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TH
STELLA’S 24 OF JULY CHOCOLATE CHERRY NUT CAKE
WITH SEVEN MINUTE “ICING”
Excerpt from This is the Place:
th
“
Today was July 24 , the day Brigham Young had entered the Salt Lake Valley
more than one hundred years before. He knew that his followers would wring this desert
to green like the rains bring the Indian Paint Brush and Sego Lilies to bloom. He had
said, “This is the place.” And it was.
The Garret and Stella Eccles family—Sky’s family—would have gathered on
their shady lawn on the East side of the house for this reason alone, but as it happened it
was also Sky and Venetia’s birthdays. They celebrated with sparklers instead of candles
for that was how the holiday itself was celebrated. These two native Utah women were
tied to the state and to each other by accident of birth, place, and timing.
There was potato salad made with red potatoes with the skins left on. There were
hot dogs. Cokes were chilling in their bottles in a galvanized steel washtub. It was filled
with ice cubes made in little segregated trays. The twin cakes, frosted by hand with
seven-minute icing, were on an umbrella table protected from flies with waxed paper. TV
trays had been set up next to chairs to handle pop, ashtrays, and bowls of party mix, a
recipe that Stella had found in the Ladies Home Journal.
Neesha knew that in a while—it was as sure to happen as the cutting of the
cakes—the family would begin to discuss politics, which in Utah is the same as
discussing religion. They would bash Mormon beliefs as foolish, the Mormon’s intensity
about converting them as insulting. Sky would fade into another place with practiced ease
and Garret—the lone Mormon—would take his broad-toothed grin into the garage to
putter with his rock collection or sharpen his tools.”
th
Stella’s 24 of July Chocolate Cherry Nut Cake with Seven Minute “Icing”
Ingredients:
Chocolate Cherry Nut Cake
1
1
1
cup sugar
egg, beaten
-¾ cup cake flour
¼
cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
squares semisweet chocolate
cup butter, softened
2
½
1
cup sour milk
1
tsp baking soda
5
1
1
-oz bottle maraschino cherries, sliced
pinch salt
tsp vanilla
9
9
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