Theories abound as to why women excel in the baking and pastry arts. Dexterous fingers, capable of the perfectly fluted pie crust? Exacting intellects, attuned to weights and measures? Palates hard-wired to appreciate the frill and grace of petits fours?

As a man possessing none of these innate traits, I never got around to baking much for myself. Never had to. I've been too busy paying homage to the women in my life with my mouth full.

Rum cakes were early favorites. My mother baked a bundt shot through with Bacardi, crackled with lemon icing. It played across my tongue like a vote of confidence, an acknowledgment that I was an adult in the making.

Poundcake came next. While in my teens, I became a bake sale devotee. I bought butter-drenched and Saran-wrapped treats from Baptist church ladies and grammar school PTA moms alike. By the time I enrolled at the University of Georgia, I knew the joy of skillet-toasting a slice for breakfast. In my 20s, I wowed dates with cadged slices, tufts of whipped cream and jumbles of berries.

Caramel was the cake of my 30s. I fell hard for the idea of expeditionary food, by which I mean I traveled to eat. When I moved to Mississippi, I took an almost-oath to sample every caramel cake in the northern half of the state. I ferreted out Junior League doyennes in Tupelo. I sought Calhoun City housekeepers with a gift for yellow cake and burned sugar. I scouted talent in convenience stores from Oxford to Okolona.

I'm now a fruitcake man. Laugh if you like, but compared with most confections, fruitcakes are sturdy, masculine even. Yes, I'm aware some claim they are nothing more than bakery bricks, best employed as doorstops. But I fix on the aging process, sketching comparisons to the crafting of country ham and bourbon whiskey, both of which are, well, manly pursuits.

I've come to appreciate how a douse of liquor, liberally applied to a pecan-and-fruit-studded dough, mellows from early November, when my wife bakes cupcakes of the stuff, until sometime shy of Christmas when I sneak the last bite from the tin.

Seven years into our marriage, I feel the urge to have a hand in the process. This time, when Blair sets to work stirring dough and chopping nuts, I plan to help — as best I can.

John T. Edge is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. The SFA documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. If you would like to be on the mailing list for SFA events, including a Jan. 6 dinner and food film fest in Atlanta, e-mail sfamail@olemiss.edu.