The 20 Best Fruitcake to Order Online 2024
Fruit Cake delivered to your door from some of the best bakeries in the country.
October 15, 2024
The Best Fruit Cake to Buy? It’s Complicated
Which is the best fruit cake? Tastes in fruitcake can be quite opinionated. You’ve got your candied fruit camp—the folks who expect to see red and green candied cherries and pineapple in every slice of a fruit-and-nut-packed cake.
Adding to the debate is whether a splash of alcohol for aging is a good thing. Should it be rum? bourbon? brandy? Or should it be alcohol free?
Our test-tasting experience revealed that except for Red Truck Bakery’s Havana Fruitcake, none of the fruitcakes we tried had a pronounced taste of alcohol. Our advice if a taste of alcohol is what you are looking for: order a fruitcake early, poke it generously with a skewer, lightly sprinkle it with an ounce or two of your favorite spirit (bourbon, rum, brandy, cognac), wrap it back up snugly, and tuck it in the back of your fridge to let the flavors mellow for a few weeks or months. Then…enjoy! But keep it out of reach of the youngsters.
Whatever your taste in fruitcake, we have your choices covered in this list of the best fruit cakes to buy online.
An important note on size: Fruitcakes have a tendency to be dense with the weight of fruit and nuts. As a result, if you order a one pound fruitcake—which sounds substantial—its actual size is going to be quite small. A one pound fruitcake can be tiny with just a few inches of width and depth, but it will provide eight 2 ounce servings.
The classic fruitcake rings typically weigh in at two pounds and up. That may sound like too much, but remember, thanks to the candied fruit—and even without a splash of alcohol—fruitcakes will remain quite good stored 3 or 4 months or more in the refrigerator or freezer according to each manufacturers’ instructions.
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Assumption Abbey Fruitcake, Ava, Missouri
Baked by the Monks at Assumption Abbey, nestled in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks, this fruitcake recipe was developed by French chef Jean-Pierre Augé, who was once employed by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Insider tip: this is the same fruitcake being sold by the Williams Sonoma food catalog for $50 for a 2 lb gift tin. This dark, two pound, round fruitcake is made with raisins, pineapple, cherries, lemon peel and walnuts and is injected with one ounce of rum. It has a moist and rich flavor, and may win you over to how delicious a fruit cake can be.
Order fruitcake online via Amazon (4.5 star rating) Assumption Abbey Fruitcake in Traditional Tin, 2 lbs ($42.00 for 2 lb gift tin with free Prime shipping).
You can’t buy this fruitcake until October. Chef Becky of Frog Hollow Farms starts making this fruit cake in mid-September and finishes up in mid-November. No candied or colored fruits here! The refined ingredient list begins with sulfur-free dried organic peaches, cherries, and candied orange peels made in the Frog Hollow Farm kitchen. The fruits are mixed with walnuts and are soaked in rum overnight before the cakes are made. The leftover rum from the macerated fruits is then added to the batter and is sprinkled over the cakes as they come out of the oven. When cool, the cakes are wrapped in cheesecloth that has been soaked in rum. Yes, we used the word rum three times in this short description. That’s why Chef Becky insists these cakes sit for 3 weeks to a month before they are shipped to allow the cakes time to mellow.
These fruitcakes are small, approximately 5.5 inches in diameter, but each weigh in at 22.5 ounces, enough to serve 8 to 10 very happy people. The cake arrives wrapped in cheesecloth nestled in a lovely, reusable gold tin. This is fruitcake at its refined, time-honored best. Buy these early or, if last year is any indication, you will miss out. The rum keeps them shelf-stable in their tin at room temperature for months! No need to refrigerate. Available now only from Frog Hollow Farms. 10% off your first purchase!
You can’t search for “best fruitcake online” without Collin Street Bakery popping up again and again. Their DeLuxe Fruitcake is as classic as fruitcake gets. It has been featured on the Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” holiday edition, and “The Chew.”
Made with 27% pecans from Texas, pineapple from Costa Rica, papaya, red cherries from Washington State, honey and golden raisins from California, this cake is both sweet and moist and will stay fresh for months in the refrigerator.
You may also want to consider the Apricot Pecan Fruitcake which combines apricots from Australia with fresh Texas pecans in a cake that is bursting with flavor. It’s a delicious and inspired twist on the classic fruitcake.
Order the 1 lb. 14 oz. Collins DeLuxe® Fruitcake online via Amazon DeLuxe® Fruitcake 1 lb. 14 oz. Collin Street Bakery
Anna Mary’s Gourmet Nut Cake, Huntsville, Arkansas
A Regional Treasure
Our reviewers went nuts for this cake! The pun is unavoidable and their reaction was undeniable. Anna Mary’s gourmet cake is more a nut cake with fruit rather than a fruitcake with nuts. Walnuts, pecans and fruit make up 72% of this cake with just enough batter to hold these top-quality ingredients together.
Made from a Mennonite family recipe, this fruitcake is a labor of tradition and love: hand-mixed, hand-packed and hand-decorated. Sweet but not-too-sweet, this walnut, pecan, date and cherry cake would be just as welcome as a breakfast table treat as well as being the star at the holiday dessert table. And then there’s the amazing price. We have no idea how a fruitcake made from such quality ingredients can be such a steal, but we are happy to share our find with you. In terms of price, quality ingredients, taste and the rare unanimous thumbs up rating from all our reviewers, this cake is an editor’s choice!
Shop Anna Mary’s Gourmet Nut Cakes. In a hurry? Shop the 1 pound loaf, or 3 pound ring Anna Mary’s Nut Cakes at Amazon (4.8 star rating.).
In a hurry? We found gourmet food gifts on Amazon!
This Nebraska bakery specializes in cakes bursting with fruits and nuts. And they happen to be the same fruitcakes offered in a number of popular mail order catalogs such as Hale Groves and the one the presenters swoon over on QVC. Their most popular cake doesn’t even use the title “Fruitcake.” Instead it bears the name Grandma’s Original Fruit & Nut Cake (2 pound fruitcake ring).
This cake features ripe fancy cherries, pineapples, plump raisins, crunchy almonds, pecans, English walnuts in a batter doused with just the right amount of bourbon, rum and brandy. If you prefer a fruitcake without alcohol, consider Ye Olde English certified Kosher, no alcohol fruit and nut cake. They have plenty of other cakes that non-fruitcake lovers would be tempted by.
Want to up the surprise factor? Consider sending the 3 pound Heavenly Trio Fruitcake selection which is available on Amazon. The trio includes Beatrice Bakery’s Classic Fruit and Nut Cake (1 lb), the Amaretto Fruitcake (1 lb), and the Pineapple Macadamia fruitcake (1 lb).
Or you can choose the Chocolate Fruit and Nut cake mellowed with 80 proof bourbon, 80 proof dark rum and 80 proof brandy. Or the Chocolate Rum cake? See, shopping for fruitcake is pretty fun.
Order from Beatrice Bakery direct, or via Amazon.
You can also purchase individually wrapped fruitcake slices from Grandma’s Famous Fruit and Nut Cakes! Holiday ready and perfect for snacking. Available on Amazon.
Gladys’ Bakery, Weimar, Texas
Texas Proud Fruitcake
Gladys’ Bakery opened in 1972 in a rural Texas hamlet 100 miles from both San Antonio and Houston. Founder Gladys Farek, a mother of 6 girls, was looking for a creative outlet and began baking bread, cookies, and pies. However, it was when she made her first fruitcake (and later, a world record-sized, Texas-shaped fruitcake) that a legend was born. Decades later, Gladys’ Weimar, Texas, bakery is Texas famous, and continues to load its Czech-style fruitcakes with fresh cherries and pineapples while leaving out citron, raisins and dates.
Shop Gladys’ Bakery Fruitcakes via Goldbelly with free shipping.
In May of 1898, 21-year-old German immigrant F. H. Eilenberger opened a bakery in Palestine, Texas to begin producing an old German family recipe for fruitcake. Today, Eilenberger’s bakery is the oldest operating bakery in Texas. Their multi-award winning fruitcakes continue to be handmade and sell nearly 50 thousand fruitcakes per year.
The reviewers from our panel of 14 taste testers felt this was one of the best classic fruitcakes available. The 4.5 lb. Fruit Cake arrives beautifully packaged in a holiday tin (the 1.5, 2 and 3 pound fruitcakes arrive as a loaf). Pecans, cherries and pineapple make a festive decoration on top of a cake that’s chewy with fruit and generously studded with pecans. If you prefer more nuts than fruit in your cake, consider the Texas Pecan Cake, or the Walnut Loaf Cake, both of which are a close cousin to the Fruitcake, and award-winning in their own right.
Eilenberger’s Fruitcake ring is available via Goldbelly .
Red Truck Bakery Fruitcake, Virginia
Nuns of New Skete Monastery, Cambridge, New York
This self-supporting community of orthodox nuns at the Monastery at New Skete in upstate New York are famous for their cheesecake. Not as well-known but just as beloved is their brandied fruitcake. Our tasting panel rated this festive 2 pound, 9 inch fruitcake ring just as highly as Eilenberger’s fruitcake which is reviewed above. Our tasters particularly appreciated the holiday tin it arrives in. They describe the fruitcake as dense and “chewy” with fruit which is balanced by the crunch of walnuts. Some reviewers felt the cake uses too many raisins (golden and dark raisins are listed as the first ingredient), and they would have preferred more cherries. Again, tastes in fruitcakes can be very specific, but all the reviewers agreed you can buy this fruit-filled cake confident that the excellent ingredients used add up to a delicious fruitcake that can be enjoyed year round. Available via GoldBelly.
Trappist Abbey is known for making old-style, dense dark fruitcakes. It’s packed with cherries, raisins, walnuts and soaked in 120 proof brandy (though none of our reviewers could detect the alcohol by taste). Be aware that a one pound fruitcake measures a petite 3 inches square and 2 inches high. That’s just about the size of a large muffin, though reviewers across the web say the petite size reflects the weight of the quality ingredients. You might want to consider purchasing either multiple boxes or the 3 pound size. It is available for purchase from the Trappist Abbey Bakery (though we found the shipping costs outside of the Northwest area to be steep), and it is also available in multiple sizes at Amazon.com.
To a few generations, when you say fruitcake, this is the cake they think of. The Jane Parker fruitcake has been around since the 1930s. So if you’re looking for a fruitcake that would be right at home in a Norman Rockwell-era painting, this is it. It was originally carried by A&P, the world’s largest grocery chain at the time. The cake’s quality and availability made this a traditional fruitcake choice at the holidays. When A&P went bankrupt in 2014, the recipe might have been lost to history, except for two brothers in New York who bought the rights to the recipe and continue to make it today using the very same recipe. The cake is 2/3 fruits and nuts to 1/3 cake batter. Cakes are available in 16, 32, 48 and 72 ounce sizes.
Available to order on Amazon in the following sizes: 1 pound loaf, 2 pound loaf, 3 pound fruitcake ring, or purchase the 3 pound fruitcake in a classic Holiday Tin.
Claxton Fruitcakes, Claxton, Georgia
The Claxton Fruitcake, which is proudly made in Claxton, Georgia, has the advantage of being carried by grocery stores across the country, giving them a top-of-mind familiarity at the holidays. Seeing their retro red and white holiday striped boxes stacked in your local grocery is the surest sign that the holiday season is unquestionably upon us. Bright candied red and green cherries top a dense pound cake that binds together California raisins, pineapple, Georgia pecans, cherries, walnuts, almonds and lemon and orange peel. Available on Amazon in 1, 2 and 3 pound options.
Southern Supreme Fruitcakes, Bear Creek, North Carolina
You’ve heard the expression “nutty as a fruitcake” right? It is a phrase coined in the south where nuts are grown in abundance and used liberally in baked goods like fruitcake. As you would expect, the Southern Supreme fruit cake uses nuts as a star ingredient. Made in North Carolina, it is a moist and chewy cake, featuring walnuts and fresh pecans mixed with golden raisins, dates, pineapple and candied cherries. The one pound fruitcakes measures 6 1/2 in. x 2 in x 1 1/2 in. With a bright red cherry decoration, this is a classic to add to your holiday dessert table.
Available at Amazon Southern Supreme Fruitcake
Robert Lambert Fruitcake, California
At $75, Robert Lambert Fruitcakes are pricier than the rest, and measure a mere 6″ X 3″ X 2″. Ah, but these high-end fruitcakes unleash amazing flavors thanks to top-quality ingredients. These superb fruitcakes have replaced much of the expected candied fruit with exotic home-candied citrus peels and young ginger. Fruits and nuts from small California farms complete the task of creating cakes that vanquish fruitcake’s bad reputation! Each is aged for flavor, wrapped in cheesecloth, tied with linen string and doused with good liquor. They are topped with fresh bay leaf and citrus peel star, then sealed in a cellophane bag. Perfect for those with discriminating tastes. It’s the same fruitcake proudly featured in Zingerman’s catalog.
Order white or Dark Fruitcakes online at Robert Lambert.
Want to send both fruitcake and fudge? Then order the 20 ounce Gethsemani Farms Fruitcake with 1 pound of Kentucky bourbon chocolate fudge with pecans which is available on Amazon. (We want to be on your gift list.)
You asked, so here are the fudge flavors the Monks make and sell on Amazon:
Butter Walnut Bourbon Fudge, Coffee Fudge, Mint Julip Bourbon Fudge, Salted Caramel Fudge, Peppermint Fudge, and Coconut Fudge. Enjoy!