Sunday, November 13, 2011

Fruit Cake, Killion, and Looking Forward to the Yuletide Season

Christmas is FRUIT CAKE season for our family.  It's my mother's specialty and she's got her regular clients to satisfy.  So as early as October she'd start building up her raw materials and start baking this Yuletide delicacy as early as November. 

Fruit cake is laced with rum and is meant to be aged.  The longer it sits the better it taste.  Hence, baking it early will have it aged enough in time for Christmas.  It is truly a delight to eat and makes for a perfect Christmas gift.

If you're going to shop around for this treat, you'll notice that it is quite expensive.  This is because its ingredients does not come cheap (if you see offers that promises a 0.75 kg  fruit cake for less than Php 350---better be wary).  Glazed fruits, walnuts, pili nuts, dates, these raw materials are royalty!  Aside from being delicious, my mother's fruit cakes are known to be FILLING, SIKSIK, and GENEROUS in terms of its content.  I've just talked about SULIT in my past two blogs and my mother's fruit cake is definitely worth your money!

The skyrocketing cost of goods is definitely hurting small time enterprises like my mother's but thanks to places like Killion in Quiapo, the industry continues to thrive.

Killion is a Chinese run store which has been in operation like forever!   I remember when I was still a small boy when I used to accompany my mother in buying fruit cake ingredients---that was 25+ years ago.  Last Saturday, my wife and I went on an errand for my mother.  It was the first time in many years that I came back to that place and it still looks the same.  Well, with the exception of a couple of additional appliances (they didn't have cash registers before), it was the same old Killion!






Located at 40 Orozco St., Quiapo, Manila, Killion is a baker's version of Divisoria with their low priced goodies!  Of course, if coming from a far off place like us, you'd better be ready with a large back pack and an able bodied sidekick to carry the load (which was why I got elected to tag along).  Expect to meet other entrepreneurs while at the store and if you're sociable enough, you'll get free tips as to where other other baking paraphernalia can be bought for less.  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does Killion sell flours and dairy products? I need an inexpensive source of unsalted butter, cream cheese and cake flour.

Thank you.

Unknown said...

yes they do...