10 Alternative Uses For Fruitcake

You hope for a bag of coffee or perhaps a new mug, and you're thankful when the foil-wrapped box you get at the office gift exchange is close enough in size to be either. What you come out with, however, is fruitcake: a brick-hard loaf studded with pink and green fruits so garish and goopy they might as well be gumdrops.  

For a second you consider that perhaps it could be a good fruitcake, one of those mythological rum-punched creatures that folks claim to have seen, even tasted. It is not. Nobody gives away a great fruitcake, at least not in the office gift pool. If they do, well, never quit your job. You are in a good place with good people.

So what do you do with the crappy cake? You could throw it away, but you'd be bound for terrible karma that would surely follow you into the New Year. You could also ditch it by the break-room coffeemaker with a Post-it that encourages others to enjoy — particularly if it's one of those more-to-love round fruitcakes that comes in a collectible tin. But that's an obvious move and nobody wants to be cliché — it's the last few days of 2011 and you still have something to prove.

Check out these 10 alternative ways to put a bad fruitcake to good use.

Check out the next page for five alternate uses for round fruitcakes!