As holiday staples go, fruitcake generally ranks among the most groan-inducing — a yuletide tradition as cherished as mailing packages at the post office or parking at the mall. At Christmas potlucks, it consistently takes the prize for most throw-able dish, most likely to end up inside a potted plant or a beagle’s stomach. But in 1992, a gifted Raleigh baker named Ruth Gerringer submitted her recipe to The N&O’s annual fruitcake contest, setting off what qualified as a Christmastime explosion, bombarding the judges with dates, Brazil nuts and a pound of candied pineapple. She won handily. Then she won again in 1995, using the same formula, launching her name into fruitcake immortality.

“I am convinced that if fruitcake haters will try a piece of fruitcake baked from my special recipe,” she said at the time, “there will be a revolution to restore fruitcake to where it rightfully belongs — among the special treats of all time.”

More than three decades later, Norma Hoots Lynch still bakes Gerringer’s fruitcake every year, having clipped the original from The N&O pages.

She likes it because it goes so light on the cake — just a little flour to bind everything together, not so much that a mouthful feels like chewing a blanket.

And where Ruth Gerringer’s recipe skimps on the cake, it doubles down on fruit and nuts: more than a pound apiece of cherries and pineapple and a metric ton of nuts.

To hear Hoots Lynch tell it, this cake will convert the staunchest fruitcake hater, powerful enough to impress the harshest judges: her senior dessert group at United Methodist Church.

“Everyone who tastes it will say, ‘I like this fruitcake,’“ she promises. “It always makes me sad when people say fruitcakes aren’t good. You haven’t had good fruitcake.”

Ruth Gerringer’s Prize-Winning Fruitcake

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds whole candied cherries

1 pound whole candied dates

1 pound walnuts

2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk

1 1/2 pounds candied pineapple

1 pound Brazil nuts

1 pound pecans

1 cup self-rising flour

DIRECTIONS

1. Cut fruit and nuts in half. Add sweetened condensed milk, then flour. Mix well. Press into greased and floured tube pan or loaf pans.

2. Bake at 300 degrees for 90 minutes.