First Fruit Cake

It is the day before the day before Christmas and there is a flurry of activity at our house. Actually, the flurry of activity is in our kitchen. We have been baking since Saturday - sausage balls, pumpkin stuff, lots of cookies, dipped pretzels - and yes, some of this has already been eaten or given away.

So yesterday we made our very first fruitcake in honor of my Grandma's memory and we made fudge according to her recipe. I always wondered why it took her days to get ready for Christmas dinner and now I know. The smells of great food and the excitement of just being at her house for Christmas are some of my favorite memories and hopefully I can pick up her mantle with grace and give my family some really great memories as well.

Making the fruitcake required several phone calls to my dad to compare notes and decide exactly how long to cook the layers as Grandma didn't think that information was important enough to write down. I think 13 to 14 minutes will do though. It was a long process but we had fun and Lindsay took lots of pictures for me. Here are a few of our favorites: