Local chef filling nearly 300 orders for famous fruit cake

Fruit cake – it is the holiday dessert that some people look forward to while most people turn their nose up at it.

That is until they try a slice of Chef James Barwick’s famous confection.

The 66-year-old culinary artist is hard at work filling nearly 300 orders for his fruit cake – 270 to be exact, the most he has ever made in a holiday season. Last year he capped orders at 200. And these masterpieces will travel well beyond the boundaries of Laurens County, with some fruit cakes to be shipped to Oregon, California and Hawaii. Some will even cross the border into Canada. 

Barwick’s fruit cakes have become more than a treat for many customers but a Thanksgiving or Christmas tradition, with many orders placed a year or more in advance. If you don’t ask early enough, you’ll have to wait until next year. 

“When they pick up at Christmas most people will go ahead and book for the next year,” he said. 

And business is strictly word of mouth. 

No stranger to the kitchen, Barwick has crafted the perfect fruit cake recipe leaning on his 50 year career as a cook and chef and a recipe learned from his mother. He has tweaked the technique and made additions and subtractions over time to create a dish with the perfect flavor profile and texture. 

These are not the mass-produced, sickeningly bright colored monstrosities seen in grocery stores during the holiday season. Barwick’s hand-crafted fruit cakes are prepared in small batches that take at least three months to prepare, starting with candied cherries and pineapple soaking in bourbon. 

“For no less than 90 days,” the chef said. 

Each cake weighs in at eight and a half pounds, made with three pounds of the whiskey drenched fruit, a pound each of walnuts and pecans with the rest made up of coconut, raisins and dates, not to mention the cake itself. Baking for two hours, Barwick can make six at a time and about 24 cakes a day. 

While the cakes wait to be picked up they are misted with bourbon every two days. Once at home, Barwick recommends spraying the cake once a week. If properly stored and spritzed, the cake will last a year or more, if you can refrain from eating it for that long. 

The fruit cakes are just the icing on the figurative cake for the in-demand chef. Barwick has pages for orders for his pies, cakes, dressing and other dishes from now to Christmas. For New Years he’s booked to prepare the fare for a wedding rehearsal dinner. 

“This is the busiest year I’ve ever had,” Barwick said. 

The Adrian native spent much of his career in New York, serving as a personal chef and even preparing meals for celebrity clientele. Now people come from miles around to pick up orders prepared in his kitchen, in a 1920s-era home in Lovett, getting a taste of world-class dining in one of Laurens County’s most rural communities. 

 “I’ve always had a passion for food. It is a pleasure to see people get joy out of what I cook,” Barwick said. “No matter your background or belief, food brings people together.”