Famous Texas-made fruitcakes travel to tables far and wide this holiday season

EAST TEXAS (KLTV) – Founded and based in Corsicana, Collin Street Bakery has served people baked treats for 128 years. The company has been passed down through four generations, and while the technology of the baking as well as the staff have changed through the years, the love and care that goes into the baked goods has not.

Famous for the DeLuxe® Fruitcake, the bakery produces over one million pounds of it a year. Each one is hand-decorated with pecans and glaceed fruits.

Between the factory’s two ovens, they can bake more than 4,000 fruitcakes at a time. While some are hard at work decorating, overseeing the baking, and supervising the glazing, others are in the scratch-made kitchen.

The bakery sells more than 100 types of baked goods, and baker Rusty Skidmore is a contributor. Now in his sixties, he said the sweet job drew him out of retirement.

“It’s just fulfilling to me to have a purpose and a meaning to life. I get to do my childhood dream,” said Skidmore. “This is what I started when I was 16.”

The McNutt family has owned and operated the company since the 1940s. Vice President Thomas McNutt said he knows the reputation of fruitcake, but feels confident their recipe is top-notch.

“I’ll tell you this, if Collin Street Bakery fruitcake was the only fruitcake that any human ever ate, every human would have it every Christmas for their families,” he said.

The fruitcakes made in the factory are distributed to their cafe locations, including one in Lindale off I-20. It’s proximity to the highway makes in a popular pitstop.

“We stop here almost every time we go to Dallas. We love this place,” said Donald Bates who stopped in on his way to AT&T Stadium to watch Carthage High School play in the state football championship for the tenth time.

According to McNutt, nearly 80% of the company’s annual revenue is made during the holiday season.

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