Today I want to share a passage from a book I just finished reading, a book so old that it is a 1912 edition. It is titled ‘ The old Fashioned girl” by Louisa May Alcott. The context is a small sermon given by the heroine Polly to her friends, Tom, Fanny and Maud.
” Life, my brethren, is like plum cake.
In some the plums are all on the top, and we eat them gayly, till we suddenly find they are gone. In others the plums sink to the bottom, and we look for them in vain as we go on, and often come to them when it is too late to enjoy them. But in the well-made cake, the plums are wisely scattered all through, and every mouthful is a pleasure. We make our own cakes, in a great measure, therefore let us look to it, my brethren, that they are mixed according to the best receipt, baked in a well-regulated oven, and gratefully eaten with a temperate appetite”.
Susie Shy 45 
I love this, Suzie. I’ve never had plum cake but if I did I would definitely want the plums evenly distributed. Sort of like the chocolate chips in cookies to bring a more palatable metaphor into the discussion. LOL.
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It is true- Susie or Suzie, no matter. I believe in recent times all ingredients are first coated in flour so they don’t sink to the bottom of the cake.
I think what old timers used to call plum cake is what we call fruit cake now, maybe ?
Susie
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Definitely flour coating helps keep fruit or chocolate chips distributed throughout the batter. And I am one of the few who will admit it. I love fruitcake.
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I love fruit cake too. I have recently come to know that it is sacrilegious to admitting a fondness for a fruit cake. The jokes about a fruit cake are many it seems.
Susie
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You are so right about that, Susie. We must unite to save the fruitcake from undeserved mockery!
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I mean Susie, not Suzie. 🙂
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I join the discussion to admit that I too love fruit cake. Especially so a recipe for Cherry cake which I first baked years ago when I was a newly married wife. Over the years the recipe has been tweaked to now include sultanas, raisins and even dried peel every now and again. I’ll eat it because it’s fabulous… but I admit that I eat it because I’m a total sucker for fruit.
Lovely post Susie.
Sending good wishes ~ Cobs. x
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Cobs,
I think plum cake( fruit cake) is the best cake there is- it is fun to pick out the raisins and sultanas out of it and eat it separately from the cake. Have you made fruit cakes ?
Susie
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Yes, lots of times. I really enjoy fruit cakes. My particular favourite is the Fruit Cake which we (here in the UK) traditionally have at Christmas time.
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Oh my ! I love them too.
But if the alcohol element is on the lower side, for me. 🙂
Susie
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I love that! I have read her other books but have not heard of this one. I am going to have to hunt up a copy to read.
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That, then, implies that a meaningful life has to be perfectly balance for it to make spiritual sense. Life is the sweetest mystery if well understood from the beginning.
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So it is. Thanks, Philip.
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Thank you too Susie.
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Yes, it is Philip.
Susie
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Susie, I love Louisa M. Alcott, but I think I have missed this one. My grandmother introduced her to me, and one year for Christmas our grandfather created small chests for all the grand-daughters in honor of the chests the March girls had in Little Women. I have read Eight Cousins. I remember liking that story too. Thanks for prompting good memories in me tonight. I’ll have to keep my eyes open for a copy of this book at book sales, or perhaps find it on YouTube as an audio book. Thanks Susie, Kathy
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I am lad I did, Kathy. I had only read Little Women and those books before- Jo’s boys, Little Men and so on. Never the other books. I am getting the books from our college library- we tell them what books we want and they get them for us from any library they can find them in.
How wonderful that your grandparents read Little Women and made chests for you girls – what lovely grandparents you had.
God bless, Kathy.
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Great book choice. It’s fun to read the not-as-famous stories of long ago authors. My daughter recently read this one and like you, we found it through the library. 🙂
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Marcia,
I am so happy to meet a fellow book lover/reader like you. I am doing all the possible books I can lay my hands on of L. M. Montgomery. I started off with the ” Anne” series. Recently I came to know she had written lots more than ” Anne”. I just finished ” A tangled web”.
Susie
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