It’s that jolly time of the year again when the fruitcake jokes start: Have you heard the one about using the fruitcake as a doorstop? Or that the same cake has been re-gifted to your relatives for the last 10 Christmases?

We all have. That’s why people who actually love fruitcake are inclined to keep it a secret. But I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve loved it since I was a kid, when my family would get the same fruitcake from a friend every Christmas. It was the “Original DeLuxe” from Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, using the original recipe since 1896. It came in a round tin decorated with a wintry scene. I’d forgotten the brand until I saw it on TV five years ago, and I was thrilled to recognize that tin can.

I ordered one right away and shared it with Star-Advertiser managing editor Marsha McFadden, another fruitcake lover who relished the cake with a glass of milk or red wine. Honestly, it wasn’t as good as I remembered as a kid, even with vanilla ice cream, my favorite accompaniment, but then, is anything ever as good?

Still, it was better than any of the ones you can buy at the supermarket, we both agreed. From then on, we would compare our fruitcake wish lists while looking at Collin Street and the Vermont Country Store catalogs every Christmas. We’d talk about how good Collin Street’s pineapple and apricot cakes looked and wondered how the Vermont Country Store’s versions stacked up.

Marsha’s ideal fruitcake, based on what she had growing up in South Carolina, was “moist, rich and homemade,” with more fruits than nuts.

“I think Mom made it a few times,” she said, but most years they just bought their fruitcakes. These days, supermarket versions don’t appeal because they’re nothing like what she was used to.

Personally, I think they’re too loaded with neon-colored fruit, or they don’t have enough nuts.

IN THE INTEREST of science (or to fuel more fruitcake jokes), we called out a challenge in mid-November for diehard fruitcake fans to come out and “stand proud” of their proclivity. About 10 people responded right away, but only two could make it to our informal tasting Nov. 27 in the newsroom.

For that, I ordered a set of four mini-cakes from Collin Street — traditional, blonde (no molasses), apricot and pineapple; a triple liquor chocolate cake from Vermont; and a cake from Gingersnaps Etc. The last was recommended by a co-worker who isn’t a fruitcake fan but likes this one, sent by her mother-in-law each year.

We also tasted a locally made pineapple-coconut-macadamia nut loaf from Hawaiian Happy Cakes, beloved by reader Mark Berwick since the days it was served at Kemoo Farms about 50 years ago.

Taster Kathy Pavao of Liliha brought with her a sample baked from a recipe at least 80 years old. Her mother, Alice Rodrigues, made a cake she called “Alberta’s fruitcake” (her middle name) that was so good the recipe was given as a prize in a local radio contest long ago. Pavao makes four to six batches every year and gives them to family and friends, who may not go for fruitcake in general, but “they can’t wait for mine.”

Ann Hinckley of Waikiki also took part in the tasting. She learned to make fruitcake living in California in the early 1960s, mainly because of a prolific tree in the backyard — “I had walnuts up the kazoo!” The essential ingredient was the “booze,” rum or brandy, to soak the cake with periodically after it was baked a month before Christmas. “It was wonderful!”

Hinckley said she hasn’t always been able to find a similar cake since moving to Hawaii 25 years ago, unless she sends away for one in San Francisco or manages to nab one at R. Field Wine Co. before they sell out. She is a stickler for the dark, molasses fruitcakes that have “fallen out of style.”

“I resent that the younger people make jokes about it all the time,” she lamented.

OTHER READERS who responded to Crave’s call-out were twin sisters Lei Brady and Lani Abrigana, who buys the Claxton brand in supermarkets. Abrigana wrote: “my husband, who is Filipino told me, ‘It looks like vomit!’ The world is clearly divided into halves: Those who like fruitcake and the unenlightened.”

Brady wrote: “We used to have an uncle who sent us each a Collin Street Bakery fruitcake every year for Christmas.” After he died, she started following a recipe from King Arthur Flour, and “after everyone gets over their initial fear and distaste of fruitcake, they like this recipe. I make it with Myers’s dark rum.”

Back to the taste test: Marsha and Pavao rated Collin Street’s pineapple cake the best because it had the right fruit-to-nut ratio and was one of the few that was moist enough. But they missed the variety of colorful fruits that highlight traditional cakes. Hinckley agreed, adding that the sliced pieces of cake used to look so pretty, “almost like a stained-glass window.”

Hinckley wasn’t enamored of any of them “because none are as good as what I used to make.” She thought the Gingersnaps cake was good but needed more brandy —“If you booze it up, then it’s perfect!” Everyone agreed the cake was too dry and had an overload of raisins and nuts.

The Vermont chocolate cake was “wonderful,” but too much like a brownie to be considered a fruitcake, according to these purists. They deemed the Hawaiian cake delectable as well but didn’t categorize it a fruitcake either, saying it deviated too far from traditional ingredients.

Owen O’Callaghan, owner of Happy Cake, begged to differ: “In addition to a strong shelf life, it has nuts and glazed fruit (the cornerstone of any fruitcake). So I would argue that it IS in fact a fruitcake!”

We finally sampled Pavao’s cake, which everyone praised for it’s light texture and moistness. Pavao thinks the secret to its success is boiling the dates, and maybe the apricot brandy. It’s now part of family lore that one year she soaked the fruits in this brandy, but after everyone fell sick at the same time she never finished making it.

The following year her son decided to use the well-aged fruits to make the cake. He called her at work, exclaiming: “Mom, I almost blew up the oven!” He meant that “the smell of alcohol was overwhelming as it baked,” she said, laughing, but that cake got the most rave reviews.