My First Fruitcakes 

B-Twin's post on her luscious wedding fruitcakes, and some of the subsequent forum remarks on wedding cakes* in particular and fruitcakes in general, took me back to my first year living in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was my first year living on my own post-college, and I was big into fancy experimental cooking.  In that vein, I decided around August that I wanted to make some fancy brandied fruitcakes for the coming Christmas.** 

I looked up a few recipes for fruitcakes, and ...