DURING Christmas, Ju.D Lao’s artisanal fruitcakes lord it over other fruitcakes in the market. Food critics, such as Nancy Reyes Lumen and Margaux Salcedo, have given Lao’s fruitcakes high marks in terms of taste and quality.
Lao, 60, proves age is just a number and not a hindrance to becoming a productive individual.
In a recent interview with the BusinessMirror, Lao said she started to sell her products to her mother, friends and relatives. However, Lao’s brother challenged her to sell to the market after he told her “you are nothing if you are only selling to your friends and families.”
“I had to sell my fruitcakes door-to-door just like the salesmen of encyclopedias during those days,” Lao said.
Lao, who started baking fruitcakes in 1975 after graduating with a Fine Arts degree from the University of Santos Tomas, never attended any cooking classes, but engaged in self study by reading a lot of cook books. She also experimented on recipes that caught her fancy.
“And, since I’m from a big family, we’re never short of guinea pigs or, should I say, brave and curious souls,” she said.
Lao said consistency is key in maintaining the quality of the fruitcakes. She said she has not changed any of their ingredients since 1975. One thing Lao does not do is sell fruitcakes during the off, season because walnuts get rancid easily.
“When we started, we always got rancid walnuts between the months of February and September, so we decided to do fruitcakes only when walnuts are fresh. That became our tradition even though the availability of walnuts has become all-year round now. We somehow retained this tradition though we still bake a few pieces from time to time just to satisfy some customers,” she said.
Aside from pursuing her passion, making fruitcakes allows her to do her own corporate social responsibility. Through the years, her work force has been composed of neighbors’ maids, out-of-school youth, parents from schools, who are in financial need but cannot take regular jobs.
“We only sell fruitcakes during the Christmas season. We cannot afford to hire regular employees so this arrangement has been a win-win situation for all of us. I remember a few years back, we had a group of young ladies from El Shaddai Choir, who came to help us, and, from time to time, they’d burst out singing while working. That was a very lovely and memorable Christmas for us,” Lao said.
She said she had a hard time perfecting her first fruitcake because of the absence of a cookbook and Google to get the instructions.
“It was hardest for the Ju.D Blue, which is coffee-flavored fruitcake. We had to source for Blue Mountain Coffee flavor and the right liquor to age the fruitcake. For that, we spent about eight months. Lately, we have been experimenting with some cookies and it’s been a big challenge for us, too,” she said.
With her cooking experience, Lao already penned two vegetarian cookbooks for the TzuChi Foundation available in about 50 TzuChi chapters worldwide. In Manila, the cookbooks are available at the TzuChi office in Quezon City.
As of now, Lao does not sell vegetarian dishes. But she is not closing the door to pursue the vegetarian route to encourage more people to become vegetarian to lessen the killing of innocent animals.
Lao is a volunteer for the TzuChi Foundation. Aside from helping in calamities, she teaches cooking vegetarian dishes and do translations for the foundation. Lao, along with her fellow TzuChi members, actively helped in relief operations after the country was hit by typhoons Ondoy and Yolanda.
“TzuChi initiated the cash-for-work program in the disaster-stricken areas because we want the victims to maintain their dignity,” Lao said.
She starts selling her fruitcakes in November. But since fruitcakes can “stand the test of time,” she usually keeps a few classic fruitcakes on hand for anyone with the craving for fruitcakes between January and November. If not, it’ll take three weeks to have them aged.
Asked what motivates her to cook, she said: “Maybe I love to share or maybe I like to see happy faces once they tried my products.”