publication from Davis Gelatine:

But there’s a similar version available online here. Since that one is from nearby New Zealand, you might be wondering what the deal is with that continent…until you remember that the deal is that it’s summer in the Southern hemisphere, so many of the Christmas recipes there are cold or fruit based. One of these days, I’m going to make the Coral Reef Pie, for instance.

So there you go. It IS from the Down Under, if not the Upside Down.

Happy days to all of you, wherever you may be, north, south, east, west, and whatever you may celebrate, even if if it’s only getting through the day. The holidays have rough spots for most of us, so don’t forget to take a minute to laugh, and give thanks that you don’t have to eat any of these!