THE Fruit Cake Recipe

 Dictated to Elizabeth E.

Right after we got back from New York, we were living in one of Grandfather Sessions' apartments, and I decided to try to make a moist kind of fruit cake, different from the dessicated ones that I'd previously tasted.  This was before Cynthia was born, probably about 1950.  

Dad said, "You're not going to make a fruit cake.  They are so awful and dry!"  

"Yes, I am," I replied.

I found this recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and cut it out.  (It's not printed in their cookbooks anymore.)  I followed the printed version almost exactly, but left out the citron, as I thought my mother didn't like it. I pulled it out of the oven as Sterling wandered in.  He asked what I'd pulled out and I said "fruit cake."  He made a funny sound, and said "Ugh! Fruit cakes are awful things."  So I cut a sliver from the end and handed it to him.  He tasted it, took a few more bites.  Then he had another slice.  

Grandfather Sessions had come home with Sterling.  They often would go selling things together, or Grandfather would say, 'I"ve got to go measure for draperies," and he'd take Sterling with him.  Grandfather Sessions also thought he didn't like fruitcakes, but when he tasted them, he liked them.  And then I think I sent some home with him for Grandmother Sesssions.

Time passed and after a while, I couldn't get the list of nuts and candied fruits on the left.  I could only buy the fruits altogether, so I adjusted quantities and wrote them out on the left.  "Of course I didn't use the brandy," she said, in response to my query about that item in the printed recipe.

Note: The recipe was folded up into a plastic sleeve and these two pieces of paper were tucked behind it.  The bottom one is the interesting one; it was the famous List of Who Got Fruitcakes.  Initially I didn't like fruitcakes, so my name is not on the list (I grew to like them, but never could get back on The List.)  Apparently Susan gave a non-committal answer, so she didn't make it onto The List. 

Mom's comment: "They take over four hours to bake, so no one who wasn't enthusiastic about it got one!"

Now you have THE Fruit Cake recipe.

More tidbits that came up later about the Cedar Avenue home, all in mother's voice:

Dad would leave early in the morning, when the house was a disaster, with kids toys everywhere, dishes in the sink and laundry to be folded.  But one morning he came back to the house about 10:30, just as I was preparing to give baby Elizabeth a bath.

"Wow!" he said.  "I’ve never seen the house look so clean!"

I said to him: "It looks this way at this time every morning."  

He had always left really early to go to work, and then by the time he came home at night, everything was a mess again, as I had four small children and dinner to fix. So I think he thought that's how the house was all the time.

Grandfather Sessions and Sterling were the bright lights of my life, that every once in a while they would pop in and say hello, and stay for a bit in the middle of the day,

Grandfather doted on Christine and Cynthia, one time coming over with a box from Kiddyville [the children's clothing and toy store in Provo].  He'd purchased two little pink satin bathrobes with matching satin slippers.  I thought that was so wonderful.

It was comfortable there living there in Provo.  We didn’t have a lot, and were eating on Grandmother and Grandfather's cast iron table and chairs, having put their patio furniture in our dining room.  When we moved to Salt Lake, we bought the maple table (not from Grandpa) and chairs, and gave them back their table.