Celebrating 30 years
The Great
Fruitcake Toss
January 25, 2025 from 1-3pm
Let your fruitcake fly
The fruitcakes will fly again in Manitou Springs! Join us for old fashioned games of tossing fruitcakes! It all started in 1996 with locals throwing fruitcakes in the park, and 30 years later, here we are. Events will be pure feats of strength, talent, balance and taste!
- January 25, 2025 1-3pm
- Memorial Park
- $1 per ticket
The cost to compete in this fun competition is a mere $1 per game! You can also bring in canned goods to donate to St. Andrew’s Food Pantry and for each canned good you will receive 1 ticket, up to 10 tickets per family. The third option is renting a fruitcake from us! For $5 you may use one of our homemade fruitcakes and receive 4 tickets. Stay until the end for all of the fun prizes! We have winners in every age group.
Congrats 2024 Fruitcake Toss Winners!
Distance – Reese (98 ft)
Distance – Dakota (147 ft)
Distance – Rory A (114 ft)
Fruitcake toss events & rules of play
Distance
- One Cake per throw (one ticket per toss)
- Measured at the location of landed cake
- WINNER: Whomever throws the farthest distance in each age group wins
Accuracy
- ONE TOSSER ON ACCURACY COURSE AT A TIME
- ONE TICKET TO ENTER
- 10 and under start from 5 feet
- 11 and older start from 10 feet
- Every tosser gets one “mulligan” (miss)
- Second miss and you are out
- Start at largest hoop and move to middle, then smallest all on 10 feet. If tosser makes all 3, they advance to 20 feet. If all 20 foot hoops are made, they advance to 30 feet.
- 10 ft increments for measurement
- WINNER: Whomever hits the smallest hoop from the farthest distance in each age group
BasketCake
- one cake – toss 3 times
- one ticket to toss in baskets
- WINNER: highest scoring toss by adding points from baskets (points only count if cake stays in basket)
Balance
- One cake per race (1 ticket)
- Five second rule: If you drop your cake, you have 5 seconds to get back into the race
- Individuals will run the race course once, balancing cake on spatula
- WINNER: Fastest time on course in each age group
The Great Fruitcake Bake-Off!
Congratulations to the 2024 Bake-Off Winner and The Loft Espresso owner, Justin Snyder!
Bake-Off Rules and Regulations
1.Bake up the ol’ family recipe… (we know you’ve got one!)
2. bring your cake down to Memorial Park between 1-1:30 pm to enter our Great Fruitcake Bake-Off!
Requirements? Just that your cake has flour, nuts, and fruit!
Collin Street Bakery is providing a $75 value prize package to our winner, so enter TODAY!
Left: Photo of 2024 Great Fruitcake Toss Bake-off judges, Lyn Ettinger-Harwell, Alex Trefry, and Marlo Anderson
We Support Local Food Needs
That’s right- we know we’re tossing perfectly good food around like it’s trash. Well, those rental cakes we make certainly are…but the seriousness of the food crisis is ever present on our minds, so the Great Fruitcake Toss has partnered with the local food pantry to stock shelves for the community.
Instead of bringing dollars to toss your cake, bring non-perishable food items and exchange for tickets to toss! (10 tickets max per family)
We will again partner with the Manitou Springs Food Pantry, held weekly on Wednesdays at St Andrews Church, 110 Cañon Ave, 1-2 pm. All are welcome and volunteers/donors always appreciated to support local food needs.
Build a mini catapult
Cool Science is back for 2024, to help kids build their own wooden catapult. Cool Science has joined us at the Great Fruitcake Toss for multiple years, and is always a crowd favorite to visit!
What happens to all of the fruitcakes?
All of the fruitcakes that aren’t brought home from the Great Fruitcake Toss go to a special friend of ours. We take all of the leftovers to SunMountain so they can be fed to their resident animals, including their pig, Jezebel.
Don’t worry, all of the fruitcakes we make don’t include the preservatives that your standard fruitcake does. These fruitcakes are nutritionally safe for Jezebel and all of her friends.
I absolutely love fruit cake
To eat not toss! Holding up my hand for leftovers!
There's not much batter in a fruitcake!
My mother used to make her own… and she’d put red and green gumdrops in them, instead of the candied cherries. Plus lots of pecans (I mean, this IS Texas 😉 ). She also candied her own pineapple, so it hadn’t been sitting on some shelf for half a year. It wasn’t half bad. But I still want to load one with maraschino cherries, raisins, pecans, and (maybe) the pineapple.
How do you get rid of fruitcake?
Just throw it as far as you can, that’s what we do in Manitou Springs.
Frequent Fruitcake Questions
Yes, leashed dogs are welcome at the Great Fruitcake Toss.
Come on down to the park and visit our Fruitcake Tech Inspect team. They’ll clear your homemade cake for tossing. If you don’t have a cake, you can buy one for $5 at the entry table.
You sure can! Extra fruitcake toss tickets will be available for $1 each. Or you can bring a canned good with you to receive a ticket as well. 10 tickets max per family for donated cans. All canned goods will be donated to the Manitou Springs Food Pantry.
Rum, dried fruit, toasted pecans, butter, candied cherries and ginger, sugar, lemon, and eggs. But it doesn’t just end there…
Great! We’d love to have you! Our volunteer application is HERE. Please contact us at monica@manitouchamber.com with any questions!
We hear this a lot. The answer is YES. We’ll have fruitcake samples provided by our sponsor Collins Street Bakery.
There will be fruitcake, fruitcake, and more fruitcake! If you’re only interested in tossing the cakes, you might want to stop by a local eatery for brunch, like Adam’s Mountain Cafe.
support the fruitcake
Sponsorship info
If your business would like to help launch the fruitcake toss, fill out an application and send it our way.
THANK YOU 2024 SPONSORS!
2024 'Icing on the Cake' Sponsors
2024 'Piece of Cake' Sponsors
2024 'Bake the World' Sponsors
2024 In Kind Sponsors
