It’s four days after Christmas and you still have a lot of fruitcake leftover that no one wants to eat it. What to do?

Before tossing it in the trash, consider these three options, courtesy pastry chef Charles Barrett of the Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta .

  1. Stuffing. Cube the leftover fruitcake and moisten liberally with bourbon, rum or brandy and stuff inside a pork loin.
  2. Balls. Since fruitcake is a holiday dessert, spice it some more by processing, dousing with rum, chilling, rolling into balls and finally, dusting with powdered sugar.
  3. Waffles. Why should the fruitcake have all the fun? Make use of your leftovers with fruitcake waffles and ham plus homemade pineapple-grain mustard. To prepare, process the fruitcake with an egg and milk to make the batter. Toast in a waffle iron then top with the leftover ham and the pineapple mustard.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

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